knapplc

Calm down. Read what I wrote again. I meant nothing by it. We're cool.

The Big 12 won't be around long enough to worry about grabbing other teams.

I have no idea what you're saying here. Show me where I've said this. Tilting at windmills again. Your giant is religion, so of course it's the most dangerous thing, and what you focus on. But reality doesn't support your personal angst. Reality says that humans conflict. You agree with this, so all you have to do is take that next step and let go of whatever personal angst you have against religion and see reality. See the windmill for what it really is. When you're ready to do that, you'll be amazed at how peaceful life can be. Congratulations. You've had a sh**ty life. Welcome to humanity. This doesn't, however, give a monopoly on suffering, nor make you any more an expert on it than anyone else. Where am I lying to anyone? I'm saying humans conflict, humans suffer, and whatever means they can find to assuage that suffering, who are you to tell them to stop? Belief in a nonexistent god doesn't harm someone. You telling them that there's no god, there's no security blanket, doesn't help in the least. It compounds their misery by taking away the one thing they hold on to. And the arrogance is that you'd do it thinking you're doing them a favor in the midst of their suffering. +1 internet tough guy points for you, I suppose. Your sh**ty life gives you license to sh#t on the next guy. You're not looking for truth, you're vindictive. Of course it isn't about use for you - if the thing you hate has a use, you minimize it. You have some personal axe to grind against religion and anyone or anything you perceive to be Theist-based stirs your anger. I show you how pointless your crusade is and you reply yeah, but religion is bad. Blah, blah, blah. It's bad, you're bad, I'm bad, humans are bad. Welcome to reality. Welcome to the improper use of a thing by a human. What an amazing discovery you've made.

This is why I compared this conversation to a discussion with SOCAL. To you there is no god. Therefore you must admit that these things you decry about religion are human-based. Being human-based, it is clear that were there no religion there would still be conflicts. Sure, 9/11's roots are in religion. The same cannot be said of WWI or WWII, Korea or Vietnam. You are so focused on religion that you fail to see the obvious - humans conflict. So there would be 3,000 people alive today and we wouldn't be fighting in Afghanistan, etc, etc. What solace does that give to the tens of millions who died in the other major conflicts of the last 100 years? What solace does that give to the tens of millions Stalin killed in his own backyard? It's just another side of the same coin - human conflict. You are also choosing to turn your eye from the tens of millions of people who receive food, clothing, shelter, asylum, health care and sundry other succoring actions from religious charities. If you're going to remove the bad religion has done you remove the good as well. Or you can, again, realize that charity is a human trait, not inherently religious, and see that charities would exist with or without religion. Either way, your aim is misplaced. Security blankets are for whomever needs them. Go do some missionary work in Africa and tell me those people running from rape and war don't need security blankets. What an arrogant statement.

So this is the windmill at which you choose to tilt, and come hell or high water you'll do your darnedest to eliminate religion in the world. How utterly wasteful, when you already know that in the absence of that religion a different excuse for all the wrongs you list will crop up. And then you'll tilt at that windmill, all the while not realizing (or being too afraid to face) that the bogeyman is inside you already, inside me, inside everyone, and you're never ever going to get rid of it until you get rid of humans. All your philosophizing boils down to a simple axe to grind with Christianity. That's why these conversations with you are as pointless as discussing government with SOCAL. To him government is a monopoly on coercion and violence. To you, religion is a great evil man inflicts on himself. Doesn't matter which side the coin falls on, it's a pointless argument.

Suggestions for what to eat? That depends on what kind of pizza you like, and they have about a dozen varieties. "The Local" is standard American pizza fare. You can also make your own, so it's as you like. They don't take cards for purchases under $5, so if you're just going for a slice and a soda, you'd better have cash. If you get the combo with a salad just be aware that the salad they serve is slightly better than the salad you would expect to get in a 1980's era Eastern European gulag. But the pizza is swell. Be sure to give them a fake, funny name when you order - they like reading them off over the intercom when your slice is done. But don't use D'Artagnan - they have trouble with D'Artagnan. When you pick up your slice, be sure to ask for parmesan cheese. They shred it fresh and it's free.

This, apparently, is a hard thing for many people to wrap their brains around. The NFL is a business. The NCAA is becoming more business-like every day.

