kvnchrist

I've never advocated painting anyone with broad strokes. This is the initial problem I see is that broad strokes are the preferred method of many human beings. What's truly bothersome is that most of the lines are meant to exclude others not include them. How can we bury our differences in understanding, if we define ourselves primarily by what we are and what others aren't? This is where the labels come in.

OK!

And how do those people being intolerant cast those in their cross hairs? They do that by Labeling them as something other than the caster is. Just because people exclude other people doesn't mean they don't use labels to do so. Wither it is exclusion or inclusion, the effect is the same. Someone is left out for being a cast that way by the use of a label. Violence need not produce a visual scar. Those scars almost always go away. It is the scars left on the soul that last the longest and hurt the most.

Differences is another topic altogether. If two people are from a region, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are alike or even speak the same language. Look at the Tribal confrontations that have happened among people in Africa. Look at the Bosnian conflict. Look at the Arabs in Iran. Labels are only given to define groups of people from other groups , not individuals. They are blanket statements that dehumanize the individual and promote an Us against them attitude. Point in fact the use of the term Gay in marriage, used to separate two people's wish to legally consecrate their lives together from other groups who have always had that right.

What part of the following statement did I get it wrong. In my opinion the word Judgmental is a politically correct phrase which has no value. You are claiming that without using labels which exclude human beings from other human beings that good ideas would not be exchanged. How is this then that there are 1000's of anonymous users, some on this very site who doesn't define themselves by any label other than their user name. How then can we exchange so many ideas without knowing who calls who what? I think you are getting Geography mixed up in topic which has nothing to do with where you were brought up. A black man, raised in Spain , who migrates to America. Is he a black man? Is he a Spaniard? Is he an American? Is he an African-American? A person may have a different perspective based on where he grew up, but does his origin define him as a person or does his character?

I'd really like to find out how many of these people who are against skimpy armor are actually modders. It doesn't take very much of a effort to blast someone elses work. especially if you have no idea how long it takes to do a mod. Personally I don't have any idea and would make a mess of anything I tried, so my hats off to those who can. To those who make beauty an art form for the rest of us gamers, I'd personal like to thank you. If someone doesn;'t like what you do because it reveals more artificial skin then you know how much of a life they have in the real world. I wouldn't let them bother you. Let them live in that small minded little pocket universe they dwel in . they are angry little people who embrace their anger, since it's the only thing they can find that keeps them warm. To the rest of the world they are nothing more than cold fish and the knowledge of that reality makes them even more angry.

Are we talking about success or greed here. Success is like progress. It builds upon itself and is only good if you continue to create an outstanding product or service. Bean counters and politicians will bleed a good idea dry because their focus is upon the well being of the institution instead of what it's supposed to stand for.

I understand this, but my take of the video was that when a person is looking to a field to enter into; That person being young and unsure of what he should get into, they should look to what stimulates them over and above the promise of a well paying job. What was so promising when a person enters college 3-5 years ago, may not be feasible upon graduation. We can look at the myriads of college educated people today, who are graduating to a bleak future in the professions that were so recently thriving. There is no guarantees that what was sought will be found and reality has a way of shifting individuals into the jobs that are out there. They may not care for what they end up doing but as the song goes. "My life has killed the dream I dreamed"

This is all about seeking employment in a position that you would enjoy even if you weren't getting paid for it. That doesn't mean that everyone would suddenly opt for all the glamourous jobs and abandon the less graceful jobs. There are people in every walk of life that are truely comfortable in jobs that would turn most peoples stomachs. There are those that actively seek to disgust others, thinking it humorous that others can't take what they can. Not everybody thinks of cleanliness and order, when they think of the ultimate position. We can see that by the exploits of the sadly deceased Steve Irwin, The Crocodile hunter. How many hear would think grabbing a poisonous snake in your bare hands fun. The crocodile hunter did. When I was in Job Corps, we visited a sewage plant and was given a tour be a person who was proud of what he did, because of the impact he had on the city he worked for. Enjoying your job doesn't mean sacrificing anything. It means orientating yourself to where you are most comfortable. You might never get the job you want, but the closer to that job, you do get the happier you'll be.

