jojoinnit posted:

Sir, are you implying that unborn children could grow up to be criminals, evildoers and warlocks? Maybe this will change your mind: What if Jesus had been aborted?

Slaan posted:

No crusades.

crime fighting hog posted:

Or Christmas

crime fighting hog posted:

Or Christmas

Tigntink posted:

You joke but i've heard this in a serious manner. I then reminded them that Jesus was believed to be born in like... June but Constantine used the winter solstice to integrate Christianity into the empire. (what ever it was. I was alot more accurate with this poo poo 7 years ago when I read about it all the time)

They were just like "So?" and I :facepalm: and walked away.

BatteredFeltFedora posted:

"So?" is the correct answer. They're still celebrating the birth of Christ. Ever had a party on a Saturday because your birthday fell on Wednesday? Same thing.

BatteredFeltFedora posted:

"So?" is the correct answer. They're still celebrating the birth of Christ. Ever had a party on a Saturday because your birthday fell on Wednesday? Same thing.

jojoinnit posted:

What if Jesus had been aborted?

Mo_Steel posted:

Not a political email but I can see them coming very soon, can anyone help me out with this "Waterboarding led to finding and killing Osama Bin Laden" thing? I can't find anything on Snopes about it because their search engine is terrible, and I'm seeing conflicting information online. How did this get started and what's the reality?

Mo_Steel posted:

Not a political email but I can see them coming very soon, can anyone help me out with this "Waterboarding led to finding and killing Osama Bin Laden" thing? I can't find anything on Snopes about it because their search engine is terrible, and I'm seeing conflicting information online. How did this get started and what's the reality?

Mo_Steel posted:

Not a political email but I can see them coming very soon, can anyone help me out with this "Waterboarding led to finding and killing Osama Bin Laden" thing? I can't find anything on Snopes about it because their search engine is terrible, and I'm seeing conflicting information online. How did this get started and what's the reality?

quote:

It does make sense that the far right would like to think some Muslim terrist was waterboarded (justly, for being a terrist), until he goes "enough, enough, I'll tell you where he is!".

BatteredFeltFedora posted:

quote:

To the Editor:

I recently came across a draft of the school mission statement. It read like a United Nations charter for global childhood education. There were references to a global society, to a world community, to environmental initiatives, and to philanthropic activity. The students apparently will become stewards of the environment and will appreciate diversity and complexity.

Although training good global citizens is, of course, an admirable goal, I would be more impressed if there had been more emphasis on academics. Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe that a school’s primary function is the education of its students, not the development of global citizens.

I would suggest that students first learn to be good American citizens, and the first lesson should be why they are so blest to live in this country. In a world full of war, poverty, and starvation, only a relative handful of nations enjoy freedom and prosperity. The United States has enjoyed more freedom and prosperity than any other nation in the history of the world. Millions of people have come to our nation to live a better life, and no other nation has attracted anywhere near the immigrants that we have. Students should understand the reasons why.

Our success derives from our adherence to the Constitution and to capitalism. The prosperous nations around the world are those who have adopted capitalism. The Constitution is unique among world documents in that it guarantees our citizens individual freedoms and liberties. I know that this may not sit well with people more interested in developing global students, but students need to first be stewards of the Constitution and of capitalism. Only then will their special role in the world be clear: to continue to be a shining beacon of hope and encouragement for people living in less fortunate nations.

ALFRED F. CHASE JR.

Cwapface posted:

I have a totally unrelated question, but I figure here is as good a place on the forums as any to ask it.

Sometimes when people post pictures, like the one quoted, I see them with a thin red border, and they can't be clicked on for enlargement, even though it's obvious they're not at full size in the thread.

What's up with that, and how can I see the image at its proper size?

Cwapface posted:

I have a totally unrelated question, but I figure here is as good a place on the forums as any to ask it.

Sometimes when people post pictures, like the one quoted, I see them with a thin red border, and they can't be clicked on for enlargement, even though it's obvious they're not at full size in the thread.

What's up with that, and how can I see the image at its proper size?

Habibi posted:

Well, a miscarriage is often (when it occurs without external stimuli) an abortion that your body naturally undertakes because there's something wrong with the way the fetus is developing, so...are human bodies the world over committing Eugenics?

Or you could ask something like, "So if a 2-months-pregnant woman rear-ends another car and the trauma from the impact / airbag leads to a miscarriage - should she be arrested for vehicular manslaughter?"

Habibi posted:

Or you could ask something like, "So if a 2-months-pregnant woman rear-ends another car and the trauma from the impact / airbag leads to a miscarriage - should she be arrested for vehicular manslaughter?"

X-Ray Pecs posted:

I was told that if a pregnant woman is killed in a car crash, it can be considered a double homicide. Is there any truth to this? (The person who told me has some insane views, so I figured I may as well ask.)

X-Ray Pecs posted:

I was told that if a pregnant woman is killed in a car crash, it can be considered a double homicide. Is there any truth to this? (The person who told me has some insane views, so I figured I may as well ask.)

Hyosho posted:

you think you're being clever, but they're already pushing for this legislation

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110225/ts_yblog_thelookout/georgia-lawmaker-proposes-classifying-miscarriages-as-prenatal-murder

quote:

Bei Bei Shuai, 34, a restaurant owner who moved to the US from China 10 years ago, was pregnant and planning to marry her boyfriend until she learned late last year that he was already married and he would be abandoning her.

