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BlueTear

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Posts posted by BlueTear

  1. I'd probably hand it in, but I'd vye for a finders fee first. Very curious as to how it fell off though, wouldn't surprise me one bit if they threw it off themselves.

     

     

     

    I'd definately keep it, stuff it into my mattress.
    Just got out of bed and read that as "stuff it into my mistress".

     

     

     

    Mornin' people...

  2. Maybe I'm being naive here, but isn't providing that kind of feedback one of the many things your teachers are paid to do?

     

     

     

    Around here everyone provided such feedback on request, and the best teachers went out of their way to provide it without us asking for it.

  3. We should also all listen to the Simpsons:

     

    Attorney: "So does this theory of evolution necessarily mean that there is no god?"

     

     

     

    Prof Frink: "No, of course not.

     

     

     

    It just says that god is an impotent nothing from nowhere with less power than the undersecretary of agriculture, who has very little power in our system."

    Warning: Incoming philosophical example.

     

     

     

    If I have a tennisball 50m from where I have a needle, and wanted to throw the tennisball is amanner so that when it lands, it is impaled by the needle in the exact center, so the needle is left standing exactly where it is, I could throw it til I die and I'd never manage. The feat is theoretically possible, but practically impossible.

     

     

     

    However, assume I could keep track of all the wind changes, air pressure, heck, even the movements of the individual atoms in the space between me and the needle, as well as control my muscle fibres for delivering the throw in a perfect manner, I could do it. I could even do it repeatedly, because as long as I know enough about the system in which I do the feat and have the control neccesary to do that which has to be done, it's perfectly possible. In fact, ignoring the quirks of quantum mechanics (yes, I'm sorry about the "quirk" pun - We're assuming the entity who designed quantum mechanics knows a few more string theory tricks than humanity has as of yet uncovered, possible even of such multidimensional order that we never will) if I knew enough about the system - henceforth refered to as the "universe" - I could do a whole lot of interesting stuff. I mean really, with perfect knowledge of the starting conditions - from which all stems, unless we get deep into the aforementioned quantum mechanics - I could predict everything. If I also happened to be the entity - henceforth refered to as "God" - that decided how those starting conditions were going to be, and had the raw mental processing power required to calculate billions of years in advance how various changes would influence development within the universe... Done right, and the omnipotent way is the right way, God would only need to start the Big bang and then he could lean back and watch as this cosmic event starting on a particle scale works it's way to a primordial soup of acid that forms DNA on this ball of interstellar dust, and eventually leads out to a being with the fabled Free Will. Because the way God set up this originial event, everything else would unfold exactly how God willed it. Like the example with the tennisball, once the grip on the ball has been released in the perfect throw, no further adjustments would be neccesary as it flies along the path towards the needle, the intended target.

     

     

     

    Unless you intend to argue that God, who designed quantum physics and time itself, would have been _unable_ to do this, which is denying the omnipotence of God, evolution does not disprove God. On the contrary, accepting the idea that God willed the big bang Just So to create an evolutionary process over billions of years that would lead to Gods intended target is accepting Gods omnipotence by order of magnitude on a scale far larger than "well, he said so, and then it happened".

  4. I'd go on, but PaperClips brought up the point I was working towards, so QFE

     

    It doesn't say physical appearance. Why would God have a single physical appearance anyway, when there are so many different skin colors and appearances among humans? We are all made in God's spiritual appearance, and that does not interfere with evolution at all.

     

     

     

    Nor is there any mention of the manner in which humanity was created. For a being in which eternity is naught, willing a species into existance over the course of several million years of evolutionary process is hardly a problem. If anything, putting togheter the universe and giving the exact right starting conditions to go from nothingness to present state via evolutionary processes requires an omnipotence far beyond taking a bit of clay, shaping it and calling it "man".

     

     

     

    Evolution in no way excludes the existance of God.

  5. If we evolve from monkeys to humans, then the Bible is false, because Gods image is not evolutionary, it does not change, hence why Humans will never "evolve" or change because then they would lose that image.
    What skin colour does the image of God have?
  6. For some reason druids never appealed to me. They are great tanks and such, but there's something about them....Maybe I'll try one later.

     

     

     

    By the way, what server (and faction) are you on?

     

     

     

    Also, I installed TBC.

     

     

     

    Europe-Boulderfist-Alliance.

     

     

     

    Someone asked something about user interfaces, and rather than just a list I'll post a screenie of mine. Bit of an addon junkie myself so there's a fair few that does things you don't see here. Among the notables is Geist, which - when you press a hotkey - opens a bar at your current mouse target. Much, much handier than mouseover, but you don't need to use any of your default bars. Bags are open because the bag addon I use deserves to be displayed simply because it's so good.

