California Mountain Snake
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Posts posted by California Mountain Snake
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Eeww Megan Fox and screamo.
Anyway mine would be Alan Rickman. (especially dressed as...see my sig.) Sexy voices are always a plus! Ohhhhh yeahhhhh...
Dr. Lazarus > Snape
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Realize that as a 14 year old posting on a forum of mostly high school and college age posters, you will invariably end up sounding and looking immature by comparison, and that's just the way it is. I know as a 14 year old on forums I was annoying as fuck too (still am), but you grow out of that eventually. Making threads like this won't fix it, promising to change won't fix it. Just accept that you just suck now, and nothing but time is going to fix that.
I'm the exception to that ;3.
No. You don't.
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None anymore.
The only previous video game forum I frequented was DGN, a forum dedicated to the Command and Conquer RTS series (It has since gone downhill). The other forum I was a significant member of (over 1000 posts) was TFF, a large forum about tropical fish and the aquarium hobby. Of course before Serenes I was a member of FESS, but I never had many posts there, ironically enough.
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Skill at blowjobs: best: Cynthia, worst: Sirius, honorable mention: Namie Amuro
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I don't think so. Isn't gozaimasu formal?
Not formal, but extra polite (there's a difference). It's the polite word for "arimasu", which means roughly to have (which has a few more uses in Japanese other than ownership, unlike the English translation). If you translate the kanji of arigatou (which I have never actually seen used, it's always in kana) it means literally to have difficulty (the first part, ari, is the same as the verb "ari"masu, from above), IE you've put yourself through trouble for me. Gozaimasu just emphasizes that, and although a little proper, I think it would more likely be what you would use in the situation above. Then again, anime is always in the most casual of casual speech (calling yourself ore and other omae after just meeting them), so I guess you would probably never hear that on the show.
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Ｉｔ’ｓ amazing, now being in college, how much I can't care about this topic anymore. No longer do these meaningless labels and shit have to annoy me.
It's almost like... being free.
Turn off your JP keyboard, damn weeaboo.
It was just for the first word, then I fixed it! God!
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Ｉｔ’ｓ amazing, now being in college, how much I can't care about this topic anymore. No longer do these meaningless labels and shit have to annoy me.
It's almost like... being free.
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Correction. Y'all are pathetic.
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inB4no****sherlock
What are the asterisks for? Shit? SHIT? Oh fuck you almost said SHIT! Damn that would have FUCKING SUCKED.
Edit:
Missed this whole dialogue
So why the asterisks, instead of a less retarded way of expressing yourself
Decided to go for the throat when I saw it instead. Fuck me, right?
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I think you should add a gozaimasu, but that's just me.
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This is pathetic.
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Didn't Path of Radiance lose Maniac mode and gain Easy mode?
I'm not really bothered by it, since I usually play on Normal anyways.
You actually change your font type?
I tend to play mutliplayer games where there is no computer AI so I don't notice any change in difficulty. But really. have you ever encountered a video game that was too hard to beat eventually, even on the hardest mode? All video games are easy, otherwise the companies which produce them would never make any money.
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I went to one in Minnesota. Hate everything about it. There is bias since I don't like food with a lot of western sauces. I hate the environment and menu as well. I was quite sick after that, though the other people with me enjoyed their meals.
Clarify "western sauces."
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A loose body of about 100-200 pounds traveling at a speed of 50 or more mph creates an incredibly amount of force and can cause a great amount of damage when slammed into something that has stopped moving previously, such as someone who was actually buckled in. Trust me, you can hurt others by not buckling in, just as you can hurt yourself.
I tried doing a Google search on seat belt death statistics, and none of the websites I've encountered have mentioned any figures about people killed yearly due to other passengers not wearing a seat belt (although some pro-seatbelt websites listed great speculation of how much a damage a flying body could potentially do, this was never backed up by any reports of actual injuries or deaths). I think before you make this argument, you need to prove that a non-negligible amount of people are injured by unbuckled passengers.
And to me, this is the only argument, if even true in the first place, which makes sense to justify the law. To people arguing that the state has to pay to clean up your body, remember that as a taxpayer the road and the services of the state are as much yours as anyone else's, so to claim you're "stealing money" by forcing the state to clean up an accident is preposterous; we pay taxes for those services.
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School systems are ALWAYS... ALWAYS on the wrong track. Humans aren't supposed to abstain from eating at all... EVER. This is another stupid quantity over quality issue and I'm saddened by it. Kids should eat whenever they get hungry, that's the body saying "Ey! Gimme food muthaf*cka!". It's what they eat that's important. Oh and I'm fully aware that some schools if not most serve plenty of plain tasting and unappetizing veggies to go along with the other stuff, but it's still a quality over quantity thing there too. Serving veggies doesn't always if ever make people healthy, or keep them from bulging out. How are these so called healthy choice foods grown anyway? I swear, sometimes I can almost taste the pesticides in my mouth.
Haha! Oh yeah, and most of this article DOES look like all the instances of "sex" were replaced by "eat" or "food". That's odd in a funny way.
At this point I'm just sorry for your parents.
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So it costs NYC $500,000/year to ship these homeless people to various destinations across the globe, but it costs them $36,000/year on support for the homeless.
Now, my maths might be a bit rusty, but isn't $500,000 a lot more than $36,000? And given that we are still in the middle of an economic downturn, shouldn't they be saving money?
-$500,000 for all homeless people's transportation.
-$36,000 per family
Support for the homeless is much more expensive.
I see nothing wrong with this as long as there's no coercion involved. At least unlike in Japan, they're allowed to come back if they please.
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Let's hope the rest of you follows.
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This topic was somewhat broached in the seatbelt law thread in this forum, but rather than sidetrack that discussion I thought I would move the discussion here.
Recreational drugs create a lot of problems in the world. They themselves are dangerous in excess or with especially powerful ones even small quantities can be deadly, but above that there are even more dangerous crimes committed around the production, transport, and selling of illegal recreational drugs on an underground market. Most recently, thousands of people have been killed in Mexico due to increased government crackdowns on Mexico-US border drug-smuggling towns, with an estimated 4000 people killed in Mexico this year alone, and 12,000 total since 2006. In a particularly illustrative article here, it's easy to see how drug use in the US has had major spillover effects; creating gang controlled border towns, facilitating illegal drug trade and in turn increasing illegal gun exports to Mexican gangs, resulting in increased violence and crime levels.
In terms of national security, most terrorist organizations, including Al-Qaeda, have funded their operations almost exclusively from illegal drug trading, with countries like Afghanistan and North Korea collecting huge portions of their GDP from illegal drug trade. The United States' "War on Drugs," largely regarded as an utter failure, has done little to curb this violence, and in fact by eliminating smaller, less efficient drug operations, the United States has allowed large cartels to do business as never before, vastly increasing the value of their products. This extreme profitability means that the United States would have to seize over 75% of all drug shipments before they drug leaders saw any loss, and in reality only 10-30% of shipments are being seized now, despite ramped up efforts.
The question is, what can be done about this? I am interested to hear your opinions, and below I have detailed mine:
To see an effective end to the vast criminal network associated with the production, distribution, and sale of illegal recreational drugs, the only complete solution that exists is simple: across the board drug legalization. If drugs could be purchased in the same way we buy cigarettes and alcohol, the demand for dangerous, underground drugs would virtually vanish, along with any profit margins that drug lords once enjoyed. Countries like Afghanistan and North Korea would no longer have markets to sell their drugs on if everyone could produce their own for cheap, and an easy source of income for organized crime and terrorist organizations would be abolished, severely weakening these organizations. This decrease in crime, as well as the elimination of drug related arrests, would also leave our police forces more free to deal with other concerns and offer better protection, while reducing tax dollars spend on catching marijuana users.
