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TOZ
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Post by TOZ » Mon Dec 28, 2009 2:39 am

> Crissa wrote:Kaelik, I don't think you know what you're talking about.
> -Crissa

I don't think you know what he's talking about.

> Crissa wrote:Obama administration will charge the passenger who assisted in subduing the burning passenger with hate crimes.

> What some guy actually wrote:Has Obama brought him up on charges yet? Any hate crime charges pending?

You stated it like it was fact that Obama was charging him as such instead of the author being snide. While I can see it going with your mocking of the authors of each link, it was pretty silly.
Edited for clarity.
Last edited by TOZ on Mon Dec 28, 2009 2:41 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Mon Dec 28, 2009 8:53 am

If by 'detonated' you mean 'his pants caught on fire.'
Also, yes, TOZ, exactly.
-Crissa
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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Mon Dec 28, 2009 12:12 pm

Why, oh why did the government of Iran shoot protesters on Ashura of all days and how long is it going to take for the government to get their just desserts?

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Mon Dec 28, 2009 2:39 pm

> Lago PARANOIA wrote:Why, oh why did the government of Iran shoot protesters on Ashura of all days and how long is it going to take for the government to get their just desserts?

- 1. To further erode the power of the Islamic Council.
  2. It's not.

We like to think of the Islamic authorities and the authoritarian conservatives as being the same people - after all, they say that they are the same people and they mostly have the same supporters amongst the men on the street. But Police State and Fundamentalism are genuinely two different methods of government (even if they aren't different enough to justify taking up two out of three governmental systems in Alpha Centauri). But the fact is that breaking the religious institutions that dominate the country leaves a power vacuum that can be as easily exploited bysecular conservatives as by liberals. Here's a section from the news:

> The Guardian wrote:By authorising the use of lethal force on one of Shia Islam's holiest days, the Islamic regime may have fatally undermined its claim to be the protector of Iran's religious traditions.

And yeah, that's totally true. Also here's a great quote to ruminate on:

> The Guardian wrote:The shootings threaten to further undermine the standing of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had already replaced President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the target of the opposition's wrath.

How sweet is that? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can give an order that erodes the power and prestige of Khamenei by shooting the lieutenants of Mir Hossein Mousavi in the face? Awesome! Ahmadinejad would totally do that. He'd do it nine times. Every time a mourning cycle comes up, Ahmadinejad can shoot at it and then Mousavi's people die (so he has to share power less) and Khamenei's prestige goes down (so he has to share power less.
As long as Ahmadinejad doesn't actually have the Ayatollah killed, he can turn the country into a military dictatorship. If he keeps this up, he can have line-item vetoes on parliamentary legislation moved to the Presidency from the Clerical Council in a few years. Maybe even a few months if things get bad enough.
For democracy to actually flourish, the Islamic Council has to be defeated and torn from the government root and branch. But the military junta represented by the Republican Guard has to also be defeated and stripped of all political power. The current situation is weakening the Islamic Council, and that's good, but it's not weakening the Republican Guard. And the fires aren't going to die down any time soon without outside intervention - and neither the US nor Britain nor France can intervene without setting off every country from Chad to Indonesia. The only countries that could intervene are Russia, China, and India. And there's no way in hell that India is going to put sanctions on Iran without an agreement by China and Russia - and Hu and Putin are both basically on record as supporting crack downs on pro-democracy protesters, so that ain't going to happen.
Prediction: Ahmadinejad gathers more power as Khamenei loses power, and when he finally retires or dies he does so as a man with more strength than he had two years ago. Khamenei is relegated to a pathetic shell of a supreme leader by the time he dies in office, and the final acts he signs are given him by the Presidency and approved without comment. Khamenei's replacement is chosen by the President and never makes a policy decision in his entire term.
-Username17
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Data Vampire
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Post by Data Vampire » Tue Dec 29, 2009 9:09 am

Prostitutes Offer Free Climate Summit Sex In Copenhagen
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Josh_Kablack
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Post by Josh_Kablack » Fri Jan 01, 2010 10:13 pm

Otherwise unremarkable pet bites owner story reveals that ABC news is incapable of using the internet
Seriously, here're the first two links google turns up on "tarantula"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantula#Defense
http://www.desertusa.com/july96/du_taran.html - scroll down to "a few facts about tarantulas"
"relatively unknown" my ass.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Fri Jan 01, 2010 10:57 pm