     

     

     

     

     

    wowscrnshot100207163310hh1.th.jpg

  7.  

    I'm still unsure of why you're even trying to argue this BlueTear.

     

     

     

    I don't (and a lot of us do) think that our worth is simply measured by how much money we are making.

     

     

     

    The picture thread was (for the most part) pretty on the money for a lot of people by the way. :P . And, at any rate, it was mostly just exaggerating a point -- not supposed to actually mean this is what that person is exactly.

    Meh, I'm not trying to argue anything as much as I'm trying to show something that occurs on the forum. And it's not really directed at you either, I knew I was going to make the same argument when I read abelmesis post in this thread, yours was just the most quote-friendly of the number of posts in this thread that had the similar content. It's a general observation that I think is worth considering before hitting 'submit', for everyone. Ahem...

     

     

     

    Most people don't believe that the complexities of human morality can be divided into the D&D alignment system either, yet you didn't make a post saying how that thread fails because it isn't a realistic projection of reality - in fact, the only guy who made a remark about how inaccurate the system is was Zonorhc, everyone else played along and took a stab at it without commenting. The RL picture thread is only a realistic projection of reality in the "haha" sense (don't get me wrong, I thought the thread was hilarious right up until people went "Do me!" rather than make a self-portrait to post), but that's okay. Neither thread was made with super-serious intent.

     

     

     

    So why is this thread different? Why isn't it possible to ignore the fact that strictly speaking it's not very realistic, and strictly speaking, you personally don't find it all that amusing either and not post about it, or play along anyway?

     

     

     

    Because of who posted it. You (and - cursed be the few limitiation the english language has - that's a plural you, to everyone who couldn't keep quiet on this one, but does otherwise) don't care what Defender thinks of you in the same way, his opinion of you is not something you hold in particularly high regard. He's just not important enough to you for you to care about his opinion of you.

     

     

     

    Not enough e-credz.

  8. On a side note, what do you think of the changes from 1-60. I'm kind of ticked because my mage just hit 60 (or is about to), and I just leveld my lock from 20-45 in the past couple of weeks. On the flipside, I might be able to roll a warrior. I am tired of stupid/idiotic tanks, so I'm rolling one. In BRD, I, not the tank, am taking control of the markings and such.
    Heh, my alt - who's only lvl 17, and probably won't hit 30 before 2.3 goes live, is a druid who I'm so far planning to build as a tank for pretty much the same reason; You want a group somewhere as a tank on my server, you can get it faster than you can say "I could tank for you?"Another advantage of druid is if I decide I want to try healing for a bit, I can just respec and equip other gear. If I want to stealth like a rogue, I've got that too. Quite different from being ranged DPS with the odd crowd control function.
  9. On the other hand, China has a large interested in stability along it's borders, and as was shown with Sudan, a public relations vulnerability the moment people start speaking the words "boycott", "Beijing" and "Olympic's". I read a quote from a high ranking Chinese foreign policy advisor that went, wait, I'll get it; "China hopes all parties concerned in (Burma) show restraint, resume stability through peaceful means as soon as possible, promote domestic reconciliation and achieve democracy and development."

     

     

     

    China wishing democracy on another country was something I found a bit funny, but at the same time interesting. The usual "hands off in internal affairs" policy China applies is to get people to leave China's internal affairs the heck alone. But at the same time, they want a stable neighbour so it won't spread into China.

     

     

     

     

     

    Last I heard, the protests had essentially been driven of the streets, but the burmese democracy movement is planning a general strike as an alternative means of protest.

  10. thats not my point. My point is his idea of our 'worth' is flawed.
    C'mon... It's "flawed" the same way the "RL pictures" are flawed; Inaccurate and frivolous. Yet rather than play along - which is what usually happends - or ignore it because it doesn't apply to you, this one "fails". Which is really the point I'm getting at; Defender just doesn't have enough e-credz for this kind of thread to work...
  11. I hate how warlocks will probably get nerfed to the ground...
    Yeah, it's funny, but the overpowered spec consists mostly of talents from demonology *cough*SOUL LINK*cough* and they nerf an affliction spell.

     

     

     

    ???

     

     

     

    As warrior put it on the warlock forums "I'll continue to beat Affliction Locks, and get horribly beaten by SL/SL locks, so for me this change doesn't really matter. " Add to that the fact that the classes with healing reducing abilities available to them today are the ones we kill us best as it is (and that's not touching the rumor of a ranged MS being given to hunters, who can already go immune to deathcoil) one really has to wonder how long it will take before they actually address the problem rather than chip away at every other specc.

  12. Or Burma as some of you might know it as, is a country bordering China and Thailand and is governed by a military dictatorship. If you want exact specifics on how the country is ruled and how it came to be that way, look it up on wikipedia, the article was quite extensive.

