saltandsauce

too many people read Neitzche he's more cynical than healthy man is shut up and enjoy life, you're a long time dead. (esp. if you're atheist) there is this strange thought that killing is bad and stealing is bad, it is drawn from the history of religions there isn't any relative arguement against me killing you all, i don't do it and won't do it for A i can't find you all B it's against my chosen religion C current morality dictates that killing everyone is wrong and i like to be a moral person this is the main reason i don't like "shades of grey" morality or "relative morality" look at the eugenics movement in Britain and America in the early 20th C, killing everyone can be considered a moral act for the following reason (i don't actually beleive in any of the stuff i'm about to say but it's to illustrate the dangers of relativism) 1, people are starving and will die a slow, painful death so put them out of their misery quickly 2, sick/ill people use up rescources which could be better used by the healthy 3, old people use up rescources which could be used up by the younger 4, people with bad genes must be removed from the gene pool for humanity's continuation 5, overpopulation 6, bad people must die 7, the poor are ugly and make rich people uncomfortable, rich people are important therefore if the rich demand the execution of the poor then thy shall be done 8, people are starving and will die a slow, painful death so put them out of their misery quickly 9, if people want to die they ought to 10, if people want to die but are unable to do it then they should be able to hire someone to kill them for them the contemporary (secular in the actual sense of the time meaning "of the time") morality says things like people should have rights and these should be respected, killing people is wrong, people dying is a tragedy and stealing is bad (most of the time) but things will change and it could be possible that one day all 10 reasons for killing people will be part of widey accepted morality and depending on your individual conscience this is either a good or bad thing. you choose. and all this from disagreeing on where "altruism" begins which is either "never" or "when people do stuff without a direct "quid pro quo"

too many people read Neitzche he's more cynical than healthy man is shut up and enjoy life, you're a long time dead. (esp. if you're atheist) there is this strange thought that killing is bad and stealing is bad, it is drawn from the history of religions there isn't any relative arguement against me killing you all, i don't do it and won't do it for A i can't find you all B it's against my chosen religion C current morality dictates that killing everyone is wrong and i like to be a moral person this is the main reason i don't like "shades of grey" morality or "relative morality" look at the eugenics movement in Britain and America in the early 20th C, killing everyone can be considered a moral act for the following reason (i don't actually beleive in any of the stuff i'm about to say but it's to illustrate the dangers of relativism) 1, people are starving and will die a slow, painful death so put them out of their misery quickly 2, sick/ill people use up rescources which could be better used by the healthy 3, old people use up rescources which could be used up by the younger 4, people with bad genes must be removed from the gene pool for humanity's continuation 5, overpopulation 6, bad people must die 7, the poor are ugly and make rich people uncomfortable, rich people are important therefore if the rich demand the execution of the poor then thy shall be done 8, people are starving and will die a slow, painful death so put them out of their misery quickly 9, if people want to die they ought to 10, if people want to die but are unable to do it then they should be able to hire someone to kill them for them the contemporary (secular in the actual sense of the time meaning "of the time") morality says things like people should have rights and these should be respected, killing people is wrong, people dying is a tragedy and stealing is bad (most of the time) but things will change and it could be possible that one day all 10 reasons for killing people will be part of widey accepted morality and depending on your individual conscience this is either a good or bad thing. you choose. and all this from disagreeing on where "altruism" begins which is either "never" or "when people do stuff without a direct "quid pro quo"

Originally posted by: Zelgadis Holy crap, has it only been 20 years? How time doesn't fly... My grandmother left me a globe with East and West Germany on it recently and I was just thinking how ancient it must be... ISF quote> My school had 1 globe that listed Namibia as "south west Africa" and had Yugoslavia as one country (along with East and West Germany) it did have modern maps as well but it still had maps with east and west germany pinned up on the wall. it does have modern maps in the geography department but it hasn't bothered getting rid of the old ones

Then again, Margaret Thatcher clung on to power for 11 years and managed to screw up at almost every turn. She's a woman (sort of) as for the thing about smartest/strongest/fittest that's one reason why contraception doesn't work it only allows those who don't use it to reproduce.

well, it shows you what is important to the US government's heart - copyright infringement

i still think Glasgow wins, when it built it's mass of housing, they forgot to put SCHOOLS in. and places for shops to go in

this is your democracy

i propose a social experiment. in a city with chronically high unemployment, (like Glasgow) build a large employer (like a textile mill) and subsidise it with welfare money and pay low wages and since it's public housing, lower the rents to compensate. offer the jobs only to the local people (you give them a job) who live within walking distance of the factory or large employer measure alcohol sales, crime, school results and number of drug addicts and possibly even the level of litter. you will no doubt find alcohol sales going down, crime going down, school results rising a little, having work helps to keep recovering addicts too occupied to relapse because of boredom (it's easier to forget cravings if you're busy than if you have 13 long hours of nothing to do/think about) i'm not saying that there wouldn't be any relapses but the numbers would dcrease by a statistically significant amount. quote> well the example would be that you build a large employer for one area (e.g. the Gorbals) and then lower the rents in the Gorbals and offer the jobs to the Gorbalians (the Gorbals is about 1 sq. mile) and then monitor crime, education levels and alcohol sales. but if you offer low wages you must depress rents to compensate. this means that your standard of living will not fall or it will rise. the other thing is that (for the Gorbals especially) you have to give each household (probably a better idea to employ the father if there is one) since there are cases where teenage sons have got jobs but their fathers or mothers make them give it up because getting ready for work makes too much noise and wakes them up.

