1081

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Orlando mass shooting

« on: June 14, 2016, 03:31:52 AM »

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/report-orlando-nightclub-shooter-visited-222620444.html

1082

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Line of sight communication

« on: June 14, 2016, 03:05:29 AM »

Rama, this claim is so obviously in your court to prove, that it is quite petty and pathetic to bat it back with "disprove me". The consistent refusal to show evidence for something supposedly so established that it speaks volumes as to the reality of the situation.

i have twice now posted such evidence for your perusal.  that you pretend it doesn't exist speaks volumes as to the reality of the situation.

1083

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Game of Thrones

« on: June 13, 2016, 11:55:09 PM »

i agree with mollete.  personally, i thought that was the perfect way to execute that scene. for one thing, it's a kind of visual representation of what just happened to the waif and what arya is now capable of.  it's not that they omitted some cool action sequence or fight scene that arya won.  it represents how the waif experienced that scene: the light went out, and she was dead just as quickly.  and, that's all the more reason to leave the details to your imagination.  i don't want every little detail of everything that happens to be shoved down my throat.  the way that scene plays out in my head after the candle falls is just so much cooler than anything they could've showed me on screen.

saddam i seriously don't get why you watch this show.  all you do is complain about it and talk about how awful and terrible it is.  i mean, if they'd showed arya killing the waif, then you'd absolutely be in here complaining about what a terrible scene it was and how they didn't do it right and etc...

1084

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Line of sight communication

« on: June 13, 2016, 05:17:23 PM »

Burden of proof is on the claimant. I don't need to prove that your magical fairies don't exist. You need to prove that your magical fairies do exist.

http://www.mike-willis.com/Tutorial/PF6.htm
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~aty/explain/atmos_refr/duct.html

1085

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Line of sight communication

« on: June 12, 2016, 02:45:16 PM »

I would appreciate a post relevant to the topic.

the mechanism behind ducting/groundwaves/whatever is not an unproven hypothesis.  it is a proven hypothesis, hence the videos detailing some of the proofs.

1086

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Line of sight communication

« on: June 12, 2016, 04:36:45 AM »

Deal with a unproven hypothesis? Isn't it your job to demonstrate that the hypothesis is true, if that is your position?

Can I just say that little invisible fairies did something and expect you to deal with that mechanism and rebut it?

It is clearly you who is making mumbling excuses to avoid the issue, not me. These absurd claims are not mine.

1087

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Size of the Sun and the "Known Magnification Effect"

« on: June 12, 2016, 04:30:57 AM »

 The headlights are all the same size down the highway, for as far as the eye can see. The headlights are bright, and therefore the magnification effect occurs. Other objects in this scene, are not as bright as the headlights, such as the tail lights of the cars moving away, and therefore naturally shrink. This is evidence that brighter light sources magnifiy and dimmer light sources do not.

All measurements are experiments. Your experiment does not control for the angle of orientation of the light source. It does not conform to the scientific method, which demands that trials are controlled. Trying to pass off something uncontrolled and unscientific as scientific is reprehensible. I would suggest that you go back to middle school and learn some science.

1088

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: 2016 US Presidential Race

« on: June 10, 2016, 03:07:36 PM »

which do you think is more likely to elicit a military response from the united states: dead south korean soldiers, or dead american soldiers?

A rational actor would not attack South Korea at all.

if you would take the time to actually read the content of my posts, you'd find that this is the statement i've been disagreeing with for 2 pages now.  rational people can disagree about things.  rational people can make miscalculations.  rational people can be influenced by emotions, ideology, appeals to concepts like justice/retaliation/whatever, etc.  your argument rests on the idea that all rational people see the the same way: the way you see them.  that's not an argument; it's just ego.

please stop pretending that all rational people always agree with each other about what is most rational.  how do you not realize that the implication of that belief is that everyone who disagrees with you is either crazy or just trying to annoy you?

An irrational actor would attack South Korea regardless of US presence. Tell me, what exactly is the US presence supposed to be doing if Kim Jong-un is just a nutter who is willing to get himself and his country destroyed regardless of the consequences?

here's a scenario: without a us presence on the peninsula, the dprk could be more emboldened to attack more south korean ships with sub attacks, or plant more landmines on the sk side of the border, or whatever.  i mean i know a rational actor would not attack south korea at all lol, but setting that aside, suppose south korea gets all pissy and finally decides to hulk out on north korea.  so they get into a bunch of shit, and north korea goes all guerrilla war, and then maybe china or russia or both decide to start materially aiding the dprk and the peninsula is now up to its dick in a new korean war.  or something along those lines.

to be clear, i'm not saying that absolutely 100% would definitely happen in exactly that manner, but it's obviously not hard to think of some scenarios in which a us military presence would be a useful means of de-escalating south korea from going to war.  sunk warships are exactly the kind of event that causes otherwise "rational actors" to make less-than-optimal decisions.

Asking people to pay for a service provided isn't extortion. Other countries can afford extravagant social and education programs because a completely different country is absorbing their defense costs. It's time they pay up a few billion dollars at a time. I mean, it's just "petty cash," right?

right.  compared to our budget, it's small change.  sk isn't fueling their university system by saving $2bln on military expenses, and our healthcare system isn't $2bln away from being top of its class.  so imagine the audacity of actually phoning up an ally and saying, "give us $2bln or we're going to take our security forces and go home."  forget about the utility of the troops: it's just a fucked up thing to do to a nation we call friends.  we've promised to guarantee their security, and keeping us troops there is as much about the gesture as it is anything else.  it signals to both koreas that we are serious about protecting these allies, a signal that probably could have prevented the first korean war.  that was a HUGE contributing factor of the first korean war: sung incorrectly perceived the us to be uninterested in supporting the south because of ambiguous and often downright misleading signaling by the us.

if anything, suddenly bailing from the peninsula makes such miscalculations more likely.

Oh, please. This is just embarrassing.

We'd "cooperate" with North Korea too, if they actually had anything worth having.

i'm not sure why i should be embarrassed to say that russia and the dprk are qualitatively different and do not require identical foreign policies.  i still don't get what russia has to do with whether or not the dprk is a threat to seoul.  ffs the dprk doesn't even have a 'let's try not to nuke each other hotline.'  they don't cooperate on arms control at all.  they regularly threaten to destroy south korea and the us.  they semi-regularly attack and kill south korean military personnel.  we don't trade with them and we actively try to stop them from trading with others.  they're ruled by a dictator with nearly absolute authority.  the list goes on and on...

1089

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: 2016 US Presidential Race

« on: June 10, 2016, 12:02:16 AM »

All of those events were perpetrated by countries that had reasonable chances of winning the war. If the DPRK attack South Korea, everyone loses, regardless of how many billions or even trillions of dollars we put into South Korea.

right.  events that were beyond their control motivated them to start wars they thought they could win, even though at least 2 of those conflicts (both germanys) were almost certainly completely un-winnable by the instigators and lacked internal consensus that war was the appropriate course of action.

your whole argument rests on the bizarre premise that kim jong un and the dprk are always going to assess things the way you do and could never be motivated by irrationality or external forces.  that's asinine.

What is your argument at this point? Do you believe that an American base in South Korea makes a crazy, unpredictable DPRK less likely to nuke Seoul?

my argument is that trump is a retard with a retard proposal to extort our allies our of some petty cash, and no one should take seriously the inane ramblings of someone who isn't even really interested in learning who pays for what, or what we get in return, or any other fact that will impede on his bloviating on what an idiot everyone else is.  it's actually kinda beautiful in its way.

i think it's exceedingly unlikely that north korea will ever nuke anyone.  but yeah, nuking us soldiers is obviously going to elicit a stronger response from the us than nuking south korean soldiers.  it's more about deterring conventional conflict.  we deter north korea, but also we exert control over south korean forces that are also capable of starting a conflict.  as a bonus, we get to deter north korea from conflicts with other neighbors besides south korea simply by having a strong presence in the region and establishing those neighbors as us interests.

