Everything posted by warri0r45
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Quick Questions
There's the occassional f-bomb in Tool music, but other than that it should be fine. I'd reccomend starting with Aenima, though any of them are good, really.
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What are you listening to right now!?
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back by Public Enemy (album).
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Is God real post your thoughts!
Talk about an overreaction, Raven. I thought the post was very funny (especially when it started talking about buns and condiments :lol: ), and it touched on some valid points. Perhaps religious people can understand the way atheists feel about their beliefs with a post like that. Not necessarily in the sense of ridicule, but in the sense that we just think your beliefs are plain weird and shouldn't be believed by any rational, skeptical person.
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Abortion: Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)
You don't know how refreshing it is to hear this from a pro-life advocate. You just made my day. :)
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Swedish/folk/finish/ metal
So far I like Abhorrence, Demilich and Demigod from Finland and Carnage and Spawn of Possession from Sweden. I've not really taken to the Swedish death metal scene that much.
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What are you listening to right now!?
Breeding The Spawn by Suffocation (album). It's such a shame that it wasn't produced as well as Effigy or Pierced. I still love it though.
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Victorian Bushfires
They should never have named the arsonist. Now everyone on the internet has his name and photo, there's bound to be some overzealous people out there who want to take the law into their own hands. For Christ's sake people, let the legal system deal with him. Any vigilante violence is only going to strengthen the arguments of the defence lawyers.
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Homosexuality: Right or Wrong?
And that's the way i view it, notice it's not religious at all. Off Topic: is it just me or do i sound childish sayin "it" like that and all? A few points: 1) Science only establishes what is empirically true, it doesn't make moral judgments. The fact that reproduction works by male-female sex doesn't make homosexuality, or even homosexual sex for that matter, wrong. 2) Homosexuality is obviously natural. First, it happens. Furthermore, it happens in non-human species with little more behavioural drive than instinct. [1] There are a number of hypotheses to account for this, but nothing solid at the moment. 3) Despite the second point, something being normal or natural doesn't make it right or wrong. Flying planes isn't "natural" (by some definitions of the word), but we don't say that it's wrong.
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Possible Cure for HIV Discovered
I don't think so. Raven is basically suggesting that the researchers wouldn't have thought of an obvious barrier to drug design. Any highschool biology student knows that humans have DNA and mutagens will mutate that DNA. A PhD biology researcher doesn't work with a mutagenic agent and all of a sudden realise "oh crap, this could cause cancer so I shouldn't use is as an anti-viral" months later.
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Possible Cure for HIV Discovered
[hide=] [/hide] While I applaud the effort you put into your post, I think there's one fatal flaw. It's not like these researchers wouldn't realise that our DNA could be affected, so I think they would have gone for a different route of action. The drug probably targets reverse transcriptase, which is only used to transcribe viral RNA into DNA. It's not used for any vital eukaryotic biological function, so tampering with it shouldn't hurt us. Just as a matter of interest, the reason why retroviruses like HIV mutate so much in the first place is because reverse transcriptase is a pretty error-prone enzyme. I'll do some research and report back later. Edit: From what I can tell, KP-1461 is a special kind of nucleotide/nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor, except it induces extra mutations and doesn't terminate replication. These kind of drugs work as analogs to proper nucleotides and serve to prevent proper replication via reverse transcriptase. This paper suggests that it doesn't get used by nuclear polymerases and passed toxicology/genotoxicity tests which would suggest it takes advantage of a unique affinity for reverse transcriptase. Here's the mechanism of action as the company explains it:
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Well whoa darn! Obama has failed - already?
And what facts are those? Don't just claim that there's pork barrel and partisan spending, list off some examples so we can judge what you're talking about. By the way, I'm not a Democrat. Not even American.
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Well whoa darn! Obama has failed - already?
This, and as Happysniff noted, not many presidents have had to deal with what Obama has so far. You shouldn't be surprised that he's spending so much considering the economic crisis we're in right now. The comparisons to Bush on spending are laughable to be honest. Context is everything here, and the OP has none of it.
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What are you listening to right now!?
Tomb Of The Mutilated by Cannibal Corpse (album).
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Darwin turns 200!
