681

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Should we take members?

« on: January 14, 2014, 02:35:31 AM »

I'm good with that. I suppose that's a majority vote, then.

682

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Should we take members?

« on: January 13, 2014, 08:42:04 PM »

Well, I certainly wouldn't want to consider TK to be a member of the Society. There should certainly be a difference between societal membership and having an account on a public forum. That said, I don't know what privileges could come with the distinction. I'd like to say we could give everyone a shirt or something, but we don't have the money.

683

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: York University Supports Religiously Motivated Prejudice

« on: January 11, 2014, 06:50:58 PM »

That's idiotic. I'm glad I didn't apply to York University. This would probably make me decide not to go there. 'Religious reasons' aren't enough to ask a university to segregate people like that. Beside the uncomfortable assumptions it makes about gender binary, that guy's religion is his own problem. If he didn't want to be confronted with situations in which he would have to 'intermingle' with women, maybe he should have avoided going to a coed university. Really, that's just asking for trouble.

684

Technology & Information / Re: New Chrome update question

« on: January 09, 2014, 07:45:14 PM »

Silly question, but have you double checked the smooth scrolling setting?

This. Go to chrome://flags/ and check smooth scrolling.

685

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Aether

« on: January 09, 2014, 02:37:25 AM »

The reason the wiki page on Aether is so awful is that I need to rewrite it, and I removed a lot of the outdated or incorrect information. Uninformed is better than misinformed.

The Aetheric Wind is, essentially, a current. The Earth is like a rock caught up in that current, getting pushed along and creating an eddy. That eddy is the Aetheric whirlpool. Its x-axis motion causes Coriolis Effect, and its z-axis movement causes local gravitation variation.

686

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Should we vote on fine details or broad proposals?

« on: January 08, 2014, 06:04:52 PM »

I like the idea of manual voting, the way we do it in Werewolf. That way the votes are more public and it's easier to see who voted for what

687

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Satan comes to Oklahoma

« on: January 08, 2014, 04:32:32 AM »

Satanists are better Christians than most Christians are, imo. They should be excited to allow this monument to be set up.

I guess from a Christian perspective, Satanists are following what they're closer to. Humans are supposed to be inherently evil.

Satanism and Christianity are pretty similar. Satanism is strictly individualistic while Christianity is arguably collectivist, and Satanism is more accepting of violence, but the two religions have similar philosophies. Especially LaVeyan satanism.

I don't know a whole lot about Satanism, but isn't it just basically self worship almost? Like your birthday is the most important holiday, and you should do whatever you want?

Not really. It emphasizes things like self-actualization, skepticism, creativity, education, etc. Theistic Satanism doesn't say much about morality, pretty much leaving it up to personal philosophy. LaVeyan Satanism is an atheistic religion that worships Satan metaphorically.

Wikipedia says their sins are stupidity, solipsism, herd conformity, conceit, self-deceit, "forgetfulness of past orthodoxies" (basically, ignoring historical perspective), excessive pride, and lack of aesthetics. That really tells you everything you need to know about Satanism as a whole.

One of my Tumblr mutuals is a satanist and posts about it a lot.

688

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Satan comes to Oklahoma

« on: January 08, 2014, 03:01:55 AM »

Satanists are better Christians than most Christians are, imo. They should be excited to allow this monument to be set up.

I guess from a Christian perspective, Satanists are following what they're closer to. Humans are supposed to be inherently evil.

Satanism and Christianity are pretty similar. Satanism is strictly individualistic while Christianity is arguably collectivist, and Satanism is more accepting of violence, but the two religions have similar philosophies. Especially LaVeyan satanism.

689

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Satan comes to Oklahoma

« on: January 08, 2014, 02:24:28 AM »

Satanists are better Christians than most Christians are, imo. They should be excited to allow this monument to be set up.

690

Flat Earth Community / Re: The Zetetic Council

« on: January 08, 2014, 02:20:20 AM »

I guess one of our responsibilities should be gathering and systematically organizing the various threads of Flat Earth Belief.  I feel like the notions that there must be one singular model that represents the entirety of Flat Earth Belief has become outdated, and one of the really interesting things about the modern movement is the diversity of opinion regarding what had previously been considered the cornerstones of the theory.  Many of the great modern FEers have added their own spin to the theory, or even completely revamped it.  One of our jobs as the first ever Zetetic Council should be organizing the various opinions into a cohesive whole, a blueprint for future Councils to build on.

Perhaps we should also be held somewhat responsible for the contents of the Wiki?  This is of course if the Council is intended to be what I think it is.  On the old board the Zetetic Council's sole purpose was deciding who should be allowed to be a FE believer, a practice I always found a bit weird.  But in a somewhat similar vein, perhaps we can take it upon ourselves to define and decide what is taken seriously as legitimate FE belief.

I like that idea. I can't decide whether it would be easier to organize FET in the Wiki or in threads on the forum. Probably both, actually.

We should be in charge of the FAQ, I think. I suggest that we have some sort of compulsion to make contributions to the Wiki, but I'm not so sure about having roles as governors of it. I can't think of anything we could actually do that the society as a whole wouldn't be better at.

691

Flat Earth Community / Re: The Zetetic Council

« on: January 07, 2014, 08:51:11 PM »

So, what are we doing? I'd like to write that blog post and maybe write a constitution to put in the Council board, but first we need to decide. What are the jobs, rights, and responsibilities of the Council?

692

Flat Earth Community / Re: Zetetic Council Election Thread.

« on: January 06, 2014, 12:35:17 PM »

I'm still waiting on input from other members in the sticky thread.