china and russia and the dprk

i'm loving this.  keep going.  i only want to hear more about how comparable our relationships with russia and china are to the dprk.

fair enough, china and russia aren't technically allies.  if you actually think that the level of cooperation we have with russia and china is an any way indicative of our level of cooperation with the dprk, even confined solely to the subject of "let's not war with each other," then you're hopeless. 

i don't even get why we're talking about russia and china since i don't think i ever said anything like "anyone with a strong military force or nuclear weapons requires a us military presence as close to them as possible no matter what the cost."  i mean, you keep pretending that i do, but i've not actually said anything like that.

oh and add "north korea is the most terrifying and powerful hegemon on the planet" to the list of shit i haven't said at all.

1090

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: 2016 US Presidential Race

« on: June 09, 2016, 05:30:38 PM »

The net impact of the actual money being sent to South Korea is extremely small (going in line with you noting it's only a few billion!) North Korea isn't staying out of South Korea just because the US has people there, since they could easily kill all of those people. North Korea is staying out of South Korea because North Korea knows North Korea will stop existing if they ever do happen to invade South Korea.

The world avoids North Korea because it is a political disaster, not a military threat.

let's hope that the dprk always assesses the situation exactly as you do from your armchair in tennessee or whatever.  i can't think of any conflicts that ignited over miscalculations, or the ideological obsessions of dictators, or random and unpredictable events, or some other nonsense altogether...can you?

Russia is much more of a threat than DPRK is. Russia could theoretically strike out at other nations and still remain a stable nation. You seem to have swallowed some fantastical "North Korean bogeyman" garbage.

so now we're on to russia = threat therefore dprk != threat?  awesome.  hey dummy: there two things aren't related.  our foreign policy toward russia doesn't have to be the same as our foreign policy toward north korea.  they probably shouldn't be, since, again, russia is an ally.

south korea is also an ally, and a valuable one at that.  we probably shouldn't follow trump's advice to extort them to save a measly 0.06% of our budget.  that's dumb.

1091

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Game of Thrones

« on: June 07, 2016, 03:46:48 AM »

i think both are true.  i think it's true that there's real value to being honest about the cruelty that really existed in that time period.  i also think it's true that choice to depict that violence, and the manner in which is is depicted, justifiable or not, can have a plethora of negative effects on some viewers, especially when it comes to sexual violence. 

i don't think there's anything wrong with writing/displaying cruelty, but i also don't think there's anything wrong with criticizing it.  if anything i think there always ought to be a voice that asks us if our displays of cruelty, even confined to their respective contexts, are morally justifiable, even if we can never reach a consensus opinion.  maybe especially because we can never reach a consensus opinion.

1092

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: 2016 US Presidential Race

« on: June 07, 2016, 03:34:57 AM »

"It's just a few billion dollars, man, no big deal." If we look at every budget constraint and say "well, gee, it's only 0.06% of the budget" then surprise! The budget never changes and we go into debt.

you're still misunderstanding my argument.  i'm not saying that any amount of spending on anything is fine.  i'm saying that the net value of this spending is positive because it secures our access to an economic asset that is worth more to our budget than we spend to secure it.

North Korea is theoretically an existential threat, yes, in the same way that China, Pakistan, India, Israel, Russia, UK, etc. are also existential threats to the world. North Korea could vaporize all of its neighbors. However, the DPRK is not verging on a murder-suicide, no matter how many times you read about it on whatever garbage it is you get your news from. They are a joke and do not warrant the absolute waste of human and materiel resources in the country.

lol if you insist.  sounds like you've got it all worked out.  tbh you read more and more like trump everyday.  i'm incompetent, whatever i read is written by incompetent people (personal fav), the dprk is incompetent, everyone involved in us foreign policy toward korea since the war is incompetent, etc.  yawn.

like i said, i do not share your confidence in your ability to predict the future of relations on the peninsula over the next 10, 20, 30, etc. years.  that the dprk does not have a death wish is hardly sufficient in an of itself to prevent conflict.  see: world history.