A few days later, on 23 December, she went to a hardware store, bought rat poison pellets, went back to her flat in Indianapolis and swallowed some. But she did not die immediately and was persuaded by friends to go to hospital.

She was given treatment to counteract the poison and gave birth on New Year's Eve, but her daughter, Angel, suffered seizures and died after four days.

Shuai then had a second breakdown and spent a month in a psychiatric ward, after which she left to stay with friends and began rebuilding her life.

But in March she was arrested and charged with murder and attempted foeticide. She now faces life imprisonment.

Dominion posted:

In reality, there is no possible way we will ever know whether the waterboarding was useful, or whether we would have caught him without it.


That's because this is a pretty common misconception about how torture works.

Petey posted:

This was a local newspaper op/ed, and a subtler version of crazy, but still:


the author is not only a noted hater of education but one of the parents behind a local book banning movement as well

Strawman posted:

Of course torture works, you can easily get people to confess to things they never even did.

Dameius posted:

If torture is good enough for Jack Bauer then torture is good enough for America.

Hyosho posted:

It's interesting to note how often torture completely fails in 24. The first guy Jack tortures dies of heart failure without giving up the information he needs, Jack and several other CTU agents resist torture quite effectively (Jack actually dies under torture), he tortures a little blond girl in series 2 and she gives him false information (he figures out she's lying, but not by torturing her).

Sometimes it works, as on Roger Stanton in series 2 (he gives up the information too late for it to be any use and in any case can't act on his confession because he's cut contact with his agents) or when Jack pretends to shoot the family of a terrorist (note here the threat of violence is more effective than violence itself).

The myth that 24 promotes torture is an interesting one, because the overwhelming impression both from watching the show and reading about it (check the first page of google results for "torture in 24" to see the overwhelming consensus) is that it does, and yet even a cursory analysis of the actual plot shows it doesn't.

ErIog posted:

Fourth, well our enemies in the past have at times done it to us so therefore it is appropriate for us to sink to their level by carrying out a behavior that the nazis were convicted for. Two wrongs obviously make a right, and they might torture us so we should proactively torture them just in case.

Hyosho posted:

It's interesting to note how often torture completely fails in 24. The first guy Jack tortures dies of heart failure without giving up the information he needs, Jack and several other CTU agents resist torture quite effectively (Jack actually dies under torture), he tortures a little blond girl in series 2 and she gives him false information (he figures out she's lying, but not by torturing her).

Sometimes it works, as on Roger Stanton in series 2 (he gives up the information too late for it to be any use and in any case can't act on his confession because he's cut contact with his agents) or when Jack pretends to shoot the family of a terrorist (note here the threat of violence is more effective than violence itself).

The myth that 24 promotes torture is an interesting one, because the overwhelming impression both from watching the show and reading about it (check the first page of google results for "torture in 24" to see the overwhelming consensus) is that it does, and yet even a cursory analysis of the actual plot shows it doesn't.

XyloJW posted:

This is a really interesting point. I only watched the first three seasons of 24 (I can only watch so much rape and torture before I get sick), but does poo poo get worse from there? All of the examples you give are from the first two seasons. I'm to understand the creator or producer for 24 regularly attends neocon meetings or whatever. With the right-ward push in America, I wonder if he dragged 24 even further to the right in subsequent seasons.

Hyosho posted:

Joel Surnow is a right wing poo poo, but he didn't have much to do with 24 past season 2 or 3. The problem with calling out 24 as a right wing fantasy is that it seems to have fully internalised the fundamental paradox at the heart of paranoid right-wing thought. On the one hand, you need an enemy that is terrifying and all-powerful and could destroy you utterly. On the other hand, you need to believe that you're invincible and competent enough to best any threat. This means the show's philosophy is schizophrenic at best.

The world of 24 is one in which government agencies are simultaneously superhumanly competent and at the same time riddled with corruption and treason, in which the president is sometimes a stalwart protector of the american people and sometimes literally working with terrorists to nuke the US (gaping plot holes opening up from season to season don't exactly help either). If it represents a mindset, it's a childish one that wants its worst fears realised and banished in the same 1 hour time slot.

This would all be harmless enough if people didn't take it so seriously. It's one thing to have lazy op-ed writers dashing off pieces about the glorification or normalisation of torture based on whatever happens to be on their Tivo that morning; it's quite another when a supreme court judge cites Jack Bauer as evidence for the need to exempt federal agents from criminal law.

Furikku posted:

And I realized in thinking about the "What if Jesus had been aborted?" question that that particular conception was probably the most pro-choice thing in history, since God explicitly had someone go up to Mary, explain what would happen, and then made sure she agreed with going through the whole thing. So the entire question is fallacious because it's not like Mary got accidentally knocked up or had no idea what she was getting into.

red19fire posted:

If the show was just following Jack around, with no visual proof given to the audience, the viewer would think he's a lunatic, torturing people for a bomb that might not exist.

Strawman posted:

Of course torture works, you can easily get people to confess to things they never even did.

red19fire posted:

Also, if you had a hardline jihadist in custody, and you knew there was a bomb somewhere in the city, that guy would clam the hell up. He would endure whatever torture you threw at him for 12, 24, 48 hours, whatever. Because he just has to wait for the bomb to go off, and whatever he knows about its location is useless. Physical torture tends to strengthen people's resolve.
effective.