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Official Election Final Round Voting in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #155
After long thought, and even looking into Desperance posts,
I vote for Stughalf,

although among the posts that I enjoy Thuryl's are clearly more frequent.
But this is for a moderator's joba and Thuryl, I would hate to see you holding back with your posts because you are a moderator.

[ Thursday, July 21, 2005 10:05: Message edited by: No 2 Methylphenidate ]
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
The arrow of time in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #76
quote:
The preponderance of probability against the 'unburning ash' states, in our observations, is far too overwhelming to write off our arrow of time as a fluctuation.
Preponderance where time goes forward.
Everything else is dubious extrapolation.

My question is - would we notice if we were at a place where the arrow of time were pointing the other way round?
Our sense of "forward" in time is the sense of the burning rather than unburning - fluctuation or not.

Time is something local as relativity theory has taught us. There is no universal clock.
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
Regrettable But in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #201
My dear Thuryl,
what do we huddled spiderweb-masses in the economy class have to expect from a desperate first class passenger who is going to moderate our forum?

A brilliant debater and knowledgeable contributor you are, imho, - but was I really going to vote for you as a moderator?
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
The arrow of time in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #73
The solution of the equation of motion is not determined without boundary conditions, so while the microscopic equations may be symmetric under time reversal, the solutions are not necessarily so unless the boundary conditions are.

So SoT's question seems to be:
Why are the boundary conditions not symmetric in time?
1. How do you know they are not?
Maybe they are but we just live in a period when what we perceive as the arrow of time has one direction.
2. What do you mean by "Why"?
Are you looking
a) for some more abstract or more general principle?
There may be several possible ones to invent if we are only sufficiently creative with sufficient time at our disposal.
b) for some possible "cause"?
In order to find that out, we would have to be able to imagine a world where this cause would not have happened - which we cannot because we just lack any experience without arrow of time. No hope. What you may want to imagine is some time "before" the big bang. Do you want to believe that the same equations of motions were applicable then? My point is that we do not know how far the reversability in time of our equations extends. At the big bang there may have been a lot more interactions than those we know today and whether time reversal symmetry was borken by any of them we just cannot know. Just take that and try to live on in this world if you can - as I wish.
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
Election Primary Results/Vote Reassignment in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #106
This name-calling exercise appears like a persiflage of some debate, I am sure, but where is the debate??

[ Wednesday, July 13, 2005 04:31: Message edited by: No 2 Methylphenidate ]
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
Election Primary Results/Vote Reassignment in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #104
The undead do not even decompose, I agree.
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
Election Primary Results/Vote Reassignment in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #101
What about a debate - not necessarily on TV but on a thread here?
The one who keeps his composure wins - well at least that is one of my personal criteria for a good moderator. Not the only one, of course because otherwise a dead body would be the ideal candidate. Aran, this is not a death threat, BTW.

[ Tuesday, July 12, 2005 23:29: Message edited by: No 2 Methylphenidate ]
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
If You Had A Billion Dollars... in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #4
No I would not use up the money by paying for my own Space Shuttle mission. I would invest in the development of a tuberculosis or a malaria drug, hoping to produce a blockbuster drug for the developing world. About the same price, BTW.

You need a goal in your live to feel anything like fruition. Not having to worry about making Wall Street happy by developping one more drug for the developed world would mean tremendius freedom to achieve some real relief in the world.
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
Election Primary Results/Vote Reassignment in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #97
Aran wrote:
quote:
don't you pesker me with it here
I am sorry, if I may have appeared to pesker anybody - honestly, I did not mean too.
I was just curious whether our three great candidates - the spiderweb community may be proud of all three, imho - perceive themselves as being as similar as I did - with differences being more of a technical nature.
I still consider to vote in the final round, BTW, if this is allowed for anybody who skipped the first because I did get a little wiser meanwhile.

[ Tuesday, July 12, 2005 12:11: Message edited by: No 2 Methylphenidate ]
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
Election Primary Results/Vote Reassignment in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #92
With the remaining 3 toprunners, the chief remaining concern is that the winner will have time to act in a timely manner for the forseeable future and will step back rather than cling to his task when he is under temporary overload.
Am i right, or can you, Aran, Stug, and Thuryl imagine a situation on the forum when you would not act in a similar way - except dependent on the time you have available in your personal schedule?
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
My girlfriend is dead... in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #27
ef wrote:
quote:
... So honouring and loving those qualities wherever you meet them is an ongoing, living memorial to her who made you aware, who showed them to you.
... she has made you aware of what it is you seek and love.
This girl has changed you, Eagle, I presume.
Perhaps you have found a new perspective on how to look at life and you are probably talking to her in your mind. Think about what you would have liked to show her and to explain to her - and you will find that you are "hosting her mind on your hardware" if I may say so.
The increased openness and awareness you draw from this will enrich your mind and honour her in that her encounter with you will have an effect beyond her lifespan. What else can you do?