Irrelevant to whom? Aren't you relevant to yourself, your friends and family? This entire self-debasing monologue might be correct in an objective sense but the objective isn't what we concern ourselves with in our lives for the most part. The fact is humanity is a social species and even if your work doesn't stick out during your lifetime, the lives you touch and the things you do are a part of a causal chain that will ring out throughout eternity. The same is true for you as it is for a prominent person like Barack Obama. Right now you are affecting me by having this conversation. I'm thinking, interacting. I'm not doing something else I might be doing if we weren't having this conversation. This will set in motion a chain of events I can't foresee, but on a more macro scale delivering milk, keeping our society running, could very well be the actions that allows us collectively to find a way to live forever, or come to an understanding of the universe, or at least enjoy ourselves a little while longer. You should be concerned with the objective. If you're not, you're wasting your time. Everything you say, think and do is pointless. Your joys, your fears, your loves, your losses, whatever, is without merit or moment. It means nothing, aside from your immediate existence, and frankly, nobody but you cares. Your grandiose "causal chain" makes a nice story, but bottom line, nothing anyone does amounts to anything. Live forever? The universe won't live forever, my friend. And even if you did live forever, what would you do with forever? How does it benefit you to live forever? Knowledge is finite, and at some point you'll know everything, you'll have done everything, and you'll have thought of everything. Then what? This is something you see as beneficial? I see this as hell. What a waste of existence. Next to no difference between people? Really? No two lives are ever the same. No two stories are ever the same. No two pieces of music are ever the same. Even if someone could live a life fundamentally different (whatever that means) from someone else, what would this life look like, and why would it be desirable? Again, we're a social species. We derive a good share of our experience of happiness from the collective, from commonality. It's in our genes and the nurturing communities most of us grow up in. Words like 'irrelevant' or 'no difference' are both wrong and unimportant to the discussion. No, those words are entirely the discussion. You want life to have meaning, but it doesn't. It's an accident - complex carbons formed more complex molecules, growing ever more complex, until it evolved into life. That life evolved further, and then there was us. The rest is just details. Your life has meaning to you, but not to me. Not to the guy down the street. Just last week we had a member of our board die. We all felt saddened, but has your life changed because of his death? How many tears did you shed? How much sleep did you lose because of his death? He was a father, a husband and (apparently) a good guy. But you didn't mourn him, and his passing doesn't affect you in any meaningful way. Tell me again how relevant he was to you, when you haven't thought about him until I brought him up at the beginning of this paragraph? The difference will be that I employed rationality, not faith, as a way of experiencing the world. Unlike faith, which can't discover, can't grow, can't change, or learn, or progress, science and reason can. They can fundamentally alter the way human beings experience life: the duration of it through medicine, the comfort of it through technology, the wonder of it through science, the beauty of it through art and literature. What has religion or believing in the unsupported ever done for us that we couldn't do for ourselves? It hasn't made us happy. It hasn't made us moral. It hasn't taught us anything we couldn't have discovered on our own. Neither does Linus' blanket, but that's not the point of Linus' blanket. You seem to think that for religion to be useful it must meet all ends, be all things to all people. To use Mr. Harris' line again, Where else in our discourse as human beings is that sort of thing acceptable? To what other thing do we apply such a litmus test?

You don't believe in Heaven? Not at this time. But I reserve the right to modify my stance in the event of new information coming to light. I wouldn't call it a presupposition. I don't believe in God so clearly I don't believe he gives life meaning. You seemed to be contrasting objective meaning between a theistic and atheistic universe. In either case it seems to me that meaning is subjective, or dependent upon a subject, or consciousness. Adding God doesn't change anything for me. You presupposed that "God gives life meaning" was my point. It was not. Whether adding God changes things for you is not relevant to the next person, it is only relevant to you. Don't know. Don't claim to know. But so far we haven't established a single thing God is good for outside of comfort, and even that is tenuous. Who are you to say that someone is or is not comforted by a belief in God? I know dozens of people who are. You're telling me they aren't? On what basis? Would 9/11 have happened without Islam? Would The Inquisition have happened without Christianity? The issue is not whether or not people would do bad things without religion––of course they would. The issue is are we doing more bad things with a false sense of justification because of religion? Are we losing something by pretending we have this life figured out as so many Monotheists do. Faith is the pretense of an answer. The trouble with having answers is that you cease to ask questions. Some cease to ask questions, but not all. You want to paint all of Theism with the same brush of mindlessness, which is unsupported opinion. But don't come to me with wringing hands over wