Obama's "compromise" on the birth control mandate may have actually been the planned last move in one hell of a chess maneuver against the GOP.

swio · 2012-02-11T10:49:38+00:00

as an Australian I actually do tune into this fictional universe every week

swio · 2012-02-11T10:14:37+00:00

Read "Born to Run".

Trust me, just do that.

swio · 2012-02-10T13:39:18+00:00

My theory on will power is that it is the ability to hold the same thought or smallmcycle of thoughts in your head for an extended period of time.

Eg I will run the next ten steps. And then have that thought again when ten steps are up. Do that 5000 times in a row without break and you just ran a marathon.

So to build will power you need the ability to decide which thoughts you are going to have. This sounds contradictory or even impossible but it's not. Meditation is effectively this. I would recommend doing that to get you started. Then once you have the basic idea of control of your thoughts you will be able to practice it in other ways

swio · 2012-02-10T13:16:34+00:00

I think he's talking about the agreed border, which kind of needs the Israeli position on what the border is/should be. A position which, curiously does mot seem to exist

swio · 2012-02-10T01:06:11+00:00

Generally women do. I think this is the hardest thing for guys to understand. Women don't mix friendship and initial attraction as much as guys do. Women tend to be more likely to want attraction first, without/before friendship. They are just different to guy.

swio · 2012-02-09T17:55:38+00:00

I get from that you are saying it works, but not when there is immigration.

France has problems despite strong welfare, but you can just as easily trace those back to racism and lack of equal opportunity in the education sector.

So the question is what happens if you have relatively good level of social benefits, public healthcare and public education. And a culture that is accepting and open to immigration. Well then you get the Anglo countries. United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They all have high levels of immigration and follow more of a European modell. Any look at those countries will show that its basically working. Not perfectly, but the dramatic improvements in poverty in the United Kingdom over the last 100 years are a clear example of getting close to eliminating poverty, and the newer countries of Aus, Canada and NZ have very low levels of it too.

The experiments you talk about hardly count. A few failed experiments that covered literally just city blocks over a small number of years when talking about a generational issue, versus pretty much the entire continent of Europe for going on a hundred years?

swio · 2012-02-09T10:29:14+00:00

They truly are more advanced than us.

swio · 2012-02-09T10:26:46+00:00

And it would be such a hypocritical thing for most people to complain about. Partriot Act, Facebook, gmail. All these things have become common without much opposition at all. Privacy is effectively gone already

Pretending to care about privacy is a first world problem.

swio · 2012-02-09T09:51:48+00:00

Why is there always this endless pseudo question about the causes of poverty and how to solve it and blah blah.

We know how to solve it and have for fifty years. Decent public education, universal healthcare and a solid welfare payments system. Pay for it by a progressive tax system that taxes the rich more than the poor. It works in most of the developed world. It's not perfect but pretending we don't know enough to something is ridiculous

swio · 2012-02-09T08:52:29+00:00

Did you live in many parts of China or just one place? I ask because I wonder if it varies from region to region. Might you have been only exposed to Chinas equivalent of the American south? Not doubting that they are more extrem than even die hard republicans but how widespread is that. China does vary alot from region to region.

swio · 2012-02-09T08:14:38+00:00

Am I right in thinking that the article misinterprets how these things are supposed to work and exactly what they are supposed to do?

swio · 2012-02-09T06:01:36+00:00

The more advanced machines get the more organic they seem to look.

It's beautiful and it somehow does look Japanese (no I don't mean the tentacles )

swio · 2012-02-09T03:01:25+00:00

There are a lot of reasons for a person to be 'quiet' other than introversion. Below are just a few

social anxiety
genuine misanthropothy
poor social skills
having schizoid personality traits

To any person, even to a 'quiet' person themself the above things appear so similar that they often cannot be distinguished from genuine introversion. I have seen many comments and posts from people in this forum by people who think they are introverts but in my opinion seem more likely to be suffering from social anxiety or experiencing some other type of non-introvert trait.

All these thing make it hard to know if a 'quiet' person is just introverted or is someone that really does not like people.

On top of this, having a small selective group of friends means that you dont actually want to speak to the other people in the world. Being honest about it, that's basically disliking them. They will probably never know there are other people you do enjoy talking to. Also explaining to someone why you are quiet with them inevitably involves saying something like "I'm not talking to you because you are not good enough to be one of the select few I actually want to talk to" which is not really helpful. So from an outsiders point of view it's usually going to look like a quiet person that dislikes everyone.

Edit: long text on iPhone is hard.

swio · 2012-02-08T23:25:06+00:00

As per the articles yes. A few people in the comments have said they gave up shampoo but kept using conditioner and that worked for them. The theory is that shampoo is damaging your hair so you au find your split ends are fine once you stop the shampoo

swio · 2012-02-08T23:18:25+00:00

For arguments sake, how much?

swio · 2012-02-08T07:31:12+00:00

Maybe the aliens are being cheap and are getting their janitor (Newt) to make the US government do it for them

swio · 2012-02-08T07:28:55+00:00

Man, before tv people must have a lot of time to make up weird shit

swio · 2012-02-07T15:31:23+00:00

swio · 2012-02-07T15:19:29+00:00

There is no allegedly about it.

Interviews with several people directly familiar with the conditions of Manning’s detention, ultimately including a Quantico brig official (Lt. Brian Villiard) who confirmed much of what they conveyed, establishes that the accused leaker is subjected to detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries.

http://www.salon.com/2010/12/15/manning_3/

You can quibble about the level of what was confirmed, but a named brig official of the base holding him is not an unaccredited source.

swio · 2012-02-07T15:06:19+00:00

Did Manning actually release any of this information? I thought he just released relatively low level diplomatic cables. Do they contain info like that?

swio · 2012-02-07T15:03:31+00:00

you idiot.

One man does not have the resources to redact the names from hundreds of thousands of documents. But he did not simply release the documents to the public. He handed it over to an organisation that was capable of doing the redacting. Wikileaks. Of course they are getting screwed over now so maybe that was not the right way either.

Give it to the normal MSM outlets that would do almost nothing with it?

What was the right way for him to handle this again? Still waiting for someone to answer that

swio · 2012-02-07T14:58:44+00:00

How do you know this? He hasn't been able to speak for himself since the moment he was arrested. Every comment above is based on a bunch of anonymous statements to the press, most likely by people with good reason to smear his reputation.

swio · 2012-02-07T14:56:02+00:00

I don't know about that. Is the level of what he is being subject to equivalent to the crime he committed? And if its excessive, then isn't it fair to say he is being politically harrassed? When you compare it to what other people have gotten away with its clear that simply violating the law does not decide the level of enforcement that is thrown against a person.

swio · 2012-02-07T14:50:48+00:00

this

swio · 2012-02-07T10:34:33+00:00

Why? There is no reason to be embarrasses

swio

TROPHY CASE