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Their mental health care may be as crappy as ours. See for example https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/13/mental-health-services-crisis-britain-revealed-leaked-report And "In spite of record spending, countries now face escalating levels of child abuse, suicide, drug abuse, violence and crime—very real problems for which the psychiatric industry can identify neither causes nor solutions." from http://www.cchr.org/cchr-reports/the-real-crisis/introduction.html

>Obama said nothing about supporting SOPA. In fact, given his history on net neutrality support, I would be incredibly surprised if he didn't veto any bill that infringed on an open web.

Obama Nominates RIAA Lawyer for Solicitor General www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/riaa-lawyer-solicitor-general/ 24 Jan 2011

Obama Taps 5th RIAA Lawyer to Justice Dept. www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/obama-taps-fift/ 13 Apr 2009

Feds, RIAA Ask $22500 in Damages Per Song www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/04/tenenbaum-appeal/ 5 Apr 2011

Obama Sides with RIAA, MPAA; Backs ACTA http://www.osnews.com/story/23002/Obama_Sides_with_RIAA_MPAA_Backs_ACTA 12 Mar 2010

>Everyone on reddit is pulling shit out of their asses

Why don't you wipe it out of your eyes, dig it out of your ears?

Religions are by nature exclusionary (with few exceptions) - if Religion X is true, then Religion Y is false, and vice versa. In addition, most religions show favoritism to their adherents and shun adherents of other religions.

All that is part of our national culture, but a capitol building isn't a museum; it's a place that makes law that applies to all people, and thus should take precautions not to show favoritism. A religious display in the capitol is a display of culture by some of the voters for which the building is erected, but what about the others? Throughout history, religious symbols have been used to mark territory as favored toward (or biased against) one religion or another. How can you claim that the display of religious symbols in the capitol is supposed to be anything but? What possible purpose does it serve other than to reinforce the dominant religion(s)?

This is cool. I have a related story from my family. My grandfather (mother's dad) was a minister for his entire life career. But as I got to know my mom more as I aged I could tell she wasn't all up on Jesus being God. As time passed and I developed my agnosticism, I found she sided with me. I wondered how many preachers' kids are atheist/agnostic.

More about my grandfather. He was also a liberal, sharing a lot of ethics with your dad. After he stopped being a minister in his old age, he attended a church where the preacher herself was a lesbian, and he was good friends with her and her significant other! Carrying on, after he died, we sorted out a lot of his old things, including his book collection. To my surprise, he had a number of books on world religions and Buddhism, seven or eight of them actually, including one called "Man's Search for Meaning," which is essentially a book about agnosticism being the only true way to honest and true happiness. Also in this book was a discussion about the effects of pressure from one's parents (especially ministers) expecting them to carry on their religion, quite ironic.

Finally, of the last books we found that were tucked away in a box, were a copy of the Koran, and one of Hinduism scriptures! He had always thought that all of the religions could live in peace together through the shared morals and trust in God. (I think this was a hopeless cause, and that religions must be outgrown by the followers if people are to live in harmony together.) He was a great man in his virtue and helped countless hundreds in his career. I can't say to this day if he was certain that Jesus was the one true God or not.

(edit: grammar)

You've pointed out a huge hole in my understanding, growing up as a Roman Catholic in Canada I have no idea how most other religious institutions do their clergy wages. Here is an wiki.answers.com post about Roman Catholic wages, which aren't wages as much as expense accounts to an organization pool. They aren't employed then in my understanding as a wage earner as the example in the article.

Relevant TED talk

Another relevant TED talk

I just did such a search. I don't really see anything in the results that would indicate that people from the left are heavily involved in the movement - the results tend to be about Ron Paul fundraising, and he's never been anything but an unabashed libertarian.

The first result does go back to my initial observation that Tea Partiers are terrible at web design, though.

I wish this were true, I really do, but there are so many forces working against a rational response to religious influence in society. Too many people in positions of power use/rely on religion as a source of power and control people. As long as this dynamic exists, it's difficult to imagine it being recognized for what it is... Control.

Mindfulness meditation is easy to learn. I would recommend the book The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh to learn more about it...it's a book written for those who have no knowledge of meditation.