693

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Sherlock

« on: January 05, 2014, 11:31:23 PM »

Mary is totally going to die.

694

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Sherlock

« on: January 05, 2014, 05:41:15 PM »

Next episode is in a few hours. I really wish I didn't have to use a livestream

695

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Sunrise and Sunset at the Falklands

« on: January 03, 2014, 11:00:28 PM »

Hi again Tausumi,

do you mean on a VxV/r principle that as the radius increases the V increases to maintain kinetic energy?

Something like that, but that runs contrary to the conservation of angular momentum that we see elsewhere in physics.  I believe there is an additional force at play here.  In the past I've called it an aetheric whirlpool, and some have postulated an additional set of celestial gears to account for this effect, allowing the sun to spin faster when the radius of its orbit is longer, and slower as the radius gets shorter.

I'm now in the celestial gears camp, myself - I've been an aether advocate in the past, and I don't discount its existence entirely, but the more study I do the more it becomes clear that the gears must exist.

Exactly. It doesn't defy conservation of angular momentum because the Sun is being propelled, either by the whirlpool or by the celestial gears.

If you want a real life example of a fluid moving faster as radius increases, look no father than a winding river. A river will deposit on the inward shore of a bend and erode the outward shore of the bend, because the water on the outside is moving faster.

696

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Sherlock

« on: January 03, 2014, 06:13:28 PM »

They never explained how he survived.

I'm confused, so when 'Sherlock' reveals his trick with the airbag, that was just in the fan's head? In which case, why splice that scene in with the cliffhanger on the train? This is the sort of incoherent plotting I was talking about.

As for the station, I'd have to watch again because I'm pretty sure Sherlock found or remembered the station while talking to the geek. (Didn't he then go on to explain how various stations have closed and opened or merged over time?)

The rest of his deductions weren't any different than before

The obvious one is the guard in Serbia who he tells about his wife having an affair, not only that she was having an affair but when he could catch them at it. Chances are Sherlock lied and he just knew that the guard was paranoid about his wife which Sherlock exploited, in which case, fair enough.

While there might not be a difference in the Real World, Sherlock clearly believes there is (See the first episode.) Regardless, if Sherlock's character has gone from being being uncaring about people's feelings to actually taking gleeful pleasure in making them suffer then it isn't a character development that I like. If it was a bit of a writing slip-up then I can move on and forget about it but this version has worked well because despite being obnoxious and smug, Sherlock is still supposed to be a sympathetic character. What he did on the train with John was just unsympathetically cruel.

That wasn't a fan. That was Anderson. They were showing how he's gone schizophrenic out of guilt. I agree about the placement though, it was kind of jarring. I think they were just trying to troll everyone. If it had been an actual explanation it would have been a decent place for it.

He's supposed to be more of an asshole than before, I think. He became more human while he was with John, and then he lost a lot of that while he was hiding. He's regressed.

697

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Sherlock

« on: January 03, 2014, 03:38:23 PM »

I thought The Empty Hearse was a godawful episode. Not only does the method that he survived not make sense* but the pacing and plot of it was all over the place, jumping from place to place, from past to future with no apparent reason or rhyme made it painfully difficult to keep track of what (if anything) was going on. The amount of filler and padding didn't help, with far too much time being spent with the Sherlock fanclub. With so much going on, none of the characters had time to show emotions developing naturally, they were just lurched from one extreme to the other.

Sherlock was also really out of character. I understand him being callous, he's a self-admitted sociopath, but the playing with John at the end for his own amusement was just cruel - the act of a psychopath rather than a sociopath.

Furthermore, the 'deductions' Sherlock is making now aren't even explained, they might as well give him psychc powers. How does he sudden; l know about *SPOILERS* an underground station under the houses of parliament that the Underground geek just neglected to remember until Sherlock reminded him, despite having the maps spread out in front of him?

*SPOILERS*




Moriarty had people watching to make sure Sherlock died, are you telling me that none of them noticed people moving a sodding bouncy castle below? Or the army of people making it look as though Sherlock had died? I hope that this isn't the 'real' explanation because if so then it only makes sense if his death was orchestrated purely for John's sake

*/SPOILERS*

As for your spoilers,

*SPOILERS*

That isn't how he survived. That was Anderson being schizophrenic. They never explained how he survived. As for the underground station, Sherlock didn't know anything about it. He just said the words, which reminded the geeky guy that there was a station that was never on any maps because it was never opened. The rest of his deductions weren't any different than before except that he wasn't saying them outloud as much, or explaining, which makes sense contextually.
*/Spoilers*

I thought it was a great episode. All of the stuff you thought was filler, I thought was brilliant. They were throwing a bone to the starving fandom that waited for two years. Also making fun of us.

I also didn't notice any issues with pacing or whatever, myself. To each his own.

Also sociopaths and psychopaths are the same thing. There's literally no difference between those two terms. Society just has a very twisted idea of what psychopathy is because we confuse it with psychosis. They're both just different words for the same disorder, ASPD. And Sherlock doesn't have ASPD. Either he was screwing with people when he said that, or it's another example of television being really bad at understanding what mental disorders are.

698

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Sherlock

« on: January 03, 2014, 04:52:05 AM »

Moffat and Gatis are cruel, cruel people

699

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Sunrise and Sunset at the Falklands

« on: January 02, 2014, 02:40:05 PM »

Simple physics. When the Sun gets father away from the hub, it necessarily moves faster. Therefore, the length of the day can stay the same

700

Flat Earth Community / Re: The Zetetic Council

« on: January 02, 2014, 12:38:21 PM »

I'll do it. I'm not expecting to have any classes tomorrow anyway, because snow. I'll post it here for peer edit.