Charlie Sheen is another 9-11 conspiracy nut, just like you. Like you, he thinks he magically “knows” what happened, and that nearly every physicist and engineer (including the American Society of Civil Engineers) is wrong, and that he knows better. Just like you! Tell us again how NASA faked the moon landings, you…

Nobody is going to believe a 9-11 conspiracy theorist who claims he can magically determine the chemical composition of materials by looking at a blurry video from 800 feet away. Or who claims that small pools of molten steel can stay molten for *weeks* on the ground. I see your rantings have as much credibility…

You should read Greg Egan's "Quarantine", in which someone (I don't want to give hints, in case you read it) seems to have that ability....

Actually, you're making the point about the *actual* shuttle - but blackraen's comment, and my reply, were specifically about "... a vehicle the size and weight of the shuttle", as I noted in my comment (where I quoted blackraen). Again - we don't lack the technical expertise to send a vehicle the size and weight of…

Minor quibble - you wrote that "With our current engineering and available technological understanding of chemical rockets... we simply cannot get a vehicle the size and weight of the shuttle to.. the Moon and back." Technically, this isn't totally true - the dry weight of a shuttle orbiter is 68,585 kg (or 68.6…

Excellent article, and as some other people mentioned, the bit about how white gun-owners can walk around with assault rifles, and Fox News paints them as some sort of patriots, while young black men are continually portrayed as threats (and the police who shoot them portrayed as victims by the same news people) is…

You seem to be arguing against some "points" that I never raised. I wasn't debating the Fermi paradox itself, but raised the issue that, if FTL is technically feasible, than it makes the Fermi paradox that much harder to explain away. Sure, there are plenty of reasons aside from "no aliens out there" for us not to…

Not just WWII planes - there are some privately-owned F-4 Phantoms out there as well.

Ooops, nevermind - I just saw the date of your comment. And this stupid "new Kinja" won't let me edit my comment in FireFox.

Um, yes it is. I just watched it last weekend. The new one ("Catching Fire") isn't on Netflix, but the first one ("The Hunger Games") definitely is.

No, they are not meaningless - the tangibility of the item, whether it's a belief in a god or a coin, is irrelevant. Belief and lack of belief are NOT the same thing, in that it's only possible to believe in something that you've at least heard of or conceived of. It's not only possible, but inevitable that you will…

If disbelief is a form of belief, then not collecting stamps is a form of collecting stamps. Which is absurd. Not collecting stamps is NOT a "form of collecting stamps", and atheism (not having belief in a god) is NOT a "form of belief". It's a lack of belief.

You keep harping on this point that "most atheists" that you meet more "fervently" say that "there IS no god", or hold that position. That is irrelevant. The word "atheist" means "person without belief in god/gods". If someone lacks belief in a god or gods, they're going to say, "that god/gods/goddess doesn't…

EDIT: Nevermind, I guess it's the combination of the two scores that you're referring to. So, ignore this comment ;-)

Oh man, I needed that laugh (it's 5 pm on a Friday, not like I'm getting a ton of work done in the next 10 minutes). But really - the news lady reading those names didn't IMMEDIATELY see that's it a joke? Is she Ron Burgundy's sister or something? I mean - "Sum Ting Wong" and "Wi Tu Lo", you can't get to that second…

You might want to update that chart for the model year coming out now (2014): the Jeep Liberty is gone, replaced by the new Jeep Cherokee (which is what the Liberty was known as in Europe all this time anyway). Although, to be honest, if somebody misses the old 80s Cherokee, they're probably not going to like the…

I don't think we are necessarily talking about "unwanted children in either case". An infant is a child - a 16-celled blastocyst is not. Many abortions are early in a pregnancy, when there is no child yet - unwanted or otherwise. Your argument that the two are nearly the same more closely approaches the truth the…

The definitions of abortion and infanticide don't depend on intent, in fact, any more than "sex" and "pregnant" do. You might have sex with the intent to get pregnant (or get someone else pregnant), but that doesn't mean a pregnancy happens. And vice-versa - you may have sex without the intent to get pregnant, and…

Whether or not an act is infanticide does not, in fact, depend on the intentions of the mother or anyone else. As someone else pointed out (by pasting in the definitions), infanticide means killing an infant, and an infant is (by definition) not still in the womb. Inside a womb, prior to childbirth, there is a fetus…

Do you actually believe that the bible - a collection of stories, myths, outright stolen ideas (from Egyptian religion, from Buddhism, etc) and some history, mixed together, is actually "truth"?!? LAUGH. The bible isn't even internally consistent - it contradicts itself in many places (go look at the lineages given…