BTW, it does not matter whether your internal image of her does match her reality. It was her image that changed you.

The fact that you posted her shows your courage to communicate your feelings and ask for support, imho. This is the best was to find out of your isolation. I wish you the strength to repeat this in real life fter this exercise here.
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
The Official Electioneering Topic in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #57
I have two questions for all candidates:

1. What are you going to do to crop this forum to a size that is tolerable for the sponsoring company?

2. How accountable for your actions,
how modest in your exercise of power and
how autocratic will you be as a moderator?
What verifiable limits to your powers are you going to accept?
There are insignia of power here that mainly serve to distinguish between the powers that be and mortals, like most prominently e.g. custom titles, and more harmless insignia of individuality and self-reflection like the privilege of ever changing signatures. Both we know. Question is
What sort of egomania can we expect from you?
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
Elections: The Registration Thread in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #76
Salmon Sushi wrote
quote:
...but it is far easier to tell people to complain to someone that won't see my message. If I had pointed at you, then you may have pointed right back and blamed me for a sudden increase in mail. I prefer to remain out of the direct line of fyre, as it were.
*this message trembles all on its own*
Will this vote be secret or open?
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
Elections: The Registration Thread in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #59
I want to "vote".

Have you ever thought what would be required to make this a relevant election rather than a karma update campaign?

The possibility to give some feedback on the present moderators, imho.

Any sort of program by one of the candidates would be even better - hey why not surpass real live here?
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
Two years to the day. in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #59
Just as a side remark, as I have been asked about it:
I am not "imho" and I would appreciate not to be mistaken for him.
In addition, I want to believe that our writing styles differ sufficiently so that we are not mistaken for each other.
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
Do you think there is a Hell? in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #92
ef wrote:
quote:
... I learned that Christ taught the way of the heart, and that the heart can be seen as a transformation center, a meeting point where the socalled 'higher' and 'lower' aspects of man, his spiritual and his human nature, come together. So that it is through our heart, through our feeling, that we connect to both spiritual and human realm, that the heart is the bridge between the two.
ef, I do not ask you to "prove" what you state but jst be honest and admit that I do not understand a word. Not only that I could not point to one sentence in the bible to explain what you write, but what you call "heart" is as much a mystery to me as what is "hell" or "heaven".

I believe that there is a treasure of experience with attitudes over the ages condensed in the various teachings but the language is alien to me.
And the idea that I profit from the crucifiction even without even understanding a word is just hot air to me.

I think and feel by communicating with other people - sometimes virtually withpeople I remember, but my whole identity, the person ME is my interface and it goes when I stop communicating.
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
Two years to the day. in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #52
Going back in time will not take us anywhere.
One may as well argue that Israel is a left-over of British colonial policy created in a conspiracy to get rid of Jews from the rest of the world.
It is a matter of perspective.

We will not get around the fact, however, that Israel is a product of WWII in particular of the Holocaust and not only British but global failure to provide local security.
Israel would not exist without a superior army financed largely by the US and not without own strategic interests.

Imho, with the decline of US military and economic manoeuvring space due to the bottomless cul-de-sac in Iraq in which the US army is trapped, other mechanisms of stability will take over from suicide bombings and Israeli bulldozers etc, in particular as the fall of Saddam Hussein seems to have cut ino the money supply for suicide bombers.
If only war expenses would figure somewhere at the top of the list of spending cuts...
Just think of it, what could have been accomplished in terms of Palestinean recompensation for land and water with all the money spent for the Israeli military...
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
Do you think there is a Hell? in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #83
We appear to agree about some common "intutive" morality and disagree to remarkable extremes about the origins.

Some pass off the origins as their very own decision but this is just a smokescreen they put up obscure some nonobliging liberty to adjust theirs morals posthoc, after they have caught themselves "sinning". It amounts to avoiding the issue and pampering their own moral genius egos, imho.

So where do our morals originate from, historically, logically, or spiritually?

Alorael is right in that that the ethical tradition is far more widespread than the Bible and includes it rather than is based upon it.
It appears to me however, that revolutionary movements that break with tradition like the French Revolution, IIIrd Reich in Germany, Mugabe in Zimbabwe start by appealing to that intuitive morality and then usurp it into some idiology to substitute a new emperor for the former king.

So morals carry immense political power.
Unless we face up to the origins of our morals, we remain unoriented objects of manipulation.
Take that you moral individualistic egomaiacs.
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
Do you think there is a Hell? in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #64
A very important date wrote:
quote:
Give me the ethics and I'll consider their value, but please don't force the mythology down my throat along with that. I know murder is bad without an old book telling me so.
Have you ever considered that you know by hearsay what was shaped by the book?

Murder is bad because you belong to a group that does not accept killing people - at least in this country at present. The book was instrumental in defining and shaping this group over more than 1000 years and you dream about knowing anything without that book - maybe you can avoid direct contact but the spirit of that book runs deeper in every one of your your thoughts than you can possibly know.