me with my old fashioned wired one is safer than most of the wireless ones in this country. joke is on Malware, i've never bought anything on the internet and never will, it's just wrong. as for the article, why can't they leave people alone, the sadists

city of Glasgow, everything built since 1948 HUGE public housing projects (we call them schemes) with no jobs, shops and schools etc. were built 10 years after the housing was built. the Drumchapel estate is enormous. the city used to have overcrowded areas like the Gorbals which were inhabited by the Irish immigrants. there were plenty of jobs available in factories, steelworks and shipyards nearby (manual labour, badly paid along with high crime (stabbings) and decrepit housing. this was demolished for an industrial estate and the residents were moved to new towns on the outskirts of town where you had to get your groceries from a VAN. i'd say post war Glasgow wins hands down for bad planning for mass unemployment, replacing old decrepit housing with new decrepit housing and the slicing of the city by the M8 motorway through the city (the only city with such a thing in Britain)

i propose a social experiment. in a city with chronically high unemployment, (like Glasgow) build a large employer (like a textile mill) and subsidise it with welfare money and pay low wages and since it's public housing, lower the rents to compensate. offer the jobs only to the local people (you give them a job) who live within walking distance of the factory or large employer measure alcohol sales, crime, school results and number of drug addicts and possibly even the level of litter. you will no doubt find alcohol sales going down, crime going down, school results rising a little, having work helps to keep recovering addicts too occupied to relapse because of boredom (it's easier to forget cravings if you're busy than if you have 13 long hours of nothing to do/think about) i'm not saying that there wouldn't be any relapses but the numbers would dcrease by a statistically significant amount. i will no doubt be accused of generalising and I AM generalising i don't know specifics since this experiment hasn't happened. it's my hypothesis. you do it before an experiment. someone with more experience with drug addicts is welcome to say otherwise but i'm trying to make an educated guess.

now, this topic mostly concerns England and Wales since Scotland's education system is independant of t'other. David Cameron and his ilk are proposing to expand the "academy" system, (it's like charter schools in the USA) these schools will be run like private schools but they will be state funded. these schools will be able to create their own cirriculum and control their intake of pupils. these schools will be independant of local authority (council) control and will be owned and run by trusts. the state comprehensive system will continue to exist alongside these schools. and academies are often brand-new plasterboard buildings it's also likely that the academies will get more money. any thoughts?

remember in England, public schools are private schools, the "public schools of England" are called "state schools" because they are funded by the state (and private schools are funded by some members of the public)

there is a strange thing in Britain where, if you are slightly middle class there is an urge for your child to be seperate from the children of "the unwashed masses" league tables do this by listing the "good" schools as better and then house prices rise to keep out the "lower orders" from polluting the intake. yes comprehensives are a mess, having seen how they are run i know exactly why they are a mess 1, teachers have to fill in forms to the effect of "this is my teaching streategy, i hope to achieve this outcome and this is my future strategy" as to headmasters/headmistresses and all the "senior management" staff. 2, classes are very noisy and distracting places to be, so it's no wonder you don't learn much there since in a lot of cases you aren't being taught anything. class sizes used to be much bigger in the UK, where there was almost no legal limit on class sizes, just the physical limit on how many pupils you could fit in a classroom (both my parents were educated in classes averaging 40) and there was proportionally fewer resources available (except in Sciences and that's because a lot of those resources are banned under health and safety regulations)

Existing schools apply to become academies, it looks like backdoor privatisation of the education system it looks like subsidized private education it looks like creating seperate middle and working class schools it looks like grammar schools without the academia it looks like they want to make sure that local authority comprehensive schools stay crap it looks like the content of the cirriculum will continue to fall it looks like they're really stuck for ideas it looks like they're determined to not think for theirselves and will only copy others (those kids don't get far) it looks like a cheap, quick fix it looks like an expensive political gimmick it looks like a slimy, marine animal it looks like a lot of things Thank God i don't live in England where there is more interference in the education system than mother-in-laws and their grandchildren's upbringing http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/10159448.stm source