Hehe. :P In my opinion, people who are brought up in religion sometimes have the tendency of moving the opposite way when they are exposed to new ideas. Sometimes this is more so than someone who wasn't exposed to religion. I'm curious. Was Darwin an atheist? To be honest, I've never seen anything that specifically said that he was or was not. He eventually turned to agnosticism and he never identified as an atheist. [1] Apparently his wife was a devout Christian and he was mindful of her beliefs.
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What are you listening to right now!?
Noctambulant by Spawn of Possession (album). For fans of Gorguts/Decapitated/Necrophagist/The Faceless. A must hear for any avid tech-death fan.
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Obama, natural born citizen?
They probably would have covered this sort of thing in the extensive vetting processes they do. I doubt there's any risk to his presidency at all.
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Rap
For old, "golden age" hip-hop, I'd recommend It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back by Public Enemy. I just listened through it for the first time and really enjoyed it. If you want a choice cut from that album, try "Bring The Noise".
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What are you listening to right now!?
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back by Public Enemy (album). Should be mandatory listening for anyone who wants to write off hip-hop music. This is excellent. :thumbup:
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Abortion: Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)
But why is an abortion any different to a miscarriage, when both (referring to the thing/mass of cells/fetus/baby) are at the same level. Why would it be cold if that is what it is. I've never heard a mother refer to what is growing inside of her as a fetus, but more joyfully as a baby. Okay question: If I punched a pregnant woman and the 'thing' died, would I be charged with murder (killing the fetus/baby) AND/OR bodily harm (injuring the mother)? There is no difference, except that with a miscarriage the baby was lost accidentally (and was wanted) where in abortion it was killed and removed intentionally. Do I even need to explain why calling it a fetus would seem cold? "I'm sorry ma'am, you just had a miscarriage and lost your fetus". The point here is that, abortion or miscarriage, it's a fetus that's lost, not a baby. That's the proper terminology. Technically, it's referred to as a fetus until birth [1], though personally I look at it a little more flexibly. As for your question, that really depends on what the law says and how many weeks/months into the pregnancy the mother is. It's a hard question, especially when the mother wants the baby. In that case I'd probably call it as good as murder.
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Abortion: Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)
How so? Because, historically, every single one of those groups has been denied rights or even mass exterminated on the basis that they weren't persons. Don't you keep up with history? So where does the hypocrisy come into it? Say a woman thinks a fetus isn't a person, but believes that women are people. What's the problem? She's just applying different standards to different groups. It's more than just applying different standards to different groups. She'd be arguing that one group be treated in the same way/considered in the same vein as that of which the group she's apart of fought against. That's like me stating that it's not okay to make slaves of blacks, but okay to make slaves of, say, Mexicans. I'm fairly sure I could come up with a rationalization for such a stance, but it wouldn't make me any less of a hypocrite :P Edit: *Grumbles* Well, these days all those people you listed are treated as just that - people. Perhaps your argument might hold more weight if these people argued against personhood for a fetus while actively arguing for personhood for themselves, but only if they couldn't justify the groups being different. I wouldn't equate their cause with owners of mexican slaves arguing against owning black slaves - those two groups are just too similar. In the case of the personhood of a woman vs. a foetus I think it's nothing more than different standards for different groups.
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Abortion: Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)
How so? Because, historically, every single one of those groups has been denied rights or even mass exterminated on the basis that they weren't persons. Don't you keep up with history? So where does the hypocrisy come into it? Say a woman thinks a fetus isn't a person, but believes that women are people. What's the problem? She's just applying different standards to different groups.
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Albums or songs? Downloads or physical copies?
First question: Do you like listening to whole albums or individual songs? What's your playlist made of? As for me, I pretty much always listen to whole albums. I like it when bands have a consistent product to offer rather than just a few good songs here and there. Second question: Do you like downloading music or buying it from a CD store? Me, I like buying it and building up a CD collection, though I have downloaded a bit of late. Call me old fashioned, but I like the physical copy with the album art and everything. I just like the feeling own really owning it.
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Abortion: Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)
The doctor in the situation you outlined isn't in the business of rigorous definitions. He/she is trying to console the parents who lost their fetus. You can see how cold it would be to use the actual medical terminology in that situation. Wanting the fetus doesn't make it a baby; it's still a fetus.
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Is God real post your thoughts!
Sure, I don't see why not. Even if a planet that could support life was very rare, then we would be an example of the small fraction of planets that supports life. In this case, you shouldn't be surprised that we're in such an advantageous point in the universe.
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Abortion: Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)
How so?