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Comment by The Big Blue Frog on October 13, 2011 at 5:44pm

It's happened again. I've inadvertently gotten myself into another Facebook fracas.

Comment by Joseph P on September 14, 2011 at 2:25pm

I haven't ever gotten a chip in my windshield, for that matter.  To a car windshield or a faceplate, they're no problem ... but to an exposed face at 80 mph (130 kph), plus whatever velocity the rock gained from the tire that threw it ... yeah, not good.

 

Yup, I love my job.  I get paid way too much, not that I'll ever express that sentiment to my bosses.  I've had some days for which I get 9 or 10 hours of pay for a lot of driving and about an hour and a half of actual work at the far end of the trip.  Plus, I own a $12k car (I'll let you do the currency conversion on that, yourself) which is about a half to a third of the value that they use to calculate the compensation for mileage.  I make out like a bandit.

Comment by Joseph P on September 14, 2011 at 2:09pm

I live near highways with crap-loads of 18-wheelers that throw around rocks like they're popcorn.  North Carolina has shit soil.  What isn't hard, red clay is rock.

 

Admittedly, I do a lot more highway driving than most.  I do on-site tech-support of work-from-home employees of my company ... about 850 clients, although we're expanding that to about 2,000, at the moment.  I have to drive all over the state, when someone's computer blows up and needs to be replaced or dealt with on-site.  I log about 800 - 1,000 miles (1,300 - 1,600 kilometers) a week, on average.

 

I think I get hit by a rock about every other day, on average.

Comment by Joseph P on September 14, 2011 at 1:56pm

Small-L libertarianism is reasonable.  I still think they have a few bad ideas, but I can at least respect those who think we should work for slightly smaller government.  It's the Anarcho-Capitalist types (the Capital-L's) who are completely around the twist.  They want NO government, except for contract law.  I'd love to know how they plan to enforce even that law, though, with no state military or police force.

 

Helmet and safety belt laws are there because when some idiot gets in an accident and runs up huge medical bills because he/she wasn't wearing a seat belt, the state usually ends up eating the medical bills.  I'd call it natural selection, if the person dies right away, but that doesn't always happen.  It's the worst of both worlds, if the person receives fatal injuries and takes a few days or weeks to die in the hospital.

 

Helmet laws don't go far enough.  Full-face helmets should be required.  I've had my windshield hit by small rocks dozens (probably hundreds, but I haven't been counting) of times, while driving on the highway.  In a car or on a motorcycle with a full-face helmet, the rock just bounces off and everything continues running smoothly.  If someone with an open-face helmet gets hit in the face with a rock, it's likely to take that person out and cause an accident with several surrounding cars, when the motorcycle flies out of control.  That then becomes my problem, if I'm in one of those cars.

This is a basic, public-safety measure.  It's not a particular hardship.  It's far from a gross infringement upon people's freedoms.

Comment by Joseph P on September 14, 2011 at 12:46pm

There are a few assholes here and there.  I've encountered very few, though.

 

Most of the big brawls I've had (not with people who are assholes, just in which we've had a massive difference of opinions) were with Libertarians.

Comment by Ben Roth on August 16, 2011 at 7:32pm

I get the dear in the headlights look constantly, and not long afterwards the lashing out is also common. This happens because challenging beliefs that you rely on mentally is very unpleasant. You're convincing the logical part of their brain and the emotional part is fighting back with the standard responses: freeze and hope the predator loses interest. When that fails, lash out and convince the predator it's not worth the effort. When that fails abandon hope.

The sad part is that people don't automatically change their believes in the face of evidence. Doing that is something we have to learn, and it's very hard to teach that lesson at the same time that you're asking them to put it into practice.

I'm not sure there really are any solutions when a person consistently makes decisions with emotion rather than logic. You can't logically argue your way to victory. You have to make them WANT to be convinced on a deep emotional level. Not sure there's a definitive way to accomplish that. If it were easy to write a book or a step by step instruction that always convinces the reader/opposition to be an atheist, it would exist and everyone would be one by now.

Also, a lot of the stuff by Dawkins/Hitchens/Harris is intended for public argument not one-on-one proselytizing. The approach has to be different depending on whether you're trying to convince the person you're talking to or the audience listening--just like Nick Nailor explained to his son in Thank You For Smoking.

Comment by Joseph P on August 10, 2011 at 8:28am

Interesting idea, from an analogy perspective.  I'll let you do the work within the actual medium, though.

 

Where will you get blue?

Comment by Joseph P on July 18, 2011 at 7:31am

You killed the link, Joshua.  Also, at least try to make some pretense of working your blog into something on topic.  Write a blog about refuting a theist argument, and post the link to that.  Have some tact, man.

Comment by A3Kr0n on July 9, 2011 at 11:37am

Mike - Maybe I'll try it sometime. I started "chatting" on someone's blog after his post "Why P.Z. Meyer is Afraid" got Pharyngulated. I will call him Joel. You may find him interesting.

Comment by A3Kr0n on July 9, 2011 at 10:49am

Mike - Ya, I looked at it, and it looked like a one on one help chat sort of thing, so I didn't click on it. I take it you've been there a couple times?

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