I don't pre-order anything. Why have your money setting in areas you can't access when there's so many emerigenices that can arise.

http://t.imgbox.com/acdxEN8C.jpg I found this on another site and thought it so profound that I needed to share it here. I know from history that human beings social and politically have evolved from Hunter gathers, to trible, to kingdoms, to nations and I was wondering why we have always sought a way to divide us as human beings, mostly according to the most superficial of reasons, other than to unite us for the betterment of the species. I could surmise that it related to times when food a reasources were sparse and required great effort to obtain. It stood to reason that groups remained small so that they could more easily feed, cloth and shelter them. I was wondering in today's world with global economies would it not be more efficient to remove the barriers of an older, more exclusive world. Would it not benefit mankind not to have individuals be refereed to by a geographic area, skin pigmentation or religious affiliation? Would it not expedite the spread of prosperity and understanding of the small differences of those in the human family so we can finally come to terms with our fears and anxieties over the unknown?

Have you ever gotten the idea that the universe doesn't like you? Didn't the same thing happen back around the turn of the 19th century. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/15/hundreds-injured-meteorite-russian-city-chelyabinsk

I think you need to get out more. This taking the words of a few idiots out there as well as linking talk radio as if everyone on the right who has a radio program spews the same hatfilled crap that a few do is as ludicrous as several on the right thinking that public education and public radio indoctrinates American youth in the socialists agenda. What gets me is the idea that anyone would assume that nuts and crackpots are getting inspiration from the news media. Certainly they may turn in such stations because they are ideologically compatible to what the person is saying. I remember when the Unibomber was caught. Those who dispised those in the environmental movement, that they connected to the left by virtue of not being able to see past their noses, were saying the same thing as you just did, but about the left. I have friends on the left and the right. Good friends and good people. There is no shortness of either honest upfront individuals or wacked out crackpots on either side of the political movement and the idea that anyone, anywhere needs to be motivated in their intentions, no matter if they are violent or not is dehumanizing and patently false. These people care nothing for anyone, which is why they try to make everyone pay for their discomfort. They couldn't care less what conservative or liberals say, because they only want to have their voice to be heard and that voice needs a gun in it's hand.

I think people aren't seeing the implications of this subtle question. This basically determines the way people seek pleasure or fulfillment in life. It is the difference between a person who purchases a cell phone, because it is a practical device for keeping in contact and a person that must have the latest gadget, no matter how much the cost, because happiness only lasts until you become unhappy. Once happiness of owning a new bobble fades to the mundane the person seeking happiness will search for the next object to bring it to them. This could be true for inanimate objects as well as relationships In a nutshell If contentment was a marathon, then happiness would be a sprint.

Would you be more pleased to have happiness or contentment in your life?

I'm just wondering if this shouldn't be posted in the off topic section. Just a thought.

My post was not meant to be a racial .

Oh wow you did too? My god it really seems the Nexus has some strange powers that brings people together, or shall I say soulmates together. Me and James met on August 29th last year, he read my post in the "School kills creativity" thread and saw I wanted to do game designing. He sent me a PM and an offer to do mods with him and his team, we talked, and we got together on the night of the 29th of August. Standing strong now ever since, in love like never before, committed beyond imagination. It's so nice to hear there are other people who met on the Nexus and made it IRL. I am sure me and James will as well. Thank you for sharing that Malachi. This is so cool it isn't even funny. Though I've not had much luck finding someone myself, I'm encouraged by the successes of at least four others. Thank you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siu6JYqOZ0g&feature=player_embedded#!

