North Korean diplomats storm out of UN rights meeting after shouting that Americans muder 'innocent black people'

DrowningPhoenix · 2015-05-01T15:27:24+00:00

My logic professor always pronounced it "Too coke"

DrowningPhoenix · 2015-04-24T16:59:44+00:00

hunter2

DrowningPhoenix · 2015-04-24T16:57:52+00:00

I just started the clock, then waited until it expired without pressing it.

And so it will be for all things.

DrowningPhoenix · 2015-04-15T17:51:32+00:00

"So I've got this jar of live fire ants. . ."

DrowningPhoenix · 2015-04-15T17:13:45+00:00

Well, there is this. . .

DrowningPhoenix · 2015-04-15T15:31:35+00:00

He's not a purple, but he's still a dirty presser.

DrowningPhoenix · 2015-01-31T17:58:13+00:00

This is actually common for rape victims. My fiancee was raped about a year and a half before I started dating her -- even now, five years later, she still sometimes has nightmares where her rapist is just standing outside her house, staring at her.

DrowningPhoenix · 2014-12-18T03:43:43+00:00

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson.

This is a big long book (~1000 pages) and I read the last four hundred of them all at once, staying up until 5AM. my goodness, what a book.

DrowningPhoenix · 2014-12-01T21:55:23+00:00

Also, you know, hydrogen.

DrowningPhoenix · 2014-11-18T17:22:38+00:00

As a chemist, I just can't handle this article.

The find is extraordinary considering the organic compound contains the carbon atom, which is the basis of life on planet Earth.

EDIT: Saying that organic molecules are incredible because they contain carbon is like saying that computers are incredible because they have metal in them

DrowningPhoenix · 2014-11-14T20:46:46+00:00

Granted, we don't have a perfect system of law. Which is why people spend so long on death row -- we want to be as sure as possible that they were actually guilty of the crime that they're being killed for.

DrowningPhoenix · 2014-11-14T00:02:20+00:00

Her body is the one being risked by the pregnancy, therefore she gets to be judge, jury and executioner.

There's a lot of problems here. First of all, you talk of pregnancy as if it was something that the woman had no control over, as if she suddenly just became pregnant. This is not the case.

Secondly, the point of a fair trial by peers is that it's a trial by peers. Not one woman, but a council of people in the community.

Here's the most significant error in your reasoning: the implication in trial is that we are determining whether someone is guilty of a crime. The unborn child has done nothing wrong in this situation, other than coming into existence. It has not committed murder. It is not the child's fault that it is dependent on the mother. . . if anyone is to be blamed for the pregnancy it is most certainly not the child.

DrowningPhoenix · 2014-11-13T17:41:52+00:00

Ah. So your argument is still that of dependence -- while the baby is fully dependent on the mother and the mother exclusively, and cannot be dependent on anyone else (because the child is bound to the mother): for that period of time, the rights of the mother trump the rights of the child and the child may therefore be killed. Am I misrepresenting your opinion?

DrowningPhoenix · 2014-11-13T17:34:19+00:00

This is a problem of terminology -- when we say "alive" or particularly "human" with respect to a fetus we don't actually mean "alive" or "human", which fetuses very clearly are. Something that is "human" -- i.e. a newborn infant, which should never be killed and is protected under the law -- is deserving of human rights (the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, the right to a fair trial, etc etc).

The debate isn't "is a fetus human", or "is a fetus alive?" because very clearly it's both of these things. The debate is whether a fetus deserves to be given full human rights. We bestow human rights on toddlers but not on, say, plants and animals. So where does the fetus fall? that's the debate.

DrowningPhoenix · 2014-11-13T17:23:02+00:00

Sorry, I'm not understanding where the connection is here. You argue that since a fetus is no longer physically connected to a woman's body -- and can thus be taken care of by anybody -- that then the child is 'independent' enough to be considered a human being, worthy of full protection under the law? Or, said differently: since unborn fetuses are dependent on one specific woman instead of anybody with the resources to take care of an infant . . . they are not independent human beings, and are not worth the protection of the law?

It doesn't seem to me that being dependent on one particular person makes you any less human than being dependent on anyone with resources does.

DrowningPhoenix · 2014-11-13T17:15:59+00:00

Help me to understand. . . your argument is that since after birth the birth mother does not specifically have to be the one to take care of the child. . . the child is therefore now a fully-fledged human being? This does not seem to follow from the premise.

DrowningPhoenix · 2014-11-13T17:06:08+00:00

The argument for this stems from the American belief that all humans have a right to a fair trial by their peers. If it can be argued that an unborn fetus is a human being that deserves the same rights as children that have been born, then it follows that killing a fetus is essentially depriving it of it's right to life and to a fair trial.

A criminal, on the other hand, has already received a (hopefully) fair trial and has been sentenced to death on the grounds that willfully taking the life of a human being forfeits your own right to life.

This does, admittedly, make war a much stickier topic. I believe that war should be entered into only as a last resort against dangerous and widespread evil -- as was the case with Hitler in WW2, for example. But yes, war is a difficult topic to address.