let me clear something up for you all. living on Welfare is NOT i repeat NOT pleasant in any way shape or form. 1, you don't get that much money, people at school would face the choice "do i get my child a school uniform/one that fits" or do we go hungry for 3 days?" (my aunt was a primary school teacher in a council estate and encountered this a lot) 2, unemployment is intensley boring and unfulfilling, once you are on it, employerslove saying "why haven't you worked for x months/years" and it doesn't matter what you say, they WILL NOT employ you because you are "welfare scum" after 3 months of unemployment. 3, when you are unemployed it is normal to apply several hundred times before you get an interview. imagine the effect 300 "your application has not been successful"replies has on your mentality and you will wonder what the point of even applying is after the 200th application. 4, you will more than likely live in a crap housing estate or public housing. where you are exposed to lots of "i am desperate crime" like mugging or "i am colossally bored" crime (like vandalism and recreational violence) this miserable atmosphere where you are surrounded by hundreds of other unemployed people, no jobs will be available locally and the constant threat of "keep pointlessly looking for work or we will cut the remaining money you get away from you" eats away at your self esteem (and eventually your mental capacity) so what if you don't have to go to work, when you don't have work to occupy you, waking hours are incredibly hard to fill if work doesn't take up somewhere around a third of your waking hours. it becomes very hard to meet people since you have little/nothing to talk about. it becomes hard to maintain friendships due to nothing to talk about. you can't take up hobbies because you don't have any money for one and chances are, none are available except alcohol and narcotics. the sensible ones try to get some at least some enjoyment out of it since there isn't any alternative and those who play the system do it out of spite for the system or sheer greed since you can't really get money any other way. and no, you can't get any bank loans (anymore) to even create your own work so don't even think about "you could make yourself a job" and that's to make sure any bothersome "entrepeneurialism" is crushed.

Originally posted by: DocRorlach China is flexing its currency muscle, toys with its export cloud, and now even attempts to come to the rescue of the Greek economy. If Ghegis was alive today he'd arrive at Europe's doorstep with a top-notch laptop and a horde of Merc driving business & banking consultants. Everyone on this forum and on this site would not be able to type a single word if it were not for the Chinese. We may have invented all the main parts that make up a computer (and even that is only 80% true - see the story of Acer), but without the Chinese labour force few of us could ever afford a half-way decent PC. quote> cheap computer use isn't necessarily a good thing. in the same way as cheap cars - everyone gets one and this erodes everyones quality of life. sitting in front of a computer whlist you could be having face-to-face contact with people (who are also on computers)

Lithium my lower posterior! my friend, OIL is there, OIL. it is potentially bigger than Saudi arabia's oilfield. a shallow sea with no through currents that closed up and then dried up. that is oilfield creation.

which is more valuable the gold bar or the faberge egg? that's why.

wow, the USA invading a thought-to-be-barren-wasteland-that's-actually-chock-full-of-untapped-wealth who'd have thought it. Vietnam that wasn't thought to be barren but turned out to have all kinds of minerals (and productive farmland with 3 crops a year)

I wonder if the USA government will demand the oil reserves lying in Canada (owned by BP) just over the border as compensation?

Originally posted by: ForceInfinity Sucks to see any game company close shop. I have faith the developers have the talent to bounce back from this and press on. (well I take that back, I didn't shed too many tears when Mythican closed shop back in the 80s during the game crash).quote> i can think of one exception to that rule, EA Games of course, that would mean taking down all the companies it bought up over the years which would include maxis etc. and the developers would still lose their jobs but with the bland out of the market there could be a huge resurgence in game interest

Originally posted by: -Lexus- You know, Ive tried all that. Ive tried very hard. But yet, praying to God never feels like any real love like Ive also experienced, nor did it ever come close to an orgasm. To me it sounds like you are just deluding yourself, which is fine, your choice. But I would very much appreciate it if you didnt try to 'save' my immortal soul with the annoying preaching. quote> there are plenty of people with mothers and fathers and siblings and the closest they've gotten to love is that praying bull--- that you've been hating no faith that's wirth its salt is all cinematic like hollywood where you pray and a deep echoey voice gives you exact guidence. what did you expect? a nice big hug from God? also, it sounds like your definition of love is eros which is pretty narrow for a lot of people. you get parental love, friendship love, the sheer delight in another's company. what about these types of love? btw i don't care about your "immortal soul" anymore than anyone else on the internet. living a "moral" life isn't supposed to be easy you know, all that stuff like fidelity, trust, hardship (this is different depending on Catholic or Protestant doctrine), desire and laziness are all the hard choices if your going to be "moral" it's not supposed to be easy.

Originally posted by: morriswalters Being an Atheist I find this thread interesting. However you could speculate that the culture, as seen by outsiders, could certainly be called Christian. Many of our ethical and moral codes are based off of Christian Philosophy, regardless of the individuals status as a practicing Christian. quote> yeah, stuff like monogamy are heavily influenced by Christianity originally it was very un-Christian to charge interest on loans unless a re-payment was late. the practice of chargin interest was confined to Jewish lenders and was branded "usury" - one of those reasons why Judaism was hated beware moral-relativism. it's a way of making everything right, even things that are wrong

if you were baptized aa Catholoic it would still work if you were confirmed which i am assuming you are neither confirmed or Catholic