How the Christian Right's Homophobia Scares Away Religious Young People: The Christian right is increasingly out of step with how Americans feel about gay rights. This issue might be the one that destroys them in the end.

davidreiss666 · 9 days

While this would be a welcome occurrence, I think it's overly optimistic and simplistic to assume that it will happen.

A group's strength of identity only grows stronger (and the group's ability to work in a coordinated fashion grows stronger the closer the bonds of the group are) the more they are able to define themselves cohesively by who/what they ARE and to some extent even more by who/what they ARE NOT.

So if losing a certain % of potential members is the price of maintaining a unified core of membership that can be relied upon to vote/act a certain way, that may actually be seen as worth it and may result in a more powerful (if smaller) group of crazy right-wing religious nutjuob bigots.

Don't start popping champagne corks just yet.

sci101 · 9 days

Okay that is EXACTLY what makes you fall victim to the "creationist" bullshit objections.

The whole point of the Scientific Method is it does NOT say "this is what actually happened" and reject all alternative explanations out of hand.

The point of it is that other explanations must be based on demonstrable, measureable, repeatable data that can be objectively examined, poked prodded and criticized.

THAT is why the fundamentalist Christian/Muslim/Bhuddist/Hindu etc. etc. creation explanations can not be accepted as something to be taught in science class. Not that they're wrong (because nobody can ever know the truth of the matter) but that they are not based on the scientific method and cannot be evaluated in a scientific manner.

Just saying "this is what happened, and you have to accept it" is no better than what the fundamentalist religious folks are trying to do.

AusGap · 10 days

'Sup, Dog?

Danish_Touch · 10 days

So he wants to bitch about it? The whole internet is available and full of others who also want to bitch about it. But Blizzard is under zero obligation to keep his bitching up on their forums.

mixedmartialswatting · 10 days

Sam was definitely the fluffiest ring-bearer, if only for a little while.

nomdeweb · 12 days

Them making or losing money on it is 100% independent from the issue of whether or not priating the show is a crime and a moral evil.

gajano · 12 days

Base pay only? I'm assuming Downey got points. Points is better than base if you think the film will do well.

KrunkJuice · 12 days

That's always been Cap's inherent contradiction. His character does not represent a rejection of Hitler's fascist ubermensch view of the world, but an improvement upon it. "You think that's a super-man? Here's one better!". He kills because his country tells him to, and he does it better than everyone else because they made him that way. He is the embodiment of the self-fulfilling circle of might makes right makes more might. Because he was frozen in time he's also a conservative wet dream in that he harkens back to bygone era values and rejects the perceived corruption/perfidity of our current generation.

cloversjoe · 12 days

The concept of choice and freedom loses a lot of meaning when it's possible to make WRONG choices - not just choices that lead to different gameplay style, but flat out WRONG choices, which is what the talent trees basically were from Classic through Wrath. Most possible builds were literally terrible and you could easily make those mistakes using only the information the game provided you and have a terrible play experience. If the only way to play "right" is to look on a bulletin board outside of the game, then that's a game design flaw and needed to be corrected. The Cataclysm talent tree changes were necessary and a huge improvement.

nomdeweb · 15 days

In case it hadn't occurred to you, HBO makes its money on people's subscription fees, and relies on people to keep paying the monthly fee even after their favorite show goes off air for the rest of the year. If you're a 1 or 2 show fan, you're still paying $180/year for HBO even if you never watch or care about anything else. So why the hell would anyone think that HBO wouldn't want to maximize the # of people paying $180/year just so it can get your miserable $4/show on iTunes?

They don't produce shows for the awards or for the downloads or even for the DVD box sets. They produce shows for the SUBSCRIPTIONS and if you can't understand that you probably are dumb enough to think that pirating is OK.

nomdeweb · 15 days

The episode availability varies during the year - they go up, come down, become unavailable, then go back up again before the new season.

rusty_blumpkin · 15 days

You bastard. Do you know how many Caturday pictures it's going to take to bleach this horror out of my mind?

zoink · 15 days

From some perspectives he's right - pretty much everything that is best about TV as an entertainment medium is worst delivered over the internet to a computer screen. The way he said it was a bad quote but not everything he said was wrong.

