Halo

Keystone XL

So Boerd said
So is the sun. The only question is when.Can you imagine how silly it would have been in the 1830s for government to invest in hydropower at the expense of oil? We shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. Coal and Oil to natural gas, natural gas to nuclear fission, fission to fusion. I suspect the renewable we know will never be nothing but a sideshow on the global stage.

For all practical intents and purposes, the sun can provide us with a limitless amount of renewable energy. When the sun dies, we fucking die, so the energy it can provide will last until the death of humanity. I'm gonna just count that as infinite, here - it's renewable energy. Unlike oil and fossil fuels. Which will run out far before the death of Earth and humanity. Please, don't be ridiculous.

This isn't the 1830s. Arguing for what we should do now with what we should have done 200 years ago is ludicrous. Also, the linear way you view this hypothetical development of energy sources has already been fucked to high hell by the fact that we already use nuclear fission and are working towards nuclear fusion, and by the fact that that's just sort of not how things work. Neat, linear, orderly little progressions like you picture don't occur in real life, in which we are always pushing forwards to new frontiers, and someone is always trying to jump ahead of the curve. As for your assertion that renewable energy as we know it is somehow obsolete already, well, there are statistics all over the place that show the ridiculous amounts of power we could generate if we had X amount of solar panels or Y amount of hydroelectric plants - I'm sure you can find them yourself. They provide plenty of evidence that renewable energy as we know it is feasible.

Keystone XL

The Nexerus said
Oil is never going to die out. We're never going to make plastics out of hydro-electricity or the wind. Calling the oil industry a necessary evil is unnecessarily pessimistic. It's the attitude that causes objection to things like Keystone XL.

Then we will have to find an alternative to plastics. Oil is finite. One day, we're gonna run out. It isn't produced nearly as fast as we use it, and simple mathematics tells us that means it is gonna run out someday, and we're gonna have to rely on something else someday. If anything, it tells us that our investment in alternative energy sources is even more important - we need to stop using our reserves of oil on energy, when other options exist, so that we have as much as possible to produce other things that we can only get from oil.

And I don't think it's pessimistic, it's realistic. Believing oil will last forever and never preparing a fallback plan for when it runs out and everything goes tits up would be ridiculously over-optimistic.

Keystone XL

The Nexerus said
We should absolutely be investing in numerous sources of energy outside of oil. A diverse economy is a competitive and efficient one, and the energy market is no exception. I'm not against investment in alternative energy, I just don't think we should be obstructing oil production and transportation in misguided environmental crusades.

Well, agreed. I never argued otherwise. As the current status quo goes, oil is our only option. We rely on it, so we need to damn well make sure it's reliable, 'cause we're fucked without oil. My whole point was to acknowledge that, and then to go further and say that we should try to develop alternate sources, to move beyond the "necessary evils" involved with our dependence on oil. I think it's pretty hard to argue that it's better to fuel ourselves on oil than clean energy sources, were that option available - so we need to invest to make that option available.

So Boerd said
The question is, should the government do it. I say no, because they muck it up. See: Solyndra.

Is that sort of a different argument? I referred to government because, in this situation, a) they're the ones who get to approve/disapprove Keystone being built, and b) they're the representatives of humanity on a wider scale. They decide our laws and represent us internationally. They act on our behalf. Therefore, my point that humanity as a whole should be investing in alternate energy... well, with the way things are now, that sorta means out governments invest, as our representatives, as those who collect our taxes, etc. etc. Whether you believe it should function in a different way is an entirely separate issue from my point - that humanity should be investing in it (and the mention of government because it is just, currently, the way in which we'd do that, as leaders and representatives of us.) Maybe it would be better if it were done another way, sure, but that's a different thing.

Normal?

So Boerd said
That's a discussion for another thread.You wouldn't want to live in a perfectly accepting or even tolerant society tolerant of whatever nonconformists do. There would be no laws preventing companies from not serving black people, and certainly Donald Sterling wouldn't be banned from the NBA as all he did was say dumb stuff, not do anything.

And I didn't say I would want to live in a society tolerant of people not conforming in whatever way they like. Funny, that. For the sake of order, we need to have some degree of conformity as mandatory in the form of laws we must follow. I never said otherwise. Non-conformity is believing in not conforming just for the sake of conformity - if there is a legitimate reason to "conform" or to adhere to a certain rule, then it isn't violating that principle in some way. What hair colour the majority of people, however, does not fall under "legitimate reason" for people to not dye their hair whatever damn colour they like.

The Nexerus said
It's naive to believe that people are capable of not being influenced by their surroundings. Every decision that every person has ever made was weighed in based on what the reactions of their peers would be.

Yes, which is why your argument that a belief in a policy of non-conformity would lead to everyone looking as outlandish as possible makes no sense. Anti-conformists, yes - they would intentionally look as different as possible. Non-conformists? Half the time they'd end up with the exact same views, making the exact same choices, as everyone else anyway. They wouldn't "rebel" in every single way. They just wouldn't feel the need to do the same as everyone else if they didn't want to on certain things. Which is why people feeling free to be individuals wouldn't result in the collapse (or at least uncontrollable ludicrousness) of society as you and So Boerd seem to believe, and why people's individuality should certainly be accepted in society.

Keystone XL

So Boerd said
So why make it a condition? Either do it or don't, but it has nothing to do with keystone.

I... what? That's my exact point - that we should be investing in alternate energy. I mentioned Keystone because that's what the whole thread - the gateway into the conversation - was about, so of course I was discussing the issue in relevance to Keystone. I don't give a crap about Keystone, I live in the UK. My point was that sure, we have to let things like Keystone go ahead 'cause overall they're beneficial in the current circumstances, despite the negative effects, but that we should be working to change those circumstances so we don't have to have those "necessary evils" in future.

Normal?

The Nexerus said
Non-conformity is a lack of adhering to societal norms. Anti-conformity is an intentional avoidance of adherence to societal norms. The only difference between the two is whether the deference is accidental or intentional. Provided a non-conformist dresses themselves, they must also be an anti-conformist.As for why anti-conformity is a bad thing,

I fully agree that anti-conformity is a terrible and ridiculous thing, because it's just another type of conformity - your ideals are still dictated by society, just in a polar-opposite fashion. But non-conformity and anti-conformity are completely different things. Anti-conformity is deliberately adopting the opposite of societal norms. Non-conformity is simply not feeling pressured to conform - meaning that if your natural tendency is the same as that of those around you, you'll do the same as them, and if it isn't, you'll do something else. Your argument only works when you're discussing one specific aspect - for example, someone who anti-conforms and someone who non-conforms are indistinguishable if they both choose to dye their hair bright purple and neon green, even if their reasons for doing it are completely different. But when you look outside of a singular action or aspect like that, the difference becomes apparent - the non-conformist might have bright purple and neon green hair, but will probably act similarly to others in many other respects, because their natural tendency/desire happens to be similar to those of the people around them, whereas the anti-conformist will not act similarly to everyone else across all things, indiscriminately.

Normal?

So Boerd said
Not bullying is tolerance. Encouraging or celebrating is acceptance. I will tolerate being a PETA nut. I will never accept it. The least the bullied could do is stop threatening the bully with force. If you don't want to bake a cake for a gay couple, that should be tolerated.

What's your point? Either way, people are still bullied for those things on a massive scale and are therefore neither tolerated or accepted, even by your definition. So my point still stands.
As for the second part, that's going off on such a tangent that I don't really know how to address it. Okay, you're welcome to feel that the the gay rights movement is going about gaining equal rights in the wrong way, I guess? That really doesn't change the fact that they're still brutally discriminated against and are technically given subhuman treatment, considering they're not even allowed to get married in many places. Whether they're going about gaining acceptance the right way or not, that only highlights that they aren't accepted, and are but one of many groups that society is not accepting of, as I said.

