Total posts: 8,696
Posted in:
-->
@TheRealNihilist
some of these eye-gougers take hours trying to figure out a worthwhile approach. brutal. I think working up from the lowest hanging fruit is the best strategy.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@RationalMadman
Hang in there, man. I respect your Mesault-like defiance by verse in the face of authority and antagonistic majority. You're a bit punk in the best sense.
Created:
Posted in:
says the heir apparent.calling myself "king" is a bit too much
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Ramshutu
It’s actually a bit sad. RM took on 20+ debates. He went from something like 90-odd debates to 124. In the space of a week or so, if they were all typical moons or Type1, it wouldn’t be a problem - but a lot of these were actually full debates. I’ve been struggling to keep up with voting on the them, I suspect he had the same issue debating them.
I don't think it's sad. It's Tony Montana at the end of Scarface. I consider RatMan very generous and I raise a toast to his long reign as Top Dog- I'm sure he'll be Top Dog again soon enough.
Created:
Posted in:
Alec & I have discussed debating capital punishment and whether the US should remain in the US Outer Space Treaty. I'd really like to see one of those "US takes over someplace" forum posts put into a debate format.
Created:
Posted in:
Alec
28
19
6
3
67.86%
1628
393
63
RationalMadman
98
71
19
8
72.45%
1621
1,121
131
blamonkey
8
8
0
0
100.00%
1615
47
13
MagicAintReal
12
8
2
2
66.67%
1576
352
7
PsychometricBrain
5
5
0
0
100.00%
Created:
Posted in:
Late start but I got my silver medal. I'm guessing I'm running third or fourth right now.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Ramshutu
Preliminary list of Eyegouger requests. All are complete and relatively contested, as far as I can tell from scanning. All but one are religious in nature & I find most religious debates hard to judge. Please don't make me read these.
christianity disadvantageous?
can we know anything?
ID
calvinism?
no gods exist
YE
no gods exist
no gods exist
no god
gun control
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@RationalMadman
That's odd. But are you are reliable source for this information? Is it possible you are wrong?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Ramshutu
I think that's fine and thanks.I won’t count RFDs in comments or forums written before the competition for this reason.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Ramshutu
What about a rule that all contest entry RFD should appear in vote tabs to prevent RFD'ing ahead of the starting gun and then linking back with vote after the contest begins?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@RationalMadman
cue: "Wake Up" Rage Against the Machine
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@RationalMadman
Only if we make it so.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@RationalMadman
I think voting tactically corrupts the heart of the game. Do we want to recognize a well-reasoned argument or a well-contested reality gameshow?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Alec
I know he acts like a jerk, but jerks should not be banned from this site. I know plenty of other people that act like jerks and they aren't banned. I support free speech for everyone, even for type1. I don't know if the mods can overturn bans, but if they can, they should limit bans to spammers and people who troll vote and leave.
I'd argue that Type1 is a type of spammer in that he fails debates in such quantity at such minimum effort that he distorts debate ratings and creates trash that obstructs access to more worthy works of effort. I think I would prefer that Type1 had been a troll vote and leave kind of person because then at least he'd be gone. If your limit is spammers and trolls, I think type1 exceeds that limit.
Look, we all know type1 is the sort to keep touching the electric fence even after the voltage has knocked him out a few times. Type1 is bound to make mgmt. escort him out the door eventually because at heart that is the game that type1 is playing.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@RationalMadman
says the guy with probably the most medals
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@RationalMadman
C'mon, RatMan. I appeal to your offices as Top Dog on the Leaderboard. You should join in, even if you don't think you've got the time to invest in a win. You and I should both at least try to score a "People's Voice" silver medal.
Created:
Supadudz's posting to his own memorial ought not to be misinterpreted as itself an incidence of resurrection, his easter is not until the 28th. Sorry for any unwarranted juxtapositions.
Created:
-->
@Vader
me too. Actually I read the first few books too and said, bah too many characters, too derivative, all the big events happen off screen. But each season gets better- fewer characters who bring increasingly complex motives to the escalating doom. The big scenes get much bigger. Last season was the most epic fantasy ever on tv- Shakespearean actors playing Vulcan chess with undead dragons- it was definitely worth the muddle
Created:
For Easter..... hey, it was that or rabbits.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Alec
Good question. In brief, the idea is that most transportation will be handled by tiny, lightweight subway cars that come to you on demand, take you where you want to go, can join into high density trains linked by remote sensor that allow for massive efficiencies in acceleration and braking; cars that drop you off and go clean and refuel and park themselves in publicly held facilities. Privately held cars are perfectly possible in such an environment. At some point, non-electric cars will be taxed as high polluters and become anachronisms held by the rich, or old, or eccentric. The advantages of a public system is that it ought to be very cheap, say 20-50% of present American average car costs per year and very safe, reducing traffic deaths by 96% at implementation and improving thereafter.
I would guess that you, Alec, don't like the idea of such fundamental govt. control. I do think that there are public private partnerships like airlines today that might work- although I'm not sure that the present US airline system ought not to be more public. If we could get to a system where a small car fit out like a tiny motel room - toilet, bed, desk, tv could take you at a true 80mph or maybe even 100mph for, let's say $100/day- how much airline traffic would lost to a autonomous electric sleeping car/taxi/train?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Ramshutu
/in
+5 points for joining first.