You guys know that I've bounced around on several forums like this. There was one a while back tha's sense closed which I was fairly active. It was like this and was fairly down to Earth. I met a dude on there that was a mod. He had been suffering from terrible fits of depression all his life and had several times cut himself before he got treatment. After that happened he openned up a small site that he ran on the side to help those, like him who have or was thinking of hurting themselves. A kind of support group, if you will. We'll he went missing for about a week and when he came back, this was last year sometimre, I found out he'd inadvertantly spilt tea all over his laptop and totally fried the thing. He was now using his phone to mod at our site as well as help others on his own. That didn't set right with me. Someone that helped people need something to help them with. I knew how terrible it was to try to log on anywhere from a phone, so I ended up buying him a laptop online. I had to do it that way because he lived in Scotland and they don't use US current there. Well, to make a long story short he and I had been talking and he was always talking about his mom. She had raised him and his siblings after she kicked her old man to the curb for cheating on her. She also had her bother and his fiance staying with her, at the time, because their house was getting restored. Anyway I started talking to her and we were really hitting it off. We'd talked and exchanged E-mail addresses, but primarily we communicated on Facebook. That thing started going s=Soutyh when her boy started up about the hardship that his mom was going through paying her bills. He'd done this stuff in the past, but I've always ignored him. It sounded like, to me that he was trying to get me to feel sorry for him and send him more money. Well after a while he stopped but it only took him a couple of days to start up with his moms financial woes. It wouldn't have been so bad, but I was having some serious financial difficulties myself and after about 3 days of hearing that crap I shot them both a message about my money being my money and It was me who decided if and when I was going to help someone else out. Well his mom came back that she had nothing to do with her son's actions and was pissed that i included her in one of his ramblings. Well it's been about a week now and Theres been virtally no communication between his mom and I. I've pretty much unfriended the guy and am thinking about doing the same to her. I had apologized for my actions to her but I think it's time to move on. I was wandering if you've or someone you know has ever went through one of these internet romances and what, if anything ever came out of it.