Moreover, the legalization of drugs has not been proven to lead to an increase in abuse, and in fact countries such as the Netherlands have seen a decrease in the number of hard drug abusers and a vast increase in the number of people who seek help, which can be funded by the government without conflict of interest, resulting in a very low percentage of "problem drug-users" compared to other countries (source). The gateway drug theory, arguing that people who start smoking marijuana will move on to more dangerous drugs for a greater high, has been largely disproven. Moreover, by selling drugs legally they will be subject to the same quality control that regulates all other legally sold products, reducing the chance that dangerous chemicals will be inserted into the drugs.
The final argument is one of freedom. As discussed briefly in the other thread, drug use a consensual crime, where both the seller and the user agree to the act, but the government has outlawed the activity. Using a drug in its own right affects no one but the voluntary consumer. If we are to accept that all people are equal, then it makes no sense that another person can tell you what you are allowed to do to yourself, anymore than you can force another person to do something against their choosing. Only when drug use is combined with activities such as driving can it be made illegal, because of the significant dangers it poses to other people. In addition, although some people may destroy their lives with drugs, being convicted of a even a consensual crime such as smoking pot by the government will ruin a persons' life guaranteed, by spoiling future job opportunities,ability to get insurance and credit, and forcing them to waste their time away in jail on our tax dollars. This makes little sense.
I'm sure that many people will not agree with what I've said, but I would be curious to hear from everyone, especially those who may not agree entirely with what I propose but may agree in part. Widely discussed is the possible legalization of marijuana, which is largely proved to be a mostly harmless drug in comparison with cigarettes; impossible to overdose on and yielding relatively mild results that do not increase violent behavior. Most drug related arrests in the US are related to Marijuana, and for certain it's legalization would have a significant impact on drug crime in the US. If we're going to move in baby steps, I think that marijuana is certainly the first place to start.
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Even the regulation and illegalization of hard drugs, for example, is justified in the United States not by the fact that it's bad for you, but because of the other illegal activity that sprout up in association with drug use.
Hardly true that things are argued this way. As long as we're arguing by anecdote, the point of every anti-pot commercial I've ever seen is that your actions are bad for you and your family. If anything, the illegal activities that sprout up in association with drug use are an argument against making it illegal.
Anti-pot commercials are far far away from legal enforcement. They're a form of education and persuasion that only hope to encourage, not force, you to take certain actions, and thus are justified in using appeals for self-interest. Education is vital, even in a society with no laws restricting consensual action, because it tells us why even though we may be allowed to do things like not wear our seat belts or abuse drugs, it doesn't mean that it's a good idea, and hopes to do its best convince us not to make that choice. The difference is it doesn't force us to make that choice. This conception of education jives with even the most ardent libertarians. The problem is that people nowadays who end up getting the raw deal on a risk they took are too quick to shout "I got hurt taking this risk, so it should be illegal for everyone."
Also, for those of you arguing that laws enforcing the use of rear belts being ineffective or that the efficacy of rear belts is just anecdotal, I highly recommend you read the first post.A recent study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows that 85% of rear-seat passengers wore seat belts in the 20 states with laws requiring their use. In states without such laws, the number was 66%. An earlier NHTSA study found that rear belts greatly reduce fatalities in crashes, particularly those involving passenger vans and sport utility vehicles.I don't think anyone's doubting whether a law would be effective or not, obviously if the government made a law that people will not wear baseball hats on Monday and enforced it, the number of people wearing baseball hats on Monday would show a decrease. The question is whether the government has the right to make that law, not whether such a law would work.
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Even the regulation and illegalization of hard drugs, for example, is justified in the United States not by the fact that it's bad for you, but because of the other illegal activity that sprout up in association with drug use.
I demand links for this.
It's called a victimless crime (see link for justifications, as well as an example relating to drug use) or between two people (such as a drug dealer and user) it's called a consensual crime. Many try to justify such a law by because it's for "the good of society" or even sometimes "because you would have to be crazy to want to do this in the first place," but such reasons step all over the constitution (reserved rights) and the Declaration of Independence (which acknowledges the natural rights of people). Even today, trying to defend a law in court for the simple "good of society" would most likely fail if you didn't defend it with statistics, in the case of drug use you must prove that other kinds of other illegal activity will pop up because of it, or possibly in the case of seat belts, how you flying about in the car is dangerous to others, or if you let yourself die it will drain the taxpayers of money for you family's social security checks. Everything has to be justified this was for a law to make sense, otherwise it would simply be the government enforcing their moral views upon you. Which isn't to say that the government doesn't try to do exactly this. The fact that sodomy was only made legal on the federal level 10 years ago, and the government still sticks its nose into who can get married or not, are obvious violations of these founding principles of liberty.
For more on victimless crimes and consensual crimes and how they don't jive with the American conception of freedom, see the book Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do (the link goes to the full text, but reading the first page will give you the gist).
Common sense =/= acting logically. The government working out of self-interest is still sensible, if not logical.
Name one job that isn't based on self-interest.
Actually, answer this for me:
How is basing things on self-interest not logical?
Congressmen largely do not act out of self interest in policy. They act out of constituent interest, which in time serve their self interest. Political theorists generally agree the number-one goal of a congressman is to be reelected, and this has proved largely true. Veteran congressmen are very smart people, and they know that if they want to continue riding the train, which they want to do either because it's a source of gravy or because they have long sighted policy goals, then they realize that they have to pass a lot of popular bills that will get them support for another term. In the case of special interests, money can also play a role when that money is used for future campaign funds and hiring more staff to deal with more issues. Thinking of the "government" as a single system in the United States is an incorrect conception. Each Senator and Representative have their own private staff, intentions, voting districts, and constituents. Each of them sets up shop within the congressional market, they are not all CEOs of the same company. So yes, congressmen act in their own self interest, but this is accomplished only by working in the majority's self interest in terms of public policy.
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This is true. Fine, I'll give you a better reason. Safety regulations exist for pretty much everything. Why should a seatbelt in a car be any different? 98% of the time, it will minimize your injuries in a crash, so it makes sense to enforce it's use. Logically, the only real way to enforce this in a manner in which the majority will respond positively, is to make those who violate the law, incur a fine. Their logic is sound, and thus there is no reason why this should even be up for debate.
The difference is that most safety regulations are in place to prevent one person's negligence from harming other people. Regulations concerning proper waste disposal, maintaining a safe workplace, traffic regulations like stop signs and speed limits, limiting smoking in public areas, et cetera all have to do with negligent actions you can make which can physically harm other people. Only in rare instances, however, does not wearing a seat belt physically harm anyone but yourself. I'm having trouble thinking of many other safety regulations which impinge on your ability to hurt yourself. Even the regulation and illegalization of hard drugs, for example, is justified in the United States not by the fact that it's bad for you, but because of the other illegal activity that sprout up in association with drug use. Unless you can definitively link not wearing a seat belt from a young age leading to a life of crime and disregard for the law later in life, I think that there is no more justification for the government to step in here than there is in the government making it illegal to punch yourself in the face.
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By the inescapable caterwaul of its stupidity.
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Realize that as a 14 year old posting on a forum of mostly high school and college age posters, you will invariably end up sounding and looking immature by comparison, and that's just the way it is. I know as a 14 year old on forums I was annoying as fuck too (still am), but you grow out of that eventually. Making threads like this won't fix it, promising to change won't fix it. Just accept that you just suck now, and nothing but time is going to fix that.
Haruhi Suzumiya
in Entertainment
Posted
I was actually in Akihabara, Tokyo (nerd spooge zone, if you don't know) when they were airing the last episode of Endless Eight. No one in the crowd of people watching it was pissed, like I'd imagine true nerds to be. Maybe this is one giant fucking lost in translation from Japan to planet Earth.