Just try to think yourself as NOT being a member of the ethical group - is there anything that would tell you what is right and wrong?
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
On The Possibility of Objective Morality in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #53
There is no objective moral system like there is no absolute language.
Moral values exist within a group and adherence to them is the price the individual pays for being accepted by the group.

Discussing moral values does make sense as part of the self-definition of a group- but otherwise it is of frustrating irrelevant abstractness.
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
Do you think there is a Hell? in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #14
I do believe some people go through hell on earth, e.g. when they see that they are alone, becoming weaker and weaker and see a lonely death coming.
people on death row come to mind and people who try to kill themselves and succeed only halfway.

Fortunately, we tend to be somewhat blind to the severity of our suffering while we suffer and we become aware of it only when we are getting better.
Hell is connected to death, because we face what our life could have been and our accumulated karma haunts us, unless we die a sudden unanticipated death but in any case it haunts our family and friends.

As we approach death, we may delegate all our tasks, our attitudes and feelings to the survivors and the extent to which this transfer succeeds determines our "afterlife", imho. So the afterlife I believe in is a collective one while hell is experienced individually.
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
New Abortion Laws in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #159
quote:
So, if a net increase in lives occurs, then do the social benefits outweigh the costs?
If this were the case, why not outlaw contraception or at least eliminate contraception information from sex-education?
Why restrict immigration at all?

In the IIIrd Reich, Germany had an organization Lebensborn that did work to reduce abortions and promote increase in "desirable" lives including the kidnapping of aryan looking kids in occupied countries secret adoptions etc.
Please look it up and tell us if you are serious.

Imho, what is desirable is not a numerical increase in numbers of lives but in kids growing up within some stable family structure to avoid youths careers like the one of Jeff Weise - who found no other spiritual home than at a Nazi website and ended his life in the recent school killing rampage.
I would agree with all effective measures to promote the respect for human life (all that I can think of at the moment), but an increase in numbers appears to me largely at odds with that.

This would include aggressive sex-education including contraception, condom vending machines in schools, access to next-day contraception, mandatory counselling for early abortions, heavy restrictions on late term abortions, aggressive promotion of adoption and a supportive policy for families.

[ Sunday, March 27, 2005 07:06: Message edited by: No 2 Methylphenidate ]
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
New Abortion Laws in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #157
Thuryl,
are you sure that this principalistic perspective is appropriate to the issue?
The uterus is not a property nor is it rentable space.
Kids depend on the society to grow up and the furure of a society depends on the kids. So it is natural that society is pushing for some say in pregnancies.

However, the costs of giving birth and raising kids is mostly paid for by the parents, and it is not taxable home entertainment but involves responsibility and commitment by the parents.
Now as the parents have de facto control, there is an obvious conflict of interests between the parents and the society about the control of pregnancies continuing until birth.

Passing and enforcing ant-abortion laws has turned out to be counterproductive and trying to REGULATE a woman to continue her pregnancy until birth is like carrying a hound when going hunting.
In addition, what is society going to do with the unwanted newborn?
If the government needs soldiers so they should allocate tax money to the rearing of the children including TLC - if they can. Otherwise they should keep their mouths shut.
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
New Abortion Laws in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #69
Thuryl wrote:
quote:
acting morally is about
what you, personally, can in fact do (including what you can in fact do to change the behaviour of others)
rather than about
what you want others to do.
And therefore, isn't it fair to say that you have to take responsibility for all the reasonably foreseeable consequences of your own actions, including those that resulted from the enactment of a law you supported? To put it briefly, it may not always be moral to attempt to force others to act morally.
Very precise analysis, imho.
I still feel we should try our best to avoid partial birth abortions even though I accept that a simplistic law is probably some unsuitable means.
I do not believe that the question of when human life begins can be decided in some unequivocal manner that does not involve some debatable definition. However we respect each other and ourselves according to how much respect we show for life and human life in particular - at least in Old Europe where we are still reeling from the holocaust impression - and I feel we should find ways to extend solidarity to pregnant women enabling them to end their pregancy early or give birth.
The error is the simplistic thinking that passing a law and possibly prosecuting women who abort would solve the problem. We need to take care of the whole complex of the unwanted pregnancy, i.e. provide day care, decent public education, etc.
I am sorry if that means to throw tax money at the problem, but talking about the morals of abortion without putting the money where one's mouth is is plain hypocrisy.

[ Friday, March 25, 2005 01:56: Message edited by: No 2 Methylphenidate ]
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00
Sexual Orientation in General
Shock Trooper
Member # 3980
Profile Homepage #44
Toasty Warm wrote:
quote:
Sheep gave us gonorrhea and syphilis
Do you have any source on this?
Posts: 311 | Registered: Friday, February 13 2004 08:00

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