assassin_696

My problem with these debates is that they normally descend into petty Bible quoting with one side claiming to know more about the context and actual meaning than the other, failing to see the inherent subjectivity in any historical document with controversial origins. This to-ing and fro-ing doesn't answer the question: Is God real? Which begs the question, if yes, why? My real interest lies with the arguments for God's existence, not Yahweh's or Allah's, just some unspecified higher being. Because frankly, if there aren't any strong arguments for God existing then the whole Bible debate seems to lose some of its potency. Surely any myth/culture with enough history and followers could be debated like this, but that's not what gives it credibility. I don't want a shooting gallery either of traditional arguments for me to knock down with the routine rebuttals. I'm just curious and interested as to why you think that God exists. If you want to take it on faith then that's fine, but if you can justify it then go for it.

What a fun idea. It would certainly bring a smile to my face to see one of those ads on a bus. Sly, I really don't have the patience for a debate with you, given the way you've patronised Ginger over the last five pages. So all i'll say is that generalising and reducing Richard Dawkin's arguments against religion to "you're an idiot if you believe in God" is as ridiculous and misrepresentative of his arguments as you claim he is of Christian's. Ironically, a Bible passage about specks of dust in eyes springs to mind here. Don't be hypocritical.

My Hitchcock DVD's arrived today :)

White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes

I'm quite curious if anyone here who's a vegetarian does any kind of weight training? I'm sure it's possible in principle to get enough protein from soya products, but I know I have enough trouble getting enough protein despite being a big carnivore myself. I'm interested to know if anyone can get their (approx) 2g of protein per lb of bodyweight a day on a vegetarian diet.

If we assume that all macroscopic interactions are (at some fundamental level) governed by the behaviour of particles governed by quantum mechanics, then talking about fate and determinism is redundant. All we can do is assign probabilities to outcomes. So although you might be able to say with 99% certainty that an electron should be at point x, there's always a 1% probability that it's somewhere completely different (and in theory, anywhere). There's also the fact that to make long term predictions of macroscopic bodies perfectly we'd need to know their initial values to an infinite degree of accuracy, which is of course impossible and physically meaningless. Some systems display chaotic behaviour, which is still fundamentally deterministic, just not computable. In short, I'm not a believer in determinism. I also don't like the airy fairy pseudo-philosophical links with fate and free-will, but that's another matter.

Do explosive squats. Lowish weight, very slowly squat almost all the way to the floor then explode up as fast as possible. That'll help build your explosive strength in your legs which is essentially for being a keeper, and utilises the faster twitch muscles. I saw a guy squatting 180kg at the gym last night, which is pretty monstrous when you actually see it done. He wasn't even using a pad.

Child In Time - Deep Purple

I'm going to see The Black Keys in November, can't wait :)

I'm not so much of a killjoy as to lock a birthday thread, but I've toned the title down a bit. Happy birthday

Whether or not there is a point, living seems a hell of a lot more fun than being dead to me.

Your Protector - Fleet Foxes

Fred Hoyle was brilliant in his youth, but his ideas went off the boil towards the end of his life anyway. He continued to believe in the Steady State theory of the Universe until his death, despite the huge evidence against it, which wasn't very scientific. It's a shame, he was born reasonably in the nearby city to me.

I got a 7, which I suppose makes sense. I'm very happy and content in my life right now.

2080 - Yeasayer I think it was How2PK who I overheard recommending this album to someone, and I thought i'd give it a cheeky listen. The first 3 are 4 songs are simply amazing, and the rest of the album's pretty good, but those 4 songs...wow.

I'd prefer some statistics to back up your first claim. Why would the wealthy cut down investment if cap gains went up? They'd still make money on any additional investment, just slightly less relative to under Bush. Obama only wants to raise cap gains by 5% anyway, not 13. Why would Obama raise cap gains? Simple, to finance his economy, especially the bailout at the moment. McCain's tax policies are unrealistic. As for your budget claim, The Tax Policy Centre estimates that under McCain's tax plans the national debt would rise by $748 billion by 2018, and in contrast Obama's tax plans would reduce the debt by $748 billion. McCain's reckless borrowing would push up interest rates and crowd out productive private investment.

I'd advise against an undershirt, but otherwise thumbs up. I've always thought you need a reasonable bulk to pull off suspenders.