What's NOT being said though is the real reason HBO doesn't make its shows more available. At first blush it seems a no brainer - they have a product in serial form that they produced themselves and it's extremely popular (Dexter, Wire, Thrones, etc. etc.) unlike movies they own it outright and could be selling it per-episode on iTunes easily. Here's the real reason - HBO as a platform makes money off the monthly subscriptions. They really want people to sign up for the service (because of one of the must-see shows) and then keep paying for it ad-infinitum because they forget to STOP paying for it. So it's really not the no-TV crowd he's thinking of, he's thinking of all the CURRENT HBO subscribers who, given the choice, would probably just pay for the episodes of the 1-2 shows they care about (even at $3/episode one season would cost less than 2 months of subscription) rather than keep paying the monthly fee.

nomdeweb · 16 days

There was never any stated or implied belief that when ONE cyle of the popol vhu ended, everything would end. Based on how the rest of the cycles flipped over to the start of a subsequent cycle, the rational assumption is that the Mayans themselves believed a new cycle would start. The people who think "The Mayans thought the world would end" have no evidence for that statement. Even if they did, there's no reason to believe it would happen.

doublehalf · 17 days

Agreed. Same experience I had. The "square japanese watermelon" is an over-played myth. Yes it's true that some novelty grower cultivated some square watermelons and sold them at exceptionally high prices due to their novelty and the care it took to make them that way. But not all Japanese watermelons are square - in fact almost none are.

Due to the Japanese insistence on the cleanliness and defect-free nature of their fruits, they require a lot more care in growing, which makes them more expensive ($3 apples) but they are also much bigger (fewer fruit per tree) and taste great. You can also get the novelty "mega-fruit" like pears the size of a child's head that go for much more ($25?) but it's purely for the novelty of it, not everyday consumption.

mepper · 17 days

Nobody can MAKE you go through a scanner. You are not required to do so. Your alternative is to not go forward into the secured area. You can always turn around and go back where you came from - which if you run into an idiot who can't follow his own agency's written and published policies and is asking you to endanger your life, that's what you do. Vacation can wait.

sci101 · 18 days

Many peoples have portions of their back-story that are either mythical, allegorical, highly stylized or outright untrue. But nobody seems to have a problem with that......except the unfortunate ignoramuses that insist every word of the Bible must be taken literally.

Once you make that mistake, you're done for in any rational discussion.

However, I think that it's not surprising that the "Egypt" days of the old testament are particularly inaccurate considering the source. When you ask the menial laborer of an oppressed minority that has no homeland anymore whether working in Egypt for food & shelter is awesome or like slavery, what do you think he'd say. The important part of that whole section is that it's describing a people without a permanent home or place of belonging, and how a savior led by God brought them to a place to call home. Literally true or not that is a powerful message and meaning. So it's only if you insist it must be literally true that you get into trouble. As an allegorical story it's still pretty good stuff.

wg1844 · 18 days

The question mixes up several different issues that are not necessarily, logically, or legally connected. It also presumes a basis for support for gay marriage that is not at all accurate.

The simplest rationale to support gay marriage is equal treatment under law. In the U.S. it is currently legal for a man and a woman to marry, but it is illegal for more than two people to be married to each other (bigamy). The simplest argument for gay marriage is to expand the right to 1:1 marriage to 2 men or to 2 women. Crossing over into expanding the right to marry to a set of people greater than 2 is a completely different issue that has nothing to do with gay/straight marriage.

prajnadhyana · 18 days

My you're very self-satisfied with your own cleverness aren't you?

If someone's out there claiming the Bible is 100% accurate and should be interpreted literally in all ways then they're already beyond any hope of rational discussion, so why waste your time on them?

PepSupChOth · 18 days

I thought the religious arguments were all FOR banning same-sex marriage?

phileconomicus · 18 days

So what mental disorder is associated with spreading an article across 6 pages with no option to view as a single page??

WarbossPepe · 19 days

Way too damn long. Misses the important points. And it starts from the most stunning misconception of all - that someone who is unable to pay for their house is somehow a victim.

peasnbeans · 19 days

The desire to take away real liberties for the purpose protecting against possible (largely imaginary) dangers is definitely the action of chickenshit bastards. That's who we are and who we vote for these days.

RedditCIO · 19 days

Retired people.

tarraaa · 19 days

You need to save that for Wombatnesday.

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