I like the originality of the tournament and the inherent promotion of proper voting. Some very good voters who seldom vote have an important advantage in this tourney since the trash voters like me who suck up easy forfeits have already spent opportunities on debates with long voting periods.
Created:
Braveheart is generally acknowledged as a profoundly ahistorical film: if you google "least historically accurate movies" Braveheart appears somewhere on each of the first 9 lists. I won't take the time to lay out all the fake news but the film besmirches many real people's reputations including that of Isabella of France, who is remembered now as the "She-Wolf of France" for her active rulership as Queen Regent of England for three years is depicted a smitten turncoat surrendering to William Wallace's sexual magnetism, making the future Edward III a bastard by treason and not incidentally, delegitimizing the rule of all successive English monarchs. In truth, Wallace was executed for treason when Isabella was still a child in France.
Created:
Posted in:
I think the age of private car ownership is coming to a close. I think driverless, electric cars are so much safer and cheaper that in 20 years, driving your own car will be seen a little like smoking today- anti-social, dangerous, worthy of heavy regulation and tax. By 2050, driving your own car will probably be left to the very poor and the very rich. Past some tipping point, I doubt that transportation infrastructure will even support a private driver. My plan is to try to make my two old hondas last another 5 years or so, after which I expect that I can give up car ownership if favor of a little car that comes on command and takes me where I want to go for probably less than what I spend today on gas alone.
Created:
Posted in:
Opposite. Q was the worst. I hated all the omnipotent aliens and Q most of all because he would not go away
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Imabench
that's religion for ya, always making a fuss
Created:
Posted in:
I agree although my favorite episode is Balance of Terror
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Vader
its more like vaping up the ski lifts but yeah
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Vader
Created:
Posted in:
Many, many, places I'd like to see. If I had to choose just one it might be Bath, England.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Outplayz
I wuz thinkin I am funny guy but now I think otherwise
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Imabench
I thought that was what we were doing now with the RELIGION forum... Golly, it has been a long time since I've read a bench post.Maybe if we give them just one unpopulated forum to spam the hell out of it we could get a benefit from all their traffic, we would just have to agree on which forum to turn into a shitfest
Created:
"smart+heart sets DebateArt apart"
DebateArt: the heart of smart
DebateArt: where speech is free and opinion prized
Created:
-->
@David
I'm just spitballing here but I'd like to see something graphically appealing that emphasizes "art" as the brand in the category of debate sites. Here's one idea that probably only appeals to me:
Take JL David's iconic painting "The Tennis Court Oath" and make it the home page graphic.
DebateArt logo imposed across the back wall. On the left wall, as if written on the wall, a link to debates, on the right wall, a link to forums. Other links appear as comic book "speech bubbles," perhaps popping up as you scroll over various faces- links to "hottest debate," "controversy of the week" "newest member" things like that. I like Virt's notion of putting debates up front but that may encourage trolls to post horribles just to see them on the front page (a la DDO). I second RM's notion that we should be branding DebateArt as the brainy venue for dialogue, "smart is what sets DebateArt apart" sort of thing.
Created:
Nope. A benevolent dictatorship is the correct approach to managing a site like this. There’s too much agitation and gamesmanship for an effective democracy.
Created:
Posted in:
Right now, BTW, California is experiencing a superbloom of flowers in the desert and the skies are filled with dense clouds of butterflies and weed is legal. This post brought to you by the California Board of Tourism.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@IlDiavolo
Really, don't you see it? California is American, not Mexican anymore. That's the funny side, this State is getting back to its origins without the need of a war. Mexicans just need to migrate illegaly and that's it, they already conquer an American State.
Yeah, that's America: one restless reconquista after another. I suppose there's humor to it but I don't see how it makes California the figure of that fun. I mean, what you say is true and because of that dynamic California is incredibly prosperous- the wealthiest sub-national entity in the world- bigger than the UK or France or India, the largest collection of very wealthy people the world and Mexicans are an important part of that prosperity at every level. The economy is so vibrant and diverse because its people are so vibrant and diverse only 50% of Californians were born in California- far less so in the major cities.
I really don't care what you love or not. I can also say I despise Mexico, but that's not the point.
Wow, even Ricardo Montalban? That's hard.
I think you've got to have a long talk with your folks living in California. In DDO I've read a lot of complaints from people who visited California about what it's going on there.I also watched some videos in youtube of people who complain about street vendoring and how it's changing the urban landscape. I mean, I understand people need the money in order to make a living, but there are laws to comply. Otherwise, the country would slide into anarchy.