I was shocked the first time I heard the word association sketch on SNL from their first season in 1975. We've become much too sensitive and the establishment is much more oppressive.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/1477/saturday-night-live-word-association

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/214912/

> literally nothing, and a quantum quirk

Have a look at A Universe from Nothing, by Lawrence Krauss. One thing that is not obvious to those who don't study this stuff is that there is never "literally nothing," how the discoveries relating to so-called "dark energy" pretty much toss out the whole idea of an empty, quiet, ground-state start of the Universe.

Even google translate have a safety mechanism built in here:

If the Nunstück git and Slotermeyer?

Yes! Or the Beiherhund the Flipperwaldt gersput

Link

I have a co-worker from Kentucky!

She seemed stressed so I shared a quote from this book I'm reading about meditation (Mindfulness in Plain English, it's great and mostly woo-free)

She asked to make sure I'm not a "universalist."

Because universalism is heresy.

Being arrogant enough to think everyone else is wrong? Apparently not heresy. (even though some of the world's smartest people disagree about faith)

I went to a Catholic university, and a lot of the profs were neo-Platonists. I became very familiar with Platonic forms, and his idea of meaning. I read the Republic, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Metaphysics, and various other Platonic dialogues. I also read a buttload of Aquinas, that douche.

I guess I'll start with #2, then. Thanks for the tips!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhBo2O1oZnJQdC0wMFRPY2pKOERYOUw2cEFGTktPN3c&hl=en_US#gid=8

Specifically, I point you to the "ballots for winning candidate per ballot" axis, with an extreme low of 32.5% of the vote in Hull-Aylmer. I'm guessing you're down in the USA where Duverger's law has taken full effect and two parties control the entire political process (note further that Duverger's law doesn't apply to non-FPTP systems).

Source (in Russian): https://meduza.io/news/2021/07/31/deputat-gosdumy-na-vstreche-s-izbiratelyami-potreboval-ot-nih-podpisat-obyazatelstvo-zhit-do-80-let-posle-otkaza-on-nazval-hram-kotoryy-oni-stroyat-saraem

> Meaning "particular system of faith" is recorded from c.1300. Modern sense of "recognition of, obedience to, and worship of a higher, unseen power" is from 1530s.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=religion

>Americans see themselves as temporarily inconvenienced millionaires.

This is a very common phrase that originates from a fake Steinbeck quote.

Unfortunately, most people even use this fake quote out of context. The original quote actually points out how most "socialists" / "communists" are privileged upper middle class:

>"Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.

>"I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves."

Ever since the Frankfurt school, most socialists realized that you could never bring socialism through revolution, because most people in America were just too wealthy and comfortable already.

AiG doesn't have scientists, I don't care what degrees they hold. AiG's employees are required to sign a statement of faith that says that there can be no valid evidence that contradicts scripture ( the last point here ).

They aren't allowed to follow the scientific method, they aren't allowed to practice science, they are not scientists.

The Roger Penrose paper shown in the vid (00:54): BEFORE THE BIG BANG: AN OUTRAGEOUS NEW PERSPECTIVE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR PARTICLE PHYSICS

The book is available here: Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe, 2010, by Roger Penrose

Edit: So much math. As a lay person with some math background it is difficult to assess the claims made.

I play podcasts daily and I listen to so many that I have to play is at 2x speed. I use "podcaster" for ios but you can also use vlc and change the playback speed, I set mines to 1.7x since it's more optimal for me and understandable.

screenshot

This is why Reddit users are less valuable. Pointing people at effective adblockers.

Also, uMatrix will let you chose which things a site can load from which domains. It does break a bunch of sites by default though, it's not just "one click install for better internet" like uBlock Origin. I don't install uMatrix for other people.

Seriously, though - Clue sells your private data and keeps asking for money for "newsletters". It's a bad app, even if it is feature-rich. If you need a period tracker, try something that keeps your data on your phone and allows you to export it to your personal cloud and does not intrude on your privacy.

Drip is good. It's open-source and you can see every bit of the platform. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.drip&hl=en\_US&gl=US