It's all relative.
-Crissa
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cthulhu
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Post by cthulhu » Sat Jan 02, 2010 2:47 pm

To be far, "Is the first hit in google" does not mean the same thing as "relatively unknown"
I mean if you ask the average american, the location of north korea is relatively unknown, but the wikipedia article does include a map.
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erik
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Post by erik » Sat Jan 02, 2010 3:38 pm

Um, the first hit in google does not mean that many people know it either. I think it is safe to assume that most people are not searching on tarantulas or concern themselves with learning about their defense mechanisms.
I knew about the barbed hairs because I watched some nature show once upon a time, not from the internet. Given that, I still have seen many people who handle their tarantulas without sufficient concern for how unpleasant those hairs can be.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Sat Jan 02, 2010 5:56 pm

I think it's a safe bet that anyone handling a tarantula should have searched it on google.
If not, they deserve to be bitten.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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shadzar
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Post by shadzar » Sat Jan 02, 2010 11:03 pm

The first thing in the google list is still ad-supported.
Google doesn't use real tracking, as none can exist, but with clickthroughs and all that and google ads, it is not true to say that the first link means anything, except a google ad has shown that more than anything else shown in the current search.
Play the game, not the rules.

> Swordslinger wrote:Or fuck it... I'm just going to get weapon specialization in my cock and whip people to death with it. Given all the enemies are total pussies, it seems like the appropriate thing to do.

> Lewis Black wrote:If the people of New Zealand want to be part of our world, I believe they should hop off their islands, and push 'em closer.

good read (Note to self Maxus sucks a barrel of cocks.)
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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Sun Jan 03, 2010 1:01 am

The majority of Republican operatives still don't use Google. (or if they do, correctly.)
So... Yeah. It's relative.
-Crissa
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Prak
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Post by Prak » Sun Jan 03, 2010 1:27 am

Blizzard helped police track down a drug dealer by tracking his account.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/
http://kokomoperspective.com/news/local ... 03286.html
As Tycho says, that's pretty damn close to cyberpunk right there...
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erik
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Post by erik » Sun Jan 03, 2010 5:37 am

Fuck Blizzard then. For drug crimes? Eff that.
I just looked up what schedule III and IV drugs are. Fucking hell. I hate our drug laws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled ... substances
They include such horrible things as anti-nausea meds for cancer patients on chemo and... ambien.
Oh shit! Thank god we got this guy. My fucking tax dollars at work! He had already run the hell away to Canada. He was not harming anyone (else he would be charged with harming people). But now we have to flush thousands of dollars down the toilet to get him, bring him back, put him on trial, and possibly place him in prison for some years. He has gone from a contributor to our economy to a drain upon our resources, all thanks to Blizzard and our stupid drug enforcement policies.
Happy fuckin new year, we really needed that.
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Data Vampire
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Post by Data Vampire » Sun Jan 03, 2010 6:35 am

I noticed the date rape drug, Rohypnol, on that list.
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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Sun Jan 03, 2010 6:39 am

Look, I know people who use schedule one and two drugs as is for doctor recommended reasons.
The schedules do not do what they say they do. Listing is unrelated to utilitarian facts and instead religious directorial reasoning.
-Crissa
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erik
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Post by erik » Sun Jan 03, 2010 8:47 am

> Data Vampire wrote:I noticed the date rape drug, Rohypnol, on that list.

I do not think that owning or selling any drug should be a crime. They should be controlled to the extent that all parties know what they are receiving and how to safely use it, but that won't realistically happen unless the criminalization of owning and distributing chemicals is ended. If there are legitimate distributors then people will not have to go to shady characters to get shit, and only then will they have full disclosure as to what they have.
Simply owning Rohypnol isn't crimeworthy. Selling it isn't crime worthy. I mean bleach is more deadly and dangerous and I can get as much as I fucking want. It is illegal for me to harm, endganger or threaten people with bleach, that should be enough of a limit for other substances as well.
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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Sun Jan 03, 2010 9:06 am

And just what good can someone do with roofies?
Bleach has hygiene uses, rohypnol does not. I'd be less willing to let someone own or acquire rohypnol than a loaded gun--at least those have a chance of legitimate use, even though the statistics are woefully against gun-owners.