     

     

     

    A few weeks back the military junta cut subsidies on fuel prices which lead to a shock increase in the fuel prices. The citizenry is not particularly rich and this is a devastating blow to many personal economies. This lead to protests, not in favour of democracy, but against mismanagemant. The distinction is fairly important, since unlike several previous protests the junta sat back and allowed them to continue rather than cracking down. Then they escalated, and the junta did react with violence. On September 5th the junta used force in breaking up a demonstration an injured a few monks in the process. This caused widespread protest among the buddhist monks of the country - and there's a lot of them - and prompted them to participate in several additional demonstration. One thing lead to another, and suddenly thousands of buddhist monks were heading the protests rather than merely participating. On 22nd September they withdrew all religious services for military personnel, and the demonstrations gradually escalated from complaints regarding economic mismanagement to allout demands for a dialogue regarding democracy in the country.

     

     

     

    As of the past few days, the juntas responses has grown all the more violent, several protestors have been killed, including a japanese press photographer. The exact death toll is difficult to [wagon] because the junta is attempting to strangle the information flows out of the country so they can deal with the protestors without the world watching. Some say it's ranging in the 100's already. Curfews are in place, and many monasteries are litterally under siege to prevent the monks from leaving and walking the streets. Some were raided, and monks arrested. Despite a temporary attempt to shut off the internet in Myanmar - after the junta realized just how many images were being sent to foreign media - many of the events are still documented and distributed using modern information technology. The UN has dispatched a special envoy, and he has met with Aung San Suu Kyi, a nobel peace price laureate who's spent a fair few years in house arrest in Myanmar, along with representatives of the junta. She continues to urge the people to peaceful, but unrelenting, protests in order to start negotiations for a democratic rule.

     

     

     

    There are now also stories circulating of defections throughout the burmese military. And as a Swedish columnist put it "the day the junta dies, is the day the farmboys in the military refuse to open fire on civilians".

     

     

     

     

     

    Of course, I missed many of the exact events, and took others out of context in order to present an as broad a view as possible of an internal struggle for democracy.

     

     

     

    Thoughts, opinions, related news items?

     

     

     

    (Yes, this is just an attempt to start a news thread, *without* copy and pasting)

  13. I recieve 72kr every day. So that'd be about... 7ÃÆââââ¬Ã¡Ãâì I think. Unless I miscalculated somewhere, my earnings per second is somewhere around 8.1*10^(-5).

     

     

     

    And I'm excempt from all kinds of work related laws involving, say, hours per week before it hits "slave labour".

     

     

     

    ... at least the meals are free...

     

     

     

    Thread fails.
    As opposed to "what's your alignment", "random google pictures of cat's with text, or "look, MS Paint RELOADED!"?
  14.  

    When our troops were fighting insurgents, they was not allowed to use gernades, also they could not call in any types of airstrikes or heavy armor.

     

     

     

    Thats basically tieing a soldiers 1 hand behind is back, hand him a pistol and say "Go get em!".

     

     

     

    Were not using 100% of our force, were just playing ring around Iraqi.

    That would be "measures designed to protect the civilian population". Oddly, creating a stable democracy that is willing to cooperate as opposed to a fundamentalist regime that hates your [wagon] means you want to avoid indiscriminate killings.

     

     

     

    Weird, I know.

  15. probably a nub question but.. why cant you just use the load out of date addons thing?
    'cause that just makes the game run all addons. That works great with addons that actually work - and I've had that box checked since before they made it uncheck after patches - but they like to fiddle with the UI code in ways that actually make some of the addons downright break and display fancifull error messages instead of doing what they're meant to. For example, due to one addon I have, my character sheet would not display tooltips for any equipped items until I updated the addon in question.
  16. And thus begins another episode of updating various addons to get a UI that worked just as well as it did yesterday.

     

     

     

    Judging by the immense frustration, you'd think I'd never done this before -_-

     

     

     

     

     

    (PS. They did something to the Darkrune event that makes it a lot harder. Both casting order as well as Chaos Strike effect. I got pwned while doing it now and the first thing I did was log on to my auction alt and take down my Badge of Tenacity. Have this funny feeling it's going to tripple in value unless they reverse some of the nerfs...)

  17. The half life of U238 is 4.46 billion years. TYVM.
    ... does a long halflife means something is less, or more, radioactive? Is a long halflife more likely to boil your eyeballs in their sockets than a short halflife?

     

     

     

    I'd like to point out that we're on the internet, and when answering a fact based question on the internet when you're not absolutely positive you know the answer, you can use google.

     

    Nuclear power is not the best option for us. I'm not saying we should be completely reliant on coal and oil. What the world should be doing is setting up wind farms, underwater wind turbines, solar plants, etc. But nuclear power is one of the worst options right now. What could happen far outweighs what will happen if we keep using coal.
    You're going to have to clarify how a potential meltdown - events which are exceptionally rare, and can be avoided through a whole host of preventive actions - are going to kill more people than a worldwide change in climate with effects ranging from sea levels, hurricane intensity, humidity, temperature etcetc. You could start of by comparing them to the casaulty figure for the Three Mile Island incident - that would be zero, I believe? - and the thousands that died at Chernobyl.
  18. Yea, but it hasn't advanced enough. One mistake and that city is uninhabitable for tens of billions of years. Not to mention that the waste is just baby sat because no one has any clue what to do with it. :roll:
    Yes mate, because a nuclear meltdown causes radioactive pollution that lasts longer than the solar system has. The exagguration train stops here, TYVM.

     

     

     

    Apart from significant advantages in technology, the lads at Chernobyl intentionally removed the control rods. They weren't trying to blow the place up, but you don't need to be all that clever to realize removing the control rods is a friggin stupid thing to do while running the reactor. In fact, the soviet night shift who did it, completely missed safety regulations. Poorly educated personnel, coupled with a Soviet design.

     

     

     

    And how many people did the Three Mile Island incident kill again?

     

     

     

     

     

    Nuclear power is the best option availabe to us. Fear of what *might* happen is not better than ignoring what *will* happen if we keep burning coal in coal plants.

  19. If I recall "Contact" correctly, the movie ends with someone noting that while there was no image evidence of her claims of being on an alien world for 8 hours 'cause there was just static, it was 8 hours of static. Unless I'm thinking of a different movie, the answer would be 'Yes'.

     

     

     

    "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", hmz... been a while since I saw that one, but I don't think so. He went into a mental ward because it wasn't prison, but he couldn't believe how the patients were treated. They turned the same quite inhumane treatment on him and eventually he just snapped. So not really mad, just temporarily enraged.

  20. The significant difference can easily be observed by the fact that the value of gold has proven to be quite 'tangible' in practice in situations where most normal currencies generally fail (i.e. world war, economic crises, political crises, hyperinflation, etc etc).
    True enough. Unless there's a worlwide economic collapse that outlasts your lifetime, there'll always be a market somewhere else. Gold in this instance is suitable due to a relatively high value, easy storage and transportation. The fact that this value comes from a belief in the value gold - like the value of paper money comes from a different belief - is only really an interesting anecdote unless under some exceptional circumstances (serious worldwide economic collapse, another item being selected as the trading commodity etcetc).
  21. A stable and healthy mental state is culturally defined to begin with. I mean, "insane" is simply used to categorize people who deviate from the "normal" mental state in socially unacceptable ways - for example, homosexuality used to be categorized in the DSM, but no longer is, as cultural definitions of unacceptable abnormality shift. I would say that there is nothing inherently unstable or unhealthy about the mental state of someone who has sex with their mom, but that it is very tied to cultural norms of acceptability.
    While theoretically true, I see no way to apply that practically while remaining in touch with reality, for several reasons:

     

     

     

    - Our definition of what is and isn't socially acceptable is the one we genuinely think is Right. Leaning back and saying "well, we didn't hold this opinion centuries ago" is no more acceptable than "well, it was this way for centuries, why should we change?". The foundation of any free society that intends to survive has to be a re-evaluation and adaptation to the realities of existance. This is our current stance as a society.*

     

     

     

    - It is, quite frankly, inhumane not to offer assistance to people with suffering from any kind of mental disorder simply because our definition of mental disorder might turn out to be inaccurate a few centuries or decades down the line. There are mental disorders, as we classify them, that makes living in our current society, abiding by our laws, very difficult. Not helping these people by teaching them how to function in the society they were born into goes against a fair few thoughts regarding how our society should function.

     

     

     

     

     

    There's a reason for incest laws; A child is the most depending human being there is. They depend so completely, so utterly, on their parents that - in the opinion of our the majority in our respective democratic nations, via our elected rulers - they cannot offer consent, because in the opinion of our society, they have not yet reached an age in which they are free of undue influence. They are not making a free choice.

     

     

     

     

     

    *Which, in any democratic society, is quite sufficient. We - the majority - say it is so, thus it is so. I've never quite understood why insane and others argue that moral relativism means you can "never prove what's right". What's right is what is our consensus; What the majority says is right is right, and we will _act_ accordingly. The fact that we have no higher source on which to lean our decisions, does not mean we will not act on our decisions, on our own responsibility. "Moral relativism", as it's used here, does not exclude action based on these morals.

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