also, the dprk is not china, pakistan, india, israel, russia, or the uk.  i'm surprised you made the comparison.  among the virtually endless supply of differences is that those nations are allies, and we cooperate with them on not blowing each other up, both diplomatically and materially.  if the dprk ever decides to behave toward us in a manner even remotely resembling those allies, then yeah, i'll probably agree that we don't need to house our own reaction forces on the peninsula anymore. 

or whatever russia != threat therefore dprk != threat that's probably right

1093

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: 2016 US Presidential Race

« on: June 03, 2016, 03:51:03 PM »

Hmm, your argument is that we shouldn't attempt to save money anywhere because we spend lots of money everywhere. Good one.

keep misconstruing my argument if you like.  you are manufacturing some good zingers.  my argument was that the opportunity-cost to abandoning the korean peninsula is probably greater than saving 0.06% of yearly spending.  i know you're smart enough to understand fractions.

"seoul is an invaluable financial and political asset for the us.  guaranteeing its security is a no-brainer.  there's probably an interesting conversation to be had about the best way to go about that, but that conversation will never involve trump, a candidate serially committed to not being even remotely interested in whether or not the things he's saying are true."

i don't really give a shit that he wants to change our foreign policy toward south korea.  i care that he has any clue at all what our foreign policy toward south korea currently is, and i care that he's completely willing to pretend that he does without any apparent self-motivation to fill those gaps in his knowledge.  he just says a bunch of shit that isn't true, gets corrected, says a bunch of new shit that isn't true, gets corrected again, and on and on and on.  but whatever as long as it's super populist and angry then that's cool.

Also, you might want to further explain your points. If you want just quote me and say "ruminate on this" I'm going to assume you have no worthwhile argument.

you started by saying that north korea is a joke, and no one could support the argument that we stay because north korea is a threat, and then ended by saying that north korea is an existential threat to seoul.  i dunno how to reconcile those two things. 

1094

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: 2016 US Presidential Race

« on: June 03, 2016, 02:31:09 PM »

North Korea is a joke, no one could possibly support the argument "we should stay in South Korea because of North Korean threats!"

The facilities are pointless if you're thinking about defending South Korea from North Korea. They brief you as soon as you get there that you will likely die in an invasion scenario and that Seoul would be destroyed within a day regardless of military intervention.

ruminate on this one for a bit.

so what's the big deal with removing the installations or, *gasp*, forcing South Korea to foot the entire bill?

the big deal is that we stand to gain very little and lose a great deal.  at best we recoup maybe $2 billion.  the us spends like $3,000 billion/year.  also how are we going to force seoul to 'foot the entire bill'?  what if they say no?  we bail?

1095

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: 2016 US Presidential Race

« on: June 03, 2016, 12:59:53 AM »

Are you agreeing now that China is an enemy of the US? North Korea is a joke, no one could possibly support the argument "we should stay in South Korea because of North Korean threats!" The world has gone so upside down that the FES leftists are now arguing for unadulterated military spending.

lol "leftist."  adorable.

forgive me if i'm unwilling to take your word for it that north korea is no threat to seoul.  honestly, you can't possibly be claiming to know what north korea is capable of, or possibly think you can predict the future of relations on the peninsula for the next 10, 20, 30, 50 years, etc.

seoul is an invaluable financial and political asset for the us.  guaranteeing its security is a no-brainer.  there's probably an interesting conversation to be had about the best way to go about that, but that conversation will never involve trump, a candidate serially committed to not being even remotely interested in whether or not the things he's saying are true.

1096

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: 2016 US Presidential Race

« on: June 01, 2016, 07:28:40 PM »

Pay 30% to protect 100% of their country. Jokes on US

if us foreign policy ever becomes this shortsighted, then the joke will definitely be on us

1097

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: 2016 US Presidential Race

« on: June 01, 2016, 02:45:02 PM »

trump: "south korea pays us nothing for our troops presence."

not-retarded people: "um, they pick up about 30% of the tab, to the tune of ~$800 million dollars, and that percentage has been increasing over time."

trump: "whoops, i meant to say that we don't get any benefit from the money we spend."

nrp: "protecting our national security interests, as well as those of our allies, is a direct benefit to the us."

trump: "whoops, i meant to say that we don't get very much benefit from the money we spend."

nrp: "um...ok...hit us up when you have something of substance to say about anything at all."

1098

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: The Breitbart Crew

« on: May 31, 2016, 07:53:58 PM »

i can only speak for myself, but i find shapiro distasteful.  here's a big long thing that says better than i could what i find so distasteful about authors like shapiro. tl;dr: he writes and thinks like lenin.  but, you know, conservative instead of liberal.  no thanks.

http://foucault.info/doc/foucault/interview-html

The polemicist , on the other hand, proceeds encased in privileges that he possesses in advance and will never agree to question. On principle, he possesses rights authorizing him to wage war and making that struggle a just undertaking; the person he confronts is not a partner in search for the truth but an adversary, an enemy who is wrong, who is armful, and whose very existence constitutes a threat. For him, then the game consists not of recognizing this person as a subject having the right to speak but of abolishing him as interlocutor, from any possible dialogue; and his final objective will be not to come as close as possible to a difficult truth but to bring about the triumph of the just cause he has been manifestly upholding from the beginning. The polemicist relies on a legitimacy that his adversary is by definition denied.

[...]Very schematically, it seems to me that today we can recognize the presence in polemics of three models: the religious model, the judiciary model, and the political model. As in heresiology, polemics sets itself the task of determining the intangible point of dogma, the fundamental and necessary principle that the adversary has neglected, ignored or transgressed; and it denounces this negligence as a moral failing; at the root of the error, it finds passion, desire, interest, a whole series of weaknesses and inadmissible attachments that establish it as culpable. As in judiciary practice, polemics allows for no possibility of an equal discussion: it examines a case; it isn't dealing with an interlocutor, it is processing a suspect; it collects the proofs of his guilt, designates the infraction he has committed, and pronounces the verdict and sentences him. In any case, what we have here is not on the order of a shared investigation; the polemicist tells the truth in the form of his judgment and by virtue of the authority he has conferred on himself. But it is the political model that is the most powerful today. Polemics defines alliances, recruits partisans, unites interests or opinions, represents a party; it establishes the other as an enemy, an upholder of opposed interests against which one must fight until the moment this enemy is defeated and either surrenders or disappears.

[...]Has anyone ever seen a new idea come out of a polemic? And how could it be otherwise, given that here the interlocutors are incited not to advance, not to take more and more risks in what they say, but to fall back continually on the rights that they claim, on their legitimacy, which they must defend, and on the affirmation of their innocence? There is something even more serious here: in this comedy, one mimics war, battles, annihilations, or unconditional surrenders, putting forward as much of one's killer instinct as possible. But it is really dangerous to make anyone believe that he can gain access to the truth by such paths and thus to validate, even if in a merely symbolic form, the real political practices that could be warranted by it.

oh hey that was still only half as long as the bullshit i usually write.

ninja edit: in case i obscured my own point, i don't think there's anything to gain intellectually by reading authors like shapiro.  there are all kinds of super awesome conservative thinkers out there who are writing about ideas rather than reducing political science to a rivalry between the sharks and the jets.

1099

Flat Earth Community / Re: Aired only in Latin America

« on: May 31, 2016, 12:44:00 PM »

http://www.pbs.org/genius-by-stephen-hawking/home/

1100

Flat Earth Community / Re: How the Sun sets on a Flat Earth

« on: May 31, 2016, 02:46:41 AM »

I have provided evidence showing that it is possible for a light source to remain the same size as it goes into the distance. Two examples were provided. The lights in the distance are clearly larger than they should be.

as i stated already, you have provided excellent evidence that a directional light source appears brighter when viewed head-on rather than at an angle.

the sun is not a directional source of light.  you have not provided any evidence that it should behave like headlights viewed from above a curved road.