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sun Jan 03, 2010 9:15 am

I definitely disagree. "Controlled substances" should be controlled. Not banned, not criminalized, but simply controlled. And the controlling takes place primarily in the realm of commerce. Just as selling beer, cigarettes, or car insurance without a license is a crime, so too should selling medications to random people on street corners be a crime. But the crime is and should be a commerce violation.
But if you just throw open the floodgates and let everyone buy, sell, or own whatever they want leads directly to snake oil salesmen and uncontrolled environmental pollution. While people should be able to purchase MDMA from pharmacies, some guy selling pills that are a 60/30/10% split of Aspirin, Meth, and MDMA as "Ecstasy" should absolutely, 100% be a crime.
-Username17
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Avoraciopoctules
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Post by Avoraciopoctules » Sun Jan 03, 2010 9:17 am

> Lago PARANOIA wrote:And just what good can someone do with roofies?
> Bleach has hygiene uses, rohypnol does not. I'd be less willing to let someone own or acquire rohypnol than a loaded gun--at least those have a chance of legitimate use, even though the statistics are woefully against gun-owners.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flunitrazepam

> flunitrazepam is prescribed for the treatment of severe insomnia, marketed by Roche most commonly under the trade name Rohypnol

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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Sun Jan 03, 2010 9:26 am

I didn't think that I had to state that when something is used as a prescription then it's okay, but apparently I have to because Avoraciopoctules completely missed the 'flunitrazepam is PRESCRIBED' part of their own damn citation.

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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erik
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Post by erik » Sun Jan 03, 2010 9:36 am

My notion is that people would not buy/sell medications on random street corners because they could do so safely at pharmacies where they have informed sellers who make certain that they understand what they are getting. People selling things without proper regulation would be just as bad as people selling cars without working brakes. It would not be legal in either case.
I am all for control, but I think that we have less control by criminalizing substances. We could have a greater amount of control by removing the criminal stigma and driving illegitimate dealers out of business by replacing them with educated and certifed dealers if we made it legal to own or distribute substances under proper circumstances.
Lago, as for what good can come from Rohypnol, it does have medicinal uses (for people with sleep disorders, as we all could guess), and in the future may be used to create other medicines, who knows? A chemical isn't inherently evil. Sometimes even the most noxious chemicals can be found to have industrial uses.
Bleach is deadly and it makes a very good cleaning agent since it kills stuff so well.
... whoops, I see you responded to Avora while I was writing this.
Oh, yes. I concur, you should have been more specific and stated that you meant "What good is rohypnol for if you are using it for no directed reason." That is a trickier question to answer and I don't think I'll bother. What good are many powerful drugs if you are using them for no directed reason? Beats me! =-)
Last edited by erik on Sun Jan 03, 2010 9:38 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Crissa
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Post by Crissa » Sun Jan 03, 2010 10:50 am

Lago, you said it did not have uses, flatly.
I could get through my household hygiene without bleach, as well. Maybe it should be prescribed for severe problems only?
Anyhow, my point was that the schedules are supposed to do something - which in the case of Rohypnol it is classified correctly, but this does not stop badguys from having it. And yet, harmless things are listed on those schedules. Which undermines our ability to use them to control substances properly.
-Crissa
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sun Jan 03, 2010 11:04 am

> Crissa wrote:Anyhow, my point was that the schedules are supposed to do something - which in the case of Rohypnol it is classified correctly, but this does not stop badguys from having it. And yet, harmless things are listed on those schedules. Which undermines our ability to use them to control substances properly.

Exactly.
Schedule I is supposed to be things that are dangerous and do not have a valid use. A lot of mercury compounds can be classified that way, and we should be using this classification to curbstomp Taoist sorcery. But there's all kinds of other stuff on that list for the explicit purpose of bothering hippies. It undermines the whole concept.
But selling Schedule III drugs - that is to say drugs that are available with a prescription - to people without a license for sale or a prescription is and should be a crime.
-Username17
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Ganbare Gincun
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Post by Ganbare Gincun » Sun Jan 03, 2010 9:18 pm

Fox News: Buddhism Is Crap, Christianity Is The One True Faith
Republicans Candidates Turn To Prayer Instead Of Fundraising?
Colbert Dishes On Bush, Glenn Beck, and MSNBC
5 minute short movie about a robot attack results in a Hollywood contract with Sam Raimi.
Last edited by Ganbare Gincun on Sun Jan 03, 2010 9:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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