McCain's promise to cut taxes whilst still balancing the budget is ludicrous. If you want the value of the dollar to keep falling then by all means vote for McCain. Obama's not budging the cap gains tax for those earning less than $250000, which is the majority, and even for those with more it's only going up by 5%. This is proportional to the investment that these kind of earners make and won't significantly hurt their investments. He's increasing income tax by 3% for that same group. To break it down, 80% of households would pay less tax whilst only 10% would pay more. Hardly a "massive amount". I think it's fairly plain to see that Obama would most likely boost investment in a large sector of the economy and not dramatically reduce it in the wealthier sector. There is no evidence that Clinton's 1993 tax increase stopped the wealthy from working harder and investing significantly less. Whatever benefits McCain's tax cuts might have would completely be cancelled out by the borrowing needed to finance his deficit. Besides, this crisis isn't fuelled by the wealthy hedging their bets about whether or not to buy a few more shares, it's been caused by the generation of billions of dollars worth of toxic assets in the form of dodgy subprime loans. It isn't the wealthy who are unable to pay these loans off. The response to this crisis will come through the candidate's policies on regulation and what to do with the banks. And this certainly isn't the time for laissez-faire politics. [hide=] [/hide] For a start, Marxism is hardly the solution to this and wasn't the solution to the last depression. And as bad as this week might have been, it's no 1929. The depression really got going because of incompetency on behalf of the American administration, they were reluctant to offer any support to the failing banks. This hasn't been the case this time. I don't know how you define rock-bottom, if you mean the trough of the stock market then depending on who you talk to it's either already been hit or another 1000 points will be wiped off the markets in the next few weeks before they start to recover. I would imagine short of a catastrope rock bottom will come soon. I believe the election of the Austrian far right party has little to do with this crisis, although I'm not sure. I agree that traditionally in times of hardship people move away from the centre, but I'm not sure that this is the case this time. Communism has only recently been shown to the world to be an utter failure when it comes to providing a viable solution, and there hasn't been a recession like this since the Berlin Wall came down. And unless the far right come up with some rather brilliant economic policies soon no major power is going to take them seriously. You answer your point in the next paragraph, ideologically both Obama and McCain favour free markets, so where's the extremist threat to the major powers? This crisis is not a failure of capitalism, it is a failure caused by incompetent regulation and irresponsible lending. The fact that these things stem from capitalism is irrelevant, it's important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and China and India will see that. China's economic growth is entirely down to them adopting a more free market based approach, they're not going to abandon that in a recession.

No no, I know the maths as well as anyone. My point was that it's a fairly arbitary and meangingless function to attach to it without any kind of evidence for it. Some people might have an exponential "happiness graph", some a logarthimic etc. etc. Peaks and troughs occur in everything in life, but to attach such a well defined mathematical function to it seems a little silly.

Ginger, you make some interesting points which I'll address when I have a bit more time. But even by my standards you're sounding a little pessimistic. I think the general consensus now is that this crisis is helping Obama, who's much more economically literate than McCain. Although it's hard to make predictions at this stage, I think an Obama lead White House would give the economy more of a boost than another Republican who needs to rely on his advisers.

Since the bailout thread seems to have died, I thought i'd make this. Is anyone else here following the events in the financial world with some interest? Personally, I genuinely thought with all the bailouts now being passed globally the markets would regain some confidence, but that doesn't seem to be happening yet. But the IMF has just declared that the world is teetering on the "brink of systemic meltdown". All the best predictions seem to be useless right now, so I suppose we just have to sit back and watch. On a side note, I can't decide whether or not this is a fantastic time to buy some shares in banks or an incredibly risky one. I turned 18 recently and have some money which I wanted to move to some form of longer term savings, it was going to go into Icesave but that's off the cards now. :P

What?

Will you be wearing a suit/jacket? As for shirts, go for a cotton shirt if you can, colour doesn't matter too much as long as it's not garish or too heavily patterned. Simple blues work well, or whites. Your tie should preferably be darker in overall shade than your shirt, but pick up on some colours in the shirt. Use a Windsor knot if you want to impress and the shirt collar is wide enough. Polished black shoes, a nice belt and black suit trousers with the above combination will all work well. To be honest I have no idea what semi-formal means for American proms, I'm just giving you some general advice on the kind of clothes that seem to have been suggested.

I couldn't remember if you said you'd got the new Dylan bootleg album How2PK? I heard Red River Shore off it the other day and it was beautiful.

This looks beatiful, and I'll definitely check it out when I get a little time this weekend. I did Astronomy GCSE in my lunchtimes at school for two years and really enjoyed it, it was probably through astronomy that I came to love physics. I still have tutorials with my astronomy teacher most Saturday mornings with myself and a friend, we've done stuff like gravitation in a lot of depth. He always keeps me informed of what's going on astronomically.