Testing Chat IV: A New Hope

[Aaron]

Which one was that?

[Darksi4190]

"racist donkey-fucking son of a whore"

[Flagg]

If you argue against the 14th amendment
You're gonna have a bad time

[Questor]

For a damn good reason.

[Questor]

I just want to clarify why.

Anyone who says that the war was about anything other than slavery is conveniently forgetting that a status quo ante offer would almost certainly have ended the war and preserved the union. In the grand scheme of things, very few times has a political entity ever stood up and said "This is evil, it must be stopped. Not because it is hurting us as individuals, but because it is wrong." The north spoke so loudly that Sam Houston said (after being hounded from office for opposing succession):

"Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you, but I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of states rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South."

The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments stand as a governmental monument to that time, and their passage was not earned in the halls of congress, but on the fields of battle across the country. The deciding vote was cast around a ring of hills outside a little town in Pennsylvania, and its validity and strength is attested to by the fact that a century and a half later, the reverberations of that time are still shaking the world today. Many of the problems in the US, and most of the problems the US has created or influenced in the world, come directly from the shocking paroxysm of change that was initiated by South Carolina's decision on December 20, 1860. The only criticism that can be made of that was that the change was managed poorly.

[RogueIce]

I stopped reading when it turned into a line by line shitfest.

^^ this

It's also why I gave up on that US Data Leak thread, when it went off into some bizarre tangent over whether the Louisiana Purchase was constitutional.

[Straha]

If you argue against the 14th amendment
You're gonna have a bad time

Carinthium is the same person who said that it would be anti-scientific to not consider whether or not Vietnamese were more violent as a people because they ate rats.

[Oxymoron]

"unscientific"

Maybe. But why would you care about that when it was the US dropping millions of tons of bombs on them and drowning them under Agent Orange that forced them to live like that ?

[The Spartan]

no, work started at at 09:00.

but I still had to get up really early.

as I do today as well (currently 04:14)

My hours are flexible, but I have to think about avoiding the worst of traffic so I try to get in relatively early. For me that means getting up at 0500 and being at work by about 0700. Otherwise I'd spend twice as much time in traffic as I do now.

The amusing thing is when friends and I have our schedules clash. Not in any serious way, but like, for example, when we tailgate before football games. I'm there, ready to go when they're only just getting up; I end up serving as an auxiliary alarm clock for them. Or when I was with friends on a weekend trip. We were up late having a good time, but I was still awake and getting breakfast ready for everyone by 0700.

I had to reheat it when they woke up.

[Oxymoron]

I just had an horrible idea for two programs to exchange data :

put data in a CSV or XML file, when one program start putting data in the file it raise a flag from the Operating System to reserve the resource, and when it is over, the flag is put down, and another raised to tell the other application "hey dude, new data in the file, come read it bro". repeat the process of raising an OS flag to say the resource is occupied while the program is reading it, and when it's over, erase the file's content.

What a mess.

But I guess if you're working in an embedded something without a network stack and only few processes running at once, it can be a viable (if dirty) option...

[Oxymoron]

(note : I've haven't yet touched to any programming case where two different applications had to share data between each other, which didn't pass through either a middleware or an SQL query)

[adr]

But I guess if you're working in an embedded something without a network stack and only few processes running at once, it can be a viable (if dirty) option...

you'd prolly use a pipe or shared memory instead of an actual file but the principle there isn't all that crazy

even with actual files, you might be integrating with a program you can't change and have to do something kinda like that. i watched a presentation a couple weeks ago about how someone was making a game and what they did was watch the source code file for changes, then automatically recompile it and reload the new code as the game was running

so they could test tweaks in a matter of seconds of just saving the code file, instead of waiting for the whole thing to restart. kinda kewl

[adr]

so i watched a youtube last month where the commentator called the suit and tie "[England]'s national costume" and i just saw a picture of Hamid Karzai that made me think of it

he wasn't wearing the suit and tie, but a whole shitload of people in the world outside of england do. many of those who don't are mocked or sidelined for it, like evo morales or colonel gaddafi to pick two of the bigger examples


and that's kinda a pity. just think how much more interesting international meetings would be if there actually were distinct 'national costumes' for everyone and it didn't get the kind of shit people shovel at morales

[Oxymoron]

A thought I had :

It's funny to think about the fact that the Bible tend to depict the Roman Empire as the "Empire of Evil", while the Roman Catholic Church is an emanation, though somewhat distant, of said Empire.

[evilsoup]

whoa
hey I just noticed something too
'dog' is 'god' spelled backwards. COINCIDENCE?

[Oxymoron]

I mean, that's the kind of thing you know on an intellectual level when learning about history.

But when you really start thinking about it the irony become quite strong.

[adr]

so news website polls amuse me

especially news websites directly run by governments

RT asks

With the latest leaks on the NSA and Britain's GCHQ, how do you feel about your online data being collected by security agencies?

1% - It’s the right thing to do! If I am doing nothing wrong, I have nothing to worry about.
6% - Unsure. It’s justifiable, but only if they are really looking for terrorists, not just spying on everyone.
72% - Unhappy. These opaque methods of surveillance are totally unacceptable.
21% - No opinion – as they are probably tracking what answer I click in this survey.

apparently RT's audience is primarily composed of anti-american traitors

who knew?

Poll
What do you make of Iran’s presidential election?

1) Iran is a democratic country that holds free and fair elections. 34 %
2) Iran is not a democratic country and holds sham elections. 17 %
3) Iran is a democracy and unlike the US, Iranian candidates do not represent only two political groups. 49 %

actually that's more varied than i was expecting

[Oxymoron]

"RT", that's the Russian Television, right ?

