Radix Malorum Est Cupiditas

Well that doesn't sound like fun. Does it pay well at least? Given the results from yesterday, (not that anyone's surprised,) I predict a third election in a few months. Will we get a hat trick of tied elections where nobody can form a coalition? Only time will tell! I'm going with yes.

Just voted today. I feel like I have deja vu, we just did this. Enjoy your free day next month Dinti. And to all the Americans, well you have a while to go. Vote in the primaries or something, I guess.

Bah! Humbug! What if I like collecting unsellable trowels?

So it's similar in that way to The Chronicles of Amber or Ender's Game. Good to know, thanks. Big test? I'm pretty sure you're older than me. Are you working on a post doc? Thesis defense?

I remember reading So You Want to Be a Wizard ages ago, I didn't know it was a series. I barely recall anything about the book, do you recommend it? I've finally got round to reading through the Witcher series. One chapter left to the end of Lady of the Lake. I'm kinda sad that I've only one more book to go. It's a great read and a fun ride.

Hmm. Just as anarchist, but quite a shift left from the last time we did this. But still far further right than the rest of you socialists. I find it ironic that just yesterday I was called alt-right by someone online, but as far as I can tell I'm further left than any of the candidates in the US democratic primary aside from Bernie.

I agree up to a point. if you're looking for a technical definition (eg, a piece of academic or scientific jargon), then dictionaries, preferably of the field in question, are the perfect place to look for a definition. The provided definitions do tend to be unhelpful at best and clear as mud, but really, what else would you expect in such a case?

I'm actually concerned with the supposed arguments against designer babies; the strike me as consisting mostly of an arbitrary line being drawn in the sand stopping the slippery-slope extension of the "prevention of genetic diseases" argument, which, in my experience, most would tend to agree with. If we agree that genetic modification of germ cells in order to prevent such diseases as Tay sachs or Huntingtons or whatever else in willing, consenting adults is acceptable (and, indeed, better than the alternative) and that the benefits outweigh the risks in the mind of the people involved, then we can make the same case about diseases that have some genetic component but are not themselves direct results of genetic mutations, ie have some genetic causal link, - or even diseases which have a genetic correlation, that is, one is statistically more likely to get some disease than others given some specific genetic makeup. Once this is granted, who's to say what benefits and what risks are taken into account? One can always draw a line, but I think it's important to stress that that line will always be arbitrary (pursuant to other beliefs and standards held by the person drawing the line, not inherent in the argument being made).

So the recent elections where I live got me thinking, and I feel like it's been too long since we last did this. https://www.politicalcompass.org/ I don't think I really realized how much this test sucks until now... https://www.politicalcompass.org/yourpoliticalcompass?ec=7.88&soc=-6.41 Yea, a year is definitely too long.

I used to be really into melodeath (especially the gothenburg sound), but my tastes have drifted to a more prog sound, so bands like opeth, amaran, meshuggah, periphery, gojira, animals as leaders, orphaned land, eternal tears of sorrow, wintersun, tesseract, vildhjarta, dream theater, evergrey, symphony x, pain of salvation, john petrucci, liquid tension experiment, myrath, animations, division by zero, seventh wonder, echosilence, queensryche, tool and the agonist. Most of them have at least some growling, so take this with a grain quite a healthy serving of salt; but it's all to some extent prog (or even in some cases, math) metal.

All of you - everyone who saw this and didn't respond - fail at nerdhood. dragon fire thaws battle axes

Am I the only one here who finds pi flavored tau severely disappointing?

Why are you mentally masturbating arguing with figments of your imagination, then? Are you a schizophrenic, maybe?

Thanks a lot guys. Yea, I've watched a lot of Cosmos, and while the parodies are funny, they're not really all that informative. I've looked at quite a few TED talks even before I asked this of you, and while some of them are quite good, most are just not what I'm looking for. James Burke is pretty interesting, just watched a couple Connections episodes. It seems a bit dated, but so was Cosmos, so it's all good. I wasn't much impressed with Cristina Rad, I think other atheist video bloggers such as Thunderf00t and AronRa do a much better job of presenting the case. Though I think that may be due in part because I have almost as hard a time listening to her speak as I do Stephen Hawking. Richard Feynman was very fun to watch. He is an excellent lecturer and can make pretty much anything interesting. In what way is he too Popperian? That he demands falsifiability? That he suggests we employ critical rationalism? I'm shocked that someone had to suggest these as processes in the scientific method. They seem to me to be obvious, though that may come from my learning the scientific method only after these were accepted into it as canon as it were. David Pakman I honestly didn't even bother listening to the podcast, but out of curiosity looked him up on youtube and realized that I had already watched a couple of his shows, specifically when Neil DeGrasse Tyson was interviewed. Thanks all, you really gave me some very good material, some interesting new stuff to think on. If anyone has anything to add, please don't hesitate.

Hi again, been a while. So as it happens, I've been watching some youtube vids in my spare time, and I'm being drawn recently to lectures and debates on the sciences, metaphysics and politics. So, I've watched pretty much every Carl Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Michio Kaku, Penn Jilette, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart and Christopher Hitchens videos as I can find. So now I'd be elated if anyone here could offer me any suggestions of speakers or commentators that are equally as witty, fun and mentally stimulating. And please, no stand up comedy, I'm looking for actual thought out commentary or satire, not punchlines.