Keystone XL

So Boerd said
To make government "investment", which is really a euphemism for funneling money to donors, a neccessary condition is silly. This pipeline will reduce CO2.

So if you are saving up rather than investing, you are putting your own prosperity ahead of the environment. Wow. You're as bad as the oil fatcats.

The pipeline will reduce CO2? Okay. Sure. I'll believe you on that. Now, what relevance does that have to anything I said? Does it change anything about what I said? Not even slightly. Fossil fuels still damage the environment, and are still finite (regardless of how much is left, it's finite), and therefore still need to be replaced at some point in future, if only for humanity's benefit. Therefore, investment in alternate energy sources makes logical sense for humanity's collective wellbeing.

That logic is so fallacious it's not even worth responding to.
1) I'm not actively damaging the environment. Perhaps, through inaction, I'm allowing it to happen, but I have little choice unless I wish to be an environmental campaigner, and I don't. By your logic, nobody has any right to disagree with any policy or any idea if they're not actively campaigning against it, which is, to put it plainly, moronic. That's why everyone is allowed to vote, and the opinions of campaigners and politicians are not the only ones that are considered.
2) At what point did I criticise the "oil fatcats", as you phrased it? Precisely nowhere. You're not even arguing against my points, you've seen that I've said something about alternative energy and are accrediting a bunch of typical arguments to me, when I've said absolutely nothing that has any relevance to what you're replying with.

Normal?

The Nexerus said
Society is already too accepting. If we were any more tolerant of people going out of their way to look funny, all of our major cities would end up looking like the Capitol from the Hunger Games.

I'm assuming you're saying this specifically in reference to this singular sentence amongst everything else I said: "people should be less judgemental and more accepting". Maybe just quote the bit that's relevant, man.

Anyway, I don't think society is too accepting at all. People still get bullied and discriminated against for everything from having an unusual hair colour to being gay. That doesn't particularly sound like being "accepting". People should feel free to be individuals - which doesn't at all mean that they go out of their way to look "funny". If you think that being an individual and not feeling the need to conform to societal expectations regarding appearance means people will deliberately go out of the way to look as outlandish as possible, you're freaking deluded. Anti-conformity is distinctly different from non-conformity. Several of my friends enjoy dressing smartly in school uniform and take the piss out of me for looking scruffy all the time - regardless of what's accepted, that's what they like. Same for me and my scruffiness, even though it's abnormal.

Spam, Let's Buy An Island

Blitzkrieg said
Smash Mouth.Papa Roach.

I actually kinda like Papa Roach.

Dervish said
If by genre, you mean pop, then yes, yes indeed.Whenever people complain about (_)'s decade of music being total shit need to remember that there's always great music being made, and what's popular now doesn't mean what's going to stand the test of time. I hear a lot of songs I grew up with on the radio now that were absolutely fantastic that I think will be played and enjoyed for decades because they're fantastic. People from my parent's generation with all the 60s and 70s rock always say that our music sucks now adays, but they have classic rock radio stations to point to that showcases all of the best of what they grew up with. I'm sure if we went back in time and turned on the radio then we'd be completely baffled at how anyone liked most of that shit. I kind of want to give my parents a flash drive with a bunch of the best songs from my library to listen to, just to show them 'Hey, look, awesome music happens these days, too.'

Okay, I'll clarify the question: the whole genre of pop was like that? And I'll also clarify that this is rhetorical. xD

And hey, I'm of the same view. I love music of all times and all genres - enough for it to be actively pointed out by several people. I feel that a lot of music is time-dependent, brilliant in its period but lacking in relevance and connection to an audience from another time, but strongly believe that there is also just timeless, great music. But I feel like we've actually had this conversation in the past at some point, or something? I dunno.