[evilsoup]

Russia Today

[adr]

yea, russian gov't

and of course presstv is run by the iranian government

[RogueIce]

A thought I had :

It's funny to think about the fact that the Bible tend to depict the Roman Empire as the "Empire of Evil", while the Roman Catholic Church is an emanation, though somewhat distant, of said Empire.

Is it? I haven't done any Bible study since, like, the third grade (Christian School ftw, then I went to public school for the rest of it) so maybe I don't remember.

I do know about Pontius Pilate, of course. But I've heard some people interpret him to be more sympathetic than not, at least in regards to the whole "didn't want to kill Jesus" thing, but he was caught between a rock and a hard place. Hence him offering up the condemned murderer in the hopes that The People wouldn't be so crazy as to let him go.

Poll
What do you make of Iran’s presidential election?

1) Iran is a democratic country that holds free and fair elections. 34 %
2) Iran is not a democratic country and holds sham elections. 17 %
3) Iran is a democracy and unlike the US, Iranian candidates do not represent only two political groups. 49 %

actually that's more varied than i was expecting

That's kind of funny. Option 3: much like Option 1, except with "fuck you America" thrown in.

[Oxymoron]

A thought I had :

It's funny to think about the fact that the Bible tend to depict the Roman Empire as the "Empire of Evil", while the Roman Catholic Church is an emanation, though somewhat distant, of said Empire.

Is it? I haven't done any Bible study since, like, the third grade (Christian School ftw, then I went to public school for the rest of it) so maybe I don't remember.

I do know about Pontius Pilate, of course. But I've heard some people interpret him to be more sympathetic than not, at least in regards to the whole "didn't want to kill Jesus" thing, but he was caught between a rock and a hard place. Hence him offering up the condemned murderer in the hopes that The People wouldn't be so crazy as to let him go.

Well, like everything in the Bible there's bound to be contradictions.

But from what I remember, in Revelations / St. Jean's Apocalypse the Whore of Babylon I think is supposed to represent the Roman Empire. Or maybe it's another character ? That was some times ago I looked into that.

[Veef]

http://twitpic.com/cyff4v

that's sexual harassment

[Bakustra]

A thought I had :

It's funny to think about the fact that the Bible tend to depict the Roman Empire as the "Empire of Evil", while the Roman Catholic Church is an emanation, though somewhat distant, of said Empire.

Is it? I haven't done any Bible study since, like, the third grade (Christian School ftw, then I went to public school for the rest of it) so maybe I don't remember.

I do know about Pontius Pilate, of course. But I've heard some people interpret him to be more sympathetic than not, at least in regards to the whole "didn't want to kill Jesus" thing, but he was caught between a rock and a hard place. Hence him offering up the condemned murderer in the hopes that The People wouldn't be so crazy as to let him go.

Well, like everything in the Bible there's bound to be contradictions.

But from what I remember, in Revelations / St. Jean's Apocalypse the Whore of Babylon I think is supposed to represent the Roman Empire. Or maybe it's another character ? That was some times ago I looked into that.

In the Apocalypse of John, there are several big references to Rome. First, Babylon the Great/the Whore of Babylon is specifically a Jewish reference, as the neo-Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple of Solomon, and took most of the ruling class as hostages in Babylon. So, specifically, the people being talked about are oppressing the faithful, but the neo-Babylonians were themselves destroyed by Cyrus the Great and the Achaemenids, who then granted much more freedom and independence to the Jewish faith, leading to the Second Temple.

The Second Temple itself was destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans, and Revelation was composed definitely after that date. So this is already a major reference- the Romans will go the way of the neo-Babylonians. To drive things in further, the Horseman of the Apocalypse on the white horse is described as holding a bow, and being given a crown and setting forth "conquering and to conquer". This is generally understood to be a reference to the Parthians, and a prediction that they will devastate and conquer the eastern part of the Roman Empire alongside civil wars, famines, plagues, and wild animals, the domains of the other three Horsemen. (The white horseman became identified with plagues after the Black Death).

A recurring figure is a beast or dragon with seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns. Rome is built on seven hills, had seven kings before the foundation of the Republic, and one of the heads died and was brought back to life, so this presumably refers to the Emperors as well, though there would have been anywhere from nine to eleven, technically, depending on when exactly Revelation was composed. John may also have counted Julius Caesar as the first Caesar, so ignoring the brief reigns during the Year of the Four Emperors, this would date Revelation to Vespasian, or if he didn't count Julius Caesar, then to Titus. Alternatively, this is backdated, counts Julius, and the last head is Galba, which fits with the passage later about the seventh head only remaining for a little while. Regardless, the head that died and returned to life is a reference to Nero, who had persistent rumors surrounding his death and return, or alternately to the revival of the Roman empire under Vespasian.

The number of the beast is 666, or 616, depending on the manuscript. This calls for wisdom, the book says, but we have a shortcut through ready access. Gematria is a form of numerology that John's audience was familiar with. The Greek formulation of Nero's name, Neron Kaisar, transliterates into Hebrew as nrvn qsr, which has a gematriac value of 666, while the Latin, Nero Caesar, transliterates as nrv qsr, with a gematriac value of 616. In addition, Nero's persecutions of Christian's lasted for 3 1/2 years, and the beast is said to have been given reign for 42 months. There are also other references, most notably in that the New Jerusalem has roughly similar surface area to the Roman Empire of the time.

[Infinity Biscuit]

The Greek formulation of Nero's name, Neron Kaisar, transliterates into Hebrew as nrvn qsr, which has a gematriac value of 666, while the Latin, Nero Caesar, transliterates as nrv qsr, with a gematriac value of 616.

Suddenly what little I know about Tsukihime makes significantly more sense.

Also what's your avatar? It's pretty sweet