And here I was getting ready to write something along the lines of "Oh good, we wouldn't want a president that doesn't look attractive". But apparently your selling point is just more bashing.

On a slightly more serious side, the democratic nominations are looking interesting (last I checked anyway). Who do you think will win?

For today Wisconsin has caught the attention of the nation as our primary is today (I just came back from the ballot box)--it is said that what happens here could be an indicator of what will happen in the key Iowa and Texas primaries and could spell the nominee.  Can't say much for the general feeling--I'm in the demographic generally favoring Obama and thus so is just about everyone I know.  I don't see any numbers rolling in yet.

As an Obama supporter my hopes were rather low going into the primary but things are starting to look up and I'm starting to get optimistic.  I was anticipating Obama having a slight lead in popular support but that Hillary would have a lock on superdelegates.  Apparently the latter isn't the case anymore.  If Obama maintains the momentum through the next few states I think he'll very likely get the nod.

Hey TimeWarp guys. How did you keep your ships balanced with so many facing angles? I'd imagine Druuge murders everything.

The additional rotations definitely alter the balance, and while it'd been pointed out it was never really addressed.  I don't know about 'murders everything' but ships like the Druuge and Melnorme clearly benefited and should have had a point boost to reflect it.

I'd say it was more this sort of internal strife that sank your project Baltar, even before the big crash and new board.

And I agree 100%.

Yeah, TW is dead, based on the brief conversations I've had with ex-contributors.  I think TfB's announcement did much to kill the drive towards creating a fan-made SC2 successor.  Of course, you posting a crappy plot doc that not many people were willing to say out loud was utterly infantile probably didn't help either.

Honestly I'm an American and I don't get it either.  I think the portrayal of Hillary as such a 'divisive' figure is an indicator of how much control conservatives seem to have over the dialog in this country.  Hillary, by our standards, is clearly centrist in her positions, right wing by the standards of the rest of the developed world, yet gets decried as a 'socialist' by the right wing here.  I think this has something to do with the wounded pride of conservatives that Bill Clinton was such a successful politician.  He too was decried as being wildly left wing when his presidency was extremely centrist and frankly lacking in significant positive action.  I think it all boils down to Republican scare tactics, and they are effective enough that even democrats are weighing their political options and wondering if we need someone else just because the GOP has such a well oiled propaganda machine specifically for dealing with her.

I think an Obama vs McCain race would be really interesting because its basically giving the American public an up or down vote on the occupation of Iraq.  If it came down to Hillary vs McCain I'd be enormously disappointed, because it would follow that the American public had no choice in the matter...

Strictly speaking isn't melee already on a 'spherical' surface since it wraps around?

This reminds me of a game I played several years ago called 'Planetarion'.  It had the exact same vulnerability--power aggregated and then spiraled out of control.  Pretty kick ass for the few on the top but absolute shaite for the other 10,000 players.

That I mentioned you or called them 'friends' is merely incidental.  I was just pointing out the creationist museum to change topic, albeit slightly.

It is certainly interesting that you can casually dismiss the religious underpinnings of the creationist movement while vilifying evolutionary biology as some sort of atheist conspiracy.

Hey!  Look at the great stuff RTyp06's friends are up to!

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/ars-takes-a-field-trip-the-creation-museum.ars

God Bless America!

Meep, just so that everyone knows....have you removed the ability for members to delete threads they started?

I will be the first to admit that my posts prior to the deletion were *not* my finest hour (well ok, second to admit).  I think RType has been quite undignified for some time now, and I was not impressed with some of the accusations he leveled at me, hence the outburst.  Not that it makes my harsh language ok.  My apologies to anyone offended.

Let's just say that I....

You focused on the metaphoric words used in the article and provided zero substance, then simply dismissed it as shit. It's an opinion piece.Who gives a fuck who it is? Who are you? Who am I? What is wrong with opinion?

Well I'll give you that.  I didn't attack it directly.  Let me state things more clearly.  It just repeats your same fucking mantra of your conspiratorial shit.

you have this recurring theme that if somthing isn't peer reviewed it is of no value whatsoever. Well what happens when the dogmatic establishment won't ALLOW you to publish? WTF  are these "outside of the box" thinkers supposed to do? Yes, you go public.

There you go again.  Short circuit the scientific method just because you think you are on to something that EVERY MAJOR ESTABLISHMENT OF SCIENCE IN THE WORLD is against.

Of course not, just asking if you saw any truth at all in them. It's ok, I already knew your hateful position.

The hateful position of not typifying the entire scientific establishment as being a cabal of evil atheists?

Who are the uneducated creationists?

You know, the mindless fuckwits talking about the perfect 'design' of the banana for the human hand?  The jar of peanut butter that 'depends' on evolution not being real?  Those guys whose statements you casually dismissed while you paraded around maliciously edited videos of Dawkins?

They were speaking specificly about Darwin Day and it's rise in recent years. The point wasn't to "advance his case" but to point out obvious double standards.

Wouldn't the double standards then be his case?  Point is those videos were just a build up of irrelevant shit that was intended to leave the viewer connecting the dots that there was some horrible conspiracy of atheists, oh, and moreover common culture is somehow dominated by them.  Also some utterly irrelevant bullshit about how some science disciplines predated darwin!  Apparently since there were discoveries before 1800 everything since must be a lie!!!

The upshot is that you keep bringing up all this stuff trying to intimate some grand conspiracy of atheists to run our schools, culture, and science.  I question your authenticity because you claim to be agnostic yet that is so monstrously insensitive to both the atheist and agnostic communities.  You are talking about a very small percentage of the population.  I'm pretty sure atheists aren't taking over anything.  In fact, according to recent polls they are even less trusted in the US than gays.

I went to different schools than you and saw pretty much the opposite.  I was taught that human embryo's had gill slits.

Ok.  Fuck you.  Maybe a teacher just doesn't know what they are doing or are just teaching ancient material.  I'm not going to defend that.  That doesn't mean trump the scientific method and cram a bunch of deceitful shit into the curriculum.

They are doing the same thing, the exact same thing in fact. Many Creationists are shoe-horning the data to fit their religious texts. Talk origins is shoe- horning the data into their evolution philosophy. Those sites cherry pick data so badly you'd think it was harvest time at the orchard. you cannot seriously be this blind. Intellectual honesty? They virtually never admit weaknesses to thier claims. They are incapable of scientific honesty when they are drumming up support for an unfalsifiable paradigm. Want honesty? How about this: We don't know yet.  Wow, is that so hard?

Look at talk orgin's downplay of the genetic code as an example.. it's not really a code, or language but a cypher instead.. Notice they don't mention the cypher problem of only coding for 20 amino acids? once again, how about "We don't currently know." Or how about their explanation of the evolution of sex organs from asexual species? At least wikipedia got it right and said it is a mystery, but not our honest friends over at talk origins..

Talk origins is a propoganda tool, so please don't insult my intelligence by suggesting any sort of honesty.

These people have a theistic viewpoint to uphold, naturalistic darwinism. There is no other valid reasoning behind it.

Well I have insulted your intelligence before and I will likely continue to do so in the future.  If you want to compare the guys advancing your pet 'theory' and writing your bullshit textbooks to a freaking usenet group then by all means please do.

I thought you were making a fairly general point about responses to creationist claims.  All I'm saying is that claims should get responded to in some context.

Where? How have they short circuited scientifc discussion? By single cases in Kansas?

So SOME short circuiting of the scientific method is ok then??

Have they ever advocated carrying a bible to school?

They aren't advocating anything overtly religious, but this whole movement is *clearly* designed to get a wedge in the door.  Whether the idea is to later manifest this with more direct influence I don't know, but at the very least they are clouding the general public's understanding of science in the hopes of attracting people to 'the flock'.  That much is obvious.

The ID founders want to teach evolution and teach MORE about it. Teach that it IS a theory and that it DOES have some legitimate scientific problems. Not teach it dogmatically straight towards a naturalistic theology as it is being taught now.

Ouch!  Two doozies here:

1) There you go reciting the mantra of 'evolution is just a theory'.  That relies on some bullshit colloquial definition of a theory that makes it sound iffy.  That way fundy pinheads can casually discard it.  It is actually very well established with a mountain of evidence from multiple disciplines.

2) Teaching it dogmatically?  Give me a break.  You are making this grand, sweeping statement already shot to shit by my own personal experience.  You are sounding a bit over dramatic with all this 'dogmatic' nonsense.  Look, it is like this: The whole point of a public education is to give a student a very broad understanding of the world.  In a science class they need to have a basic understanding of what is going on in the world of science.  Right now evolution is science.  Creationism is not.  I'm all for teaching criticism if it is the same level of criticism you would be directing at any other theories in any other lesson.  Given that at a public school level that would only be at a very general level (we aren't training kids to be molecular biologists when they earn their high school diploma after all).  I'm not ok with singling out evolution for additional criticism that wouldn't be afforded to other concepts; that would just be an indirect method of sabotaging science education.

It is man. That's exactly what it is.

No.  It isn't.  It is the scientific method versus a medieval mindfuck.  You are basically saying that the entire scientific establishment is a cabal of atheists trying to proselytize the general public in the ways of their theistic non-belief.

What makes this even more absolutely fucking insane in my mind is the fact that you, as an agnostic, are siding with a bunch of fundamentalists who *are* trying to proselytize the general public.  Moreover you've blatantly stereotyped your own ideological cousins earlier in this thread, and really do so again now with all these bullshit claims of an atheist conspiracy to 'raise Darwin to sainthood'.  What is so damned insane about this is that the people you side with will ultimately reduce you to second class citizenship if they get their way.  It is enough for me to question your authenticity when you claim to be an agnostic.  I realize you are just looking for the truth or whatnot but really, and at some level I can respect that, but this conspiracy shit needs to fucking go.

Origin
In 1983, two friends involved in the southern California atheist and freethought movements, Al Seckel and John Edwards, co-created the Darwin fish design, which was first used on a freethought leaflet for Atheists United in 1984. It was then sold by Atheists United and other freethought groups, which got free permission from Seckel and Edwards throughout the 80s, to be used on bumper stickers and t-shirts.[1] Chris Gilman, a Hollywood prop maker, manufactured the first plastic car ornaments in 1990[

OH GOOD LAWD!!!!1  NEXT THEY WILL BE BUILDING A PLACE OF UNWORSHIP!!!!!111   SWEET WEEBUS SAVE US!!!!11

it is indeed a parody but atheisim IS a theistic viewpoint. Atheism has been around far longer than Darwin's time. Atheisim itself  is not founded on science but popularizes anything that supports it's theistic view. Also Google any athiest website and you'll find them selling the Darwin Fish there. It is being popularized as the icon for atheism.

FFS it doesn't *mean* the same thing to atheists (or agnostics, for that matter, since they can use them as well....pretty fucking weird for you to typify the symbol in this way).  Still don't see anything about deifying Darwin or some shit like that.  Last I checked people don't wear crosses on their neck as a joke (hey!  There's an idea!) so the point is different symbols *mean* different things--one is mockery and one is revery--two completely different sets of emotions.  I've yet to see anyone deify the troops with a yellow ribbon.

Of course not, I'm pointing out that I have good scientifc reason to doubt the theory. Your reason for advocating it seems to be based on nothing but hate.

Mwahahahahhaa.  Which one here was stereotyping a whole group of people as being untrustworthy and has been railing on and on about how they are under attack by the dogmatic followers of Darwin?