Do you understand why this has mainly happened in our country? Our country does not have a very healthy middle class anymore. "job creators" have basically benifited from how skewed our government works to make over 300 times more than an average worker without any intent to try to stimulate the economy back. For a capitalistic nation we have some of the most unfair taxations laws that rich benifit the most out of. Our country has states that get rid important state taxes in very red and blue states but our secretly increasing sales taxes knowing full well the onces that will suffer the most from this kind of taxation is everyone but the rich... The answer is not to get rid of government programs that help a majority of the nation just because we can't afford it anymore. But this is not ruling out that Welfare, medicare, medicade etc... should not be atleast reformed. You look at the banks in our country and how they have basically gotten to the point they are too big to fail. Just imagine what would happen if all majory buisnesses got this way eventually... It would be great if our country could work on small government but as it is now trying to shrink our government i really don't think is the right anwaser. What I know for sure about government and economics could be placed easily inside a thimble and still have room enough fort a thumb. What I see is that the two party system we have in America has successfully separated Americans from Americans and has replaced common sense with the ideology that keeps us separated and at each others throats while they, the special interest groups and big business walk arm in arm for their own benefit and not ours. What I believe of government programs is they are a sideshow to placate the masses into believing the government actually cares for them. Most of this is social engineering that robs from Peter to pay Paul and really doesn't aid in getting us anywhere except right back where were, but we , by virtue of our addiction to partisan bickering either feel vindicated or vindictive depending on which party comes up on top on election day. Kind of like backing a team in the Superbowl, but never playing for them. You want government to work for you? (1) Have then live with the same medical, social and retirement situations that the average citizen has to deal with. Set their retirement age to that of the average citizen and ban corporations who have donated to any politician from hiring that person for at least 5 years after they leave office, (2) Make it so that they don't get paid until they do something worth being paid for. (3) Have them drive themselves to work on the same streets, through the same rush hour traffic and pay the same for gas, out of their own pockets that we do. (4) Ban big money, special interest groups from giving them gifts and perks that are unrelated to the performance of their duties to their constituents and have every dollar changing hands documented and posted on the internet along with the names of the corporation(s) involved. As for the presidents. We should not be liable for the care and upkeep of ex presidents or flip the bill for their security. They are private citizens and I haven't heard of anyone of them who has left the office destitute. As far as business go if they are too big to fail then they are too big to exist in their present configuration. If they screw up then they screw up. They should not be bailed out like the banks, only so they can pay their execs bonuses and hoard the money we gave them. I'm pretty sure we haven't come out of the pit we are in because the banks are setting on the money. Government should stay out of business and business out of government. Let big business and big labor fight the good fight until there is a stalemate that neither side will give. Then government should be the arbitrator in the end, but only that, There's also a third element that effects society, but discussing that is banned here. This. Is. The. Problem. While your solutions are pretty much spot on, they have no hope of ever being implemented. The ONLY folks that have the power to change the way things are, are the very same people that benefit the MOST from the current situation. Trying to convince them to turn off their gravy train just isn't going to happen, except, perhaps, at gunpoint.... (regime change.....) It has been my observation that amercians, taken as a whole, are pretty lazy when it comes to government reform..... seems we would rather just complain about it, rather than doing something.. which again, is completely understandable, given that we don't have the power to actually DO anything. We don't get to pick who runs for public office, that is decided by someone else. (those with money) we are presented a choice of the lesser of two (or more) evils. Independents have very little chance of getting elected, as the folks with the money see them as a threat, they make REAL sure that someone else gets the better financing/public exposure/whathave you, and does their best to discredit the person they DON'T want in office. We NEED government reform, but, it is going to have to start with ELECTION reform. Limit campaign donations to 5000.00 dollars from an individual registered voter. Corporations are NOT people, and are NOT entitled to spend as much as they want as their 'free speech'. If it doesn't have a birth certificate, it is NOT entitled to the rights of one. Campaigns may last a total of three months, up to the date of the election. That's it. Get caught cheating by either campaigning early, or donations outside the above outlined limits, and you are banned from running for public office, for LIFE. (this would include a single individual handing out cash to other 'people' to contribute to the same campaign.) As Americans, we are are spoiled rotten drama queens that can't see past the fictional walls of the ivory towers we perceive around us. We've had our cake and have eaten it so long we've grown fat and complacent on the swill our leaders have served us for so long. Our cities and our infrastructures are crumbling around us as we constantly view things through the very rose colored glasses that we were given to us by the very people we place in office to take care of our business. What has happened to our country, we've allowed by constantly looking for instant gratification for our every whim and not scrutinizing the hand that fed it to us. I am an American, but I am not proud of being one just because I fell out of my mommas womb inside her borders. I price myself with what I've done to help those around me and chastise myself for failing to act when I should've. This flag waving the right does and the banner carrying the left does accomplishes nothing but allows those who blindly goosestep behind their puppet masters to become accustomed to these peoples flatulence. Unless we place the same scrutiny on the leaders of both sides, we will always be under their brand of opiate and will never truly have a voice in our government. This thing about political correctness of our society and the idea that we should never offend anyone as well as those who diligently search for something to be offended by has turned this honest and open debate into a fiascle. We are told we shouldn't offend others by the very people who actively search for anything that they can act offended by and in so doing stifle free speech, while they claim to glorify the concept,. We have indeed a lot of things to work on and I dare say it doesn't start with our politican. It starts with us and it will begin when we start looking at ourselves as individuals and look around us. The minute we do we might just find out that there are more than just us that think the same way. In that we might just start the trimor that may turn into the very Earthquake that moves this country in being closer to what we've deluded ourselves into believing it is.

I've been through so many Winters out over the road, it isn't even funny and though I do get enlivened by the chill, I've never really gotten to like the cold, over the long haul. I am the one you see, in the winter time wrapped up like Nanook of the North trying to force my coat, jacket, blanket, sleeping bag and parka enshrouded self threw a mall doorway by getting a running start from the parking lot. Cold seems to go through me like money on payday. I found out long ago that pay day only meant I had the money to pay others. Seemingly I am only the middle man. lol I have noticed that there are some people who just don't get the whole Antarctica thing and wear shorts and short sleeves all the way up to where the Mercury in the thermostat implodes like a tiny black hole. I guess they like the feeling of the penguin feathers as they nuzzle up against the guy, looking to warm themselves. Heck. half the time I want to run up to them, look them right in the eye to see if there is anyone in there that knows it's flipping cold out here. I often imagine seeing a tiny body looking out through the eyes, like a snow truck driver wrapped up in ab parka, with a muffler tied around it's neck, using a mittened hand to wipe the inside of the irises so they can see more clearly how to guide the person towards wherever the mechanical body was going. No human being should dress for the Caribbean in the sub arctic tundra of upper New York State in thedepths of Winter. Brrrrrr! :blink: :blink: :blink: :blink: I was wondering how many people feel as I do and wanted to hear from those alien beings, wherever their planet of origin that are unaffected by the cold. I'm going to wrap myself up and listen. lol. Have a great day!

