Adam007

I went through a phase where I thought it would be cool to learn how to hypnotize people. I learned exactly what to do and tried it on a few people, but it didn't work. You need to have a lot of experience and get actual teachings of it to really be able to hypnotize people. You can try googling how to hypnotize people (no, you try it. We don't need to find links for you like you're asking us). You'll find a ton of sites, but you're not going to be able to do it. You need the right kind of environment first (quiet, calm, relaxing, the person to be completely at rest, etc), and that's hard to do to a kid during school.

Read some of these articles: http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/ov ... nation.htm http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/do-it-now.htm http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/ti ... gement.htm http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/tr ... tivity.htm http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/ef ... -usage.htm Seriously though, give em a read. Most 'self help' articles seem gimmicky or too idealistic, but this guy knows what he's talking about.

An astronaut. I'd love more than anything to go to space.

I'd recommend the first two, but I have Super Monkey Ball and it's just a terrible game in my opinion. There are a lot of multiplayer games, but 90% of them are really bad and seem quickly put together. I honestly don't think movement should have been done with the wiimote in this game, for the single player mode. That or they just didn't refine it enough, or maybe I'm just not good at the game. Everyone I know who bought it didn't like it though, for the control reasons. Every minute I just frustratingly think, "WHY CAN'T I JUST USE A JOYSTICK! I WOULDN'T FALL EVERY TIME ON THIS SIMPLE TURN IF I HAD A JOYSTICK!" I had so much more room control-wise to maneuver around in the older versions. I mean you can't even stay still. I'm not saying it's hard to stay still. I'm saying it's impossible. If you have to wait for a door to open, you have to wiggle around with the camera flying in all directions with you reorienting your remote based on the camera just to not die in the chaos that is trying to stay still and not fall off while waiting for a door to open. Wheeeeeew. Glad I got that out of my system. :) I played the N64 super money ball a few years back and I remember haveing the exact same reaction as you. I hated it (possibly because I was bad) and quit playing. It seems like with SMB it's either a love or hate relationship. No, that's the thing though. I played a few of the games on the gamecube and was able to maneuver very precisely, and that was what was fun about it. I'm just annoyed that I've lost so much control from the previous games.

That I agreed with(and was about to post), but the real message of this post is to try to rectify this problem - just to do your part in improving the community person by person.

*signed* I've been with your cause for as long as you have. ;)

I'd recommend the first two, but I have Super Monkey Ball and it's just a terrible game in my opinion. There are a lot of multiplayer games, but 90% of them are really bad and seem quickly put together. I honestly don't think movement should have been done with the wiimote in this game, for the single player mode. That or they just didn't refine it enough, or maybe I'm just not good at the game. Everyone I know who bought it didn't like it though, for the control reasons. Every minute I just frustratingly think, "WHY CAN'T I JUST USE A JOYSTICK! I WOULDN'T FALL EVERY TIME ON THIS SIMPLE TURN IF I HAD A JOYSTICK!" I had so much more room control-wise to maneuver around in the older versions. I mean you can't even stay still. I'm not saying it's hard to stay still. I'm saying it's impossible. If you have to wait for a door to open, you have to wiggle around with the camera flying in all directions with you reorienting your remote based on the camera just to not die in the chaos that is trying to stay still and not fall off while waiting for a door to open. Wheeeeeew. Glad I got that out of my system. :)

This debate won't go anywhere unless we decide to refocus it. It's painful to even read because one side's trying to defend a specific issue, but the other side is on a whole different philosophical and theoretical level. And you can't argue practical morals against theoretical morals. Let's just try to target one issue, not both at once. It's just making us go in circles. Yes, we know you guys see a loophole in that people who don't set their morals by the bible don't have absolute values, but again, that's looking at things way too theoretically. Practically, we can have our own morals. They don't have to be all scientific hard fact, with absolute good and all of that. Morals are people's opinions of what is good and bad, and we're just trying to argue whether or not homosexual relationships are good for society, neutral, or bad, without going on all of these theoretical tangents.

Unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world. You said that ideally we wouldn't need laws and regulations. This makes a very powerful assumption. By saying "ideally," you are declaring that there is an absolute good for humanity, and ideally, we wouldn't need laws in order for society to function at a good level. My question remains: do you believe in an absolute good? You seem to suggest that you don't believe in good, yet at the same time you continually make the assumption that laws should exist for the good of the society. How do you define what is the good of society if there is no good? Why do you assume that "not infringing on others" is good if good doesn't actually exist? Philosophically an objective good can't really exist in our world. Not to skirt away from an excellent point of yours, but I'm really not talking on that high philosophical level. I'm talking more practically based on what keeps the general population happy and safe. I'm sure my generality will come around to get me when you read this and tear it apart once again on a higher level, but I don't think you can define morals or what's good on a higher objective level. It comes down to common sense and practicality, which aren't that definable either. I think the premise of "do whatever you want as long as it doesn't harm others" is a safe enough general basic premise to go by, even if it doesn't stand much ground when taken from its practical level to a philosophical one.

That's circular logic. Public domain is only public domain because people decided it would be. What is "generally accepted" is only "generally accepted" because people decided it would be. In the 2004 election, 11 states voted to ban gay marriage all hands down. Doesn't that mean homosexuality is then immoral, because it was overwhelmingly accepted that it should not be legal? I understand your point without you explaining it, my problem is your point is inconsistent. If you don't think "morality" and "immorality" exist, then you cannot say some things are illegal because they are immoral. If you do think "morality" and "immorality" exist, then how do you define it? How do you prove your morality is right and someone else's is wrong? Lastly, do you support a drinking age? Do you support an age to by cigarettes, go to a club, or vote? Do you support laws against any form of drug use, or prostitution? Do you support laws against polygamy? Do you support laws against pedophilia, if the child consents? Do you support any of the following laws: seat belt laws, motorcycle helmet laws, curfew laws, age restrictions on erotica, parental notification laws, obscenity laws, nudity laws, any restrictions on businesses including health violations for restaurants, smoking bands for public places, or any other requirement that a business has to meet in order to operate publicly? Do you support a minimum wage? Ideally, I wouldn't support any of those you mentioned. Personally my stance on morals is that something's only immoral if something you do infringes negatively on someone else. Now this, in my opinion, is ideal to go by. But the problem is that people, in general, are stupid, and generally don't have good self control in making decisions. That's why we need the government to impose generally accepted morals. So no - in an ideal world we wouldn't need laws, and I wouldn't support any of those regulations. But people make mistakes, so we need laws, and I do support most of the laws you mentioned for humanity in general. Hopefully that clears up my two 'seemingly' conflicting viewpoints for you. So you agree that they're both risks to society. It just happens homosexual intercourse is higher percentage-wise. What's your point? Since it's higher than heterosexual intercourse, it's immoral? My question is trying to understand why you're against gay marriage, whether or not it's solely based off your one example, or just a gut opinion.

(Double post. Above edited with this post's old contents. )

It's very dishonest for you to present information like you have. Do you believe in absolute morality, or did I miss something? You seem to have a problem with people basing arguments off opinions, yet you say: Under your suggestion, I would now like you to prove to me what is moral and what is immoral. I meant in terms of what's generally accepted. I was referring specifically to his examples, such as pooping on the street. That's public domain, and it's infringing on another person. Homosexual marriage doesn't infringe, while many of the other examples do. Again, terrible word choice on my part, but I would have figured you got my point without me just explaining it. So what if the risks are relatively higher? People in heterosexual relationships can get diseases too and they're not dangers to society. But let me ask you this: Would you be against a homosexual marriage in which the partners never have intercourse?

We're still increasing, just at a much slower rate. Runescape is losing some of its edge to more popular games like WoW that are becoming more mainstream. I know there have always been better games than RS, and RS's appeal is that it's free, but since other MMORPG's are getting mainstream, they're taking some of runescape's mainstream gamers who would have played the free game.

Yeah, I know people like XplsvBam already have their minds made up, but I was saying there are probably a lot of younger lurkers from the runescape area of the forum who aren't articulate enough to participate in these threads but like reading opinions. I just think it's a good idea to defend the other side not for the purpose of proving the original poster wrong, but for the purpose of teaching everyone who reads your post your opinion, and hoping that they get informed and agree (after all, everyone believes their opinion is the best possible opinion, and thinks the world would be better if everyone adopted it).

If nothing else, to help people who read this and never post to form their own opinions based on reading this debate. I know some people just won't change their mind no matter how much you obliterate their trains of logic because of whatever reason has been deeply ingrained into them, but common sense dictates that these people should have equal rights since they're not harming anyone else. The hope is that if we disprove his points, they'll seem less valid to people who haven't formed really solid opinions yet.

The world has always been that way. :? yeah we've just gone back in time to the 60's, think about it, Kids doing drugs-hippies iran and israel-America and Russia War in Iraq-vietnam ooh that means that England should've won the world cup last year, damn....oh well, the rest of it is like the 60's Except the US has become really conservative, whereas in the 60's it was really liberal. People in masses were taking a stand against the war, but the youth of today are pretty quiet compared to back then. I'm telling you guys, you can't make generalizations about how our time period compares to other time periods when you haven't experienced them. Hearing your grandparents talk about how safe and happy their lives were compared to now isn't something you can base these opinions off of.

I agree that it's not natural (in the sense that it's not the norm) and see it as a genetic abnormality, but these people should still have the same rights everyone else does. Ugh, your train of logic is just so 100% wrong. What you're doing is going under the premise that homosexuality is immoral and a danger to society. Then you are naming acts that are immoral and dangerous to society. Then you ask us to prove that the other acts you've named aren't immoral/dangerous. You've taken a completely wrong approach though. You can't base an argument off an incorrect/debatable premise and have people argue against it. You need to first prove that homosexuality is immoral before you can use it as a premise of debate for everyone else to disprove other immoral activities you for some reason tied with homosexuality. This whole thread should be locked because we're debating an issue on false premises - your opinion. We can have opinions on a premise that is fact, but we can't have opinions on an unproven opinionated premise.

How are kidnappings, wars, and murders occurring more now than before? If anything they were more prevalent in the past than now. The past had some pretty dark, violent, and gruesome times that you're ignoring. You should be thankful for how good we have it in the now, and not be all upset because inevitable things like that happen.

I think you've got a case of overglorified "those were the good ol days!" mentality going on. Everyone makes the past seem happier and better than it really was. To quickly just counter your example, things were worse during the Vietnam war. There are fluctuations, but overall there's no change in unity really. Right after 9/11 everyone was extremely united, and that was only a few years ago. If you're taking a few years and applying it to "the world," you're making a huge leap.

The world's always been a mess. Nothing's changed within the past few years/decades.

Ozone smells pretty good too, at least in my opinion. It's what you smell when you breathe in what comes out of most air purifiers like the ones you see at Sharper Image. O3's pretty bad for you to breathe in though - I found that out through firsthand experience. I have an air purifier and liked smelling the stuff, and the next day I was coughing/wheezing all day. Turns out you can get ozone poisoning from those purifiers.

I find your argument to be kind of fallacious. Marriage of family members isn't analogous to marriage of people of the same sex. #1: Morals depend on the person. You might think it's morally wrong, but that's your opinion. #2: It's just not dangerous for society. Homosexual relationships just aren't. I can't see how someone can form that kind of an opinion. It's not effecting other people so besides the fact that it makes you feel all wrong and upset inside, how does it really affect you? You're a part of society, and you're claiming it's so detrimental. Like you, I find the thought of male homosexual intercourse pretty gross, but unlike you, I don't let that emotion get in the way of simple logic.

I like the smell when spring/summer comes around and the weather starts warming up. Maybe it's because of the contrast of winter where everything's freezing and there isn't any smell at all, but I just love that first day when it hits a warm temperature and brings that smell along with it.

I only got two days, I'm jealous of you guys who got three. :twisted:

Why is it that every time Nintendo has a new mature game announced everyone gets all excited about it? The fact that people feel the need to exclaim that Nintendo finally got a non-kiddy game makes it seem kiddy in the first place, as if it's an occasion to celebrate every time we get an M-rated game. Games are just meant to be fun - drop the whole notion of a game being kiddy, and drop the excitement over getting a mature game. Once people in general stop caring whether or not a game is mature, they'll stop caring over whether or not Nintendo is 'kiddy.' PS: The game looks fun. :P