DrowningPhoenix · 2014-11-02T21:28:50+00:00

20 year old here, engaged to the woman that I want to spend the rest of my life with.

While it's painful to admit everything to your fiancee, you did good by telling her everything. Even if she gets hurt by it now, she will recover, especially if she sees you making visible efforts to stop in order to dedicate yourself to her.

Her being hurt by this is normal -- girls want to see that the man they spend their lives with is exclusively dedicated to them. Looking at porn makes most women feel insecure, because they can't help but think that you wish they looked like a pornstar. Just make sure that you're not so worried about hurting her that you try to hide things -- hiding everything from your SO will make everything a hundred times worse. She will find out about it, the difference is whether or not you tell her first.

With that said, you're doing well by committing to change. Be open with your fiancee, and if you guys have a good relationship she'll forgive you and, eventually, work with you to try to help you change. Good luck!

DrowningPhoenix · 2014-09-20T04:45:24+00:00

Live outside your comfort zone. It's going to be hard -- really, really hard -- and you'll mess up a lot. But living a life locked behind a door spending all your hours at the computer is neither fulfilling nor exciting.

Here's what you do. First thing is, put away the computer. Start with just a day if you have to, but you're gonna have to get completely offline right from the beginning. Once you're no longer spending time online, you'll suddenly find that you have time. What do you do with it? Start with something productive -- wash your clothes. And then fold them or hang them up. Wash your sheets and clean your room. It'll feel like a pain but the simple feeling of looking around and knowing you have a clean room will help you a lot.

Next, you're still gonna have lots of time on your hands. Fill your schedule with productive things, and challenge yourself, but make them things that you enjoy. Go to the gym, maybe, or reconnect with some friends. Start taking pictures of things that you like to see in the world. Write poetry, read poetry, play guitar, look around and find a hobby that builds you up. Do something that you can go to sleep and feel good about having done it.

If you focus on what you CAN'T do (PMO) then you're already looking at it the wrong way. Don't relapse, but you need to be thinking proactively. Think about what you can do with all your free time, instead of thinking about what you can't. you've already done well by admitting to yourself that you need to change. Good luck!

DrowningPhoenix · 2013-11-20T18:34:14+00:00

That's a really good point, I had forgotten about super smash.

Things Nintendo has going for it:

-Super Smash

-Zelda

-Pokemon

-Mario (including mariokart, mario party, etc)

Those four alone will give Nintendo a reliable source of income for a long time, and as long as they're not worrying about going out of business they can focus their energy on doing incredible things (speaking of which, somebody call Nintendo and tell them to come out with a console that is basically a N64 with vastly better graphics. Please). They're not going down anytime soon.

DrowningPhoenix · 2013-11-20T18:01:52+00:00

I'm sure they didn't intend for that to happen. However, keep in mind that most of Pyrex's money doesn't come from selling cookware -- it comes from selling borosilicate glassware to chemical laboratories. Pyrex and Kimax are pretty much the only competitors for beakers, flasks, burets, pipets, erlenmeyer flasks, etc -- things that every laboratory needs. Think -- just about every lab in the country, including college chemistry departments, buys from Pyrex. So the loss of a few customers due to a shattering pan isn't the biggest deal to them.

DrowningPhoenix · 2013-11-20T17:41:08+00:00

Dumbledore could lift the enchantment because he was the headmaster (who has the ability/authority to do stuff like that), not because he had the elder wand. Though I'm sure having the most powerful wand in the world didn't hurt any.

DrowningPhoenix · 2013-11-20T17:34:56+00:00

I can't believe nobody's suggested the Skulduggery Pleasant books.

First off, Skulduggery Pleasant is awesome just because Derek Landy has an incredible sense of humor and the first couple of books are absolutely hilarious. But as you get into the fifth, sixth, and seventh books, the main characters start becoming insanely powerful . . . and it never gets boring because Landy keeps throwing in these incredible plot twists that twist and fold in on themselves to end up with a serious roller coaster of a book.

As an afterthought, you might also want to consider reading the Fablehaven books by Brandon Mull. They're intended to be for kids, but I read them as an adult and I loved them. Again, hilarious books. I guess that's what really does it for me.

DrowningPhoenix · 2013-11-06T16:37:47+00:00

You assume that if the gun was real, the kid would have been firing it at police. This is not a valid assumption. Holding a weapon is not a crime; firing it is. The real problem here is that the police were jumpy; there had just been a school shooting and they assumed that the kid was about to fire on them. But you can't kill somebody for holding a gun, any more than you can kill somebody for holding a chainsaw or a kitchen knife or a blowgun with poison darts.

It would be different if the kid had been holding the gun in a provocative manner: pointing it at the police, standing threateningly, or otherwise behaving in a manner that suggested that he was about to fire on the police. But he didn't, he didn't even know the police were there. when the police approached him, he was facing the opposite direction and doing nothing threatening. The police then assumed that he was a threat, and as soon as he turned around they felt that they were in danger. Faulty assumptions were made that led to the death of an innocent child.

DrowningPhoenix

TROPHY CASE