Do you understand why this has mainly happened in our country? Our country does not have a very healthy middle class anymore. "job creators" have basically benifited from how skewed our government works to make over 300 times more than an average worker without any intent to try to stimulate the economy back. For a capitalistic nation we have some of the most unfair taxations laws that rich benifit the most out of. Our country has states that get rid important state taxes in very red and blue states but our secretly increasing sales taxes knowing full well the onces that will suffer the most from this kind of taxation is everyone but the rich... The answer is not to get rid of government programs that help a majority of the nation just because we can't afford it anymore. But this is not ruling out that Welfare, medicare, medicade etc... should not be atleast reformed. You look at the banks in our country and how they have basically gotten to the point they are too big to fail. Just imagine what would happen if all majory buisnesses got this way eventually... It would be great if our country could work on small government but as it is now trying to shrink our government i really don't think is the right anwaser. What I know for sure about government and economics could be placed easily inside a thimble and still have room enough fort a thumb. What I see is that the two party system we have in America has successfully separated Americans from Americans and has replaced common sense with the ideology that keeps us separated and at each others throats while they, the special interest groups and big business walk arm in arm for their own benefit and not ours. What I believe of government programs is they are a sideshow to placate the masses into believing the government actually cares for them. Most of this is social engineering that robs from Peter to pay Paul and really doesn't aid in getting us anywhere except right back where were, but we , by virtue of our addiction to partisan bickering either feel vindicated or vindictive depending on which party comes up on top on election day. Kind of like backing a team in the Superbowl, but never playing for them. You want government to work for you? (1) Have then live with the same medical, social and retirement situations that the average citizen has to deal with. Set their retirement age to that of the average citizen and ban corporations who have donated to any politician from hiring that person for at least 5 years after they leave office, (2) Make it so that they don't get paid until they do something worth being paid for. (3) Have them drive themselves to work on the same streets, through the same rush hour traffic and pay the same for gas, out of their own pockets that we do. (4) Ban big money, special interest groups from giving them gifts and perks that are unrelated to the performance of their duties to their constituents and have every dollar changing hands documented and posted on the internet along with the names of the corporation(s) involved. As for the presidents. We should not be liable for the care and upkeep of ex presidents or flip the bill for their security. They are private citizens and I haven't heard of anyone of them who has left the office destitute. As far as business go if they are too big to fail then they are too big to exist in their present configuration. If they screw up then they screw up. They should not be bailed out like the banks, only so they can pay their execs bonuses and hoard the money we gave them. I'm pretty sure we haven't come out of the pit we are in because the banks are setting on the money. Government should stay out of business and business out of government. Let big business and big labor fight the good fight until there is a stalemate that neither side will give. Then government should be the arbitrator in the end, but only that, There's also a third element that effects society, but discussing that is banned here.

We are a fast food society. We want as much as posible as quickly as possible. Magical pills to make us feel good and surgical procedures to make us loose weight in a blink of an eye. It wouldn't surprise me at all if these drugs were the cause of a lot of our problems. Problems that we would rather cover up then take the time and effort to fix them the right way.

I'm not knocking government programs. I was on welfare while I was going through detox. The government just needs to figure out a workable way of implimenting these so thety can be of the most benefit to society as a whole. That was what all these were put in place for. Welfare, medicare, medicade WIC are all here to enrich society by bringing a standard to the lives of the public. The problem is that there are too many out there that abuse these and not enough people to go after the fraud.