I've been there a few times and some of my best friends live there. I've walked through East LA and slept in Griffith Park and shook hands with movie stars in Hollywood. I've seen Half-Dome and Redwoods. I've seen it snow a foot an hour on Donner Pass. I've had sex on the beach in Santa Barbara and hitchhiked abandoned out of Barstow in hundred degree heat. I've had coffee at the City Lights bookstore on the coldest day in San Francisco's history and chowder on the Sausalito docks. I love California- its people and its culture (which is very Mexican but also something very new)
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Swagnarok
thx, swag- always enjoy your thoughtful responses
Nah, if anything Christianity helped foster social cohesion in an excessively multiracial and multireligious society that was on the verge of collapse. It didn't actually save the empire but I suspect that it made the transition to the Middle Ages somewhat more smooth
I think similarly. Christianity's role in creating a literate tradition of civil service certainly helped preserve the East and brought much of Rome into the Barbarian West.
Believe it or not, I did not link to this article as your run-of-the-mill attack on Social Justice.
Believe it
Rather, I did it because I actually thought it was fascinating to draw parallels between this emerging consensus and the late religious consensus of the Roman Empire reached by way of Christianity. On its face it looks like Identity Politics will only serve to tear us apart and rip our country to shreds, fracturing it into a chaotic hodgepodge of feuding "identity-states", but alternately it could develop into a coherent framework that actually serves to unite a country and fill the void Christianity left behind. Either a highly corrupt leftist "democracy" of the Latin American variety, permanently looking to slide into despotism, or a renewal of our Republic. It could be either.As a (completely amateur) historian and sociologist. That's my primary interest in this. As a matter of future history. Thinking of Social Justice in these terms actually makes me not want to hate it as much.
Well, I don't think there's much of a case for hating social justice which "is a concept of fair and just relations between the individual and society." I think you are thinking in the pejorative SJW sense but I try to discourage too much word creep in that direction. I don't think identity politics is sufficiently resonant beyond the internet to warrant civil war but I am old enough to feel beyond understanding the capacities of younger generations. I do think the notion of identity is evolving in our society but I can't tell how much is fashion and how much is some new paradigm.
Rome is such an interesting counter-point to our present notion of identity. The idea of self-sourcing your own identity was practically blasphemous in the old Republic. A Roman's identity was always Roman and every role was well defined by God and State: you are born as nothing and you are given everything: family, state, role, and your identity changed by the giving. Nero is the earliest Roman I can think of who asserted the priority of his self-identification: "What an artist dies with me." But I think Christianity must have represented a challenge to Roman identity: if you prioritize a personal relationship with one God over Rome, family, position and that God does not prioritize Rome- are you still Roman?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Swagnarok
Thanks for sharing, swag, but a long article written almost entirely in passive voice and with no specific examples. Priests and temples emerged at the same time as kings and palaces because some justification was required for the (mostly violent) stratification of society. We profit by others labor because we are chosen by god,who makes it ok by compensating the others after death. Since religion has traditionally been the transmitter of society it is no deep analogy to call any social movement religion-like: Trumpism is like a religion, SJW is like a religion, gun ownership is like a religion, gluten intolerance is like a religion, fortnite is like a religion.
Interestingly, your Roman emperors analogy effectively credits Christianity with the Fall of Rome a la Gibbon, which I’ve never found particularly persuasive. I think religion is more a lagging indicator of social change.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
Yap. Let’s get foreigners to kill Americans with the wrong ideology in the name of the First Ammendment. You are a freakin genius.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@IlDiavolo
I've been making fun of California lately because it seems to me that this state is getting more and more hispanic given the high rate of hispanic inmigration.
California was a Spanish colony for centuries before Anglos came. Not sure where you find humor in that.
specially from the primitive, savage Mexico.
i love Mexico. I’ve been to Guadalajara, Chitzen Itza, Puerto Vallarta, Baja, Juarez. Seems like you are just pretending at provocation.
It's clear that street vendoring doesn't make any good to a state or a country because they don't pay tax
and it's an unfair competition for the vendors who pay a rent and taxes.
thats not at all clear to me. Here in Denver, street vendors are seen as a cheap venue for experimental entrepreneurship. They facilitate all kinds temporary events. We have a number of peak seasons here - rodeo, skiing, beer fest, weed fest which were really difficult to staff and produce consistently. Street vendors suddenly offer all kinds of services, mostly food that make these event consistently fun.
I suppose scoflawry of taxes is probably likelier given the transient nature of street markets but really, how can you tell? Tax dodging is extremely common in the volatile restaurant industry (hell I once helped smuggle a genuine Picasso out of a very fancy restaurant that had been shut down by the taxman that morning). I’m sure you’re right insofar as some tax dodging is very likely but I haven’t heard govts complain much. Perhaps it’s all still thought of as small potatoes or gravy.
What is going on, America? Is really Calexit getting serious?
No. turns out that was just two guys getting paid by Russia to stir up shit. I think they’re working on Brexit now. inmigration
Created:
Posted in:
where's mharman? He used to always be up for mafia
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Polytheist-Witch
Not a lot- just Dave Chapelle and Gunga Din to the best of my recollection
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Polytheist-Witch
welcome back Poly. That’s okay - I covered for u by drinking your share. If anyone asks we had hot toddys and pints o’ bitter
Created:
-->
@secularmerlin
I think you forgot to switch on your quantum dampeners and make sure the chroniton stabilizers are up to spec. What kind of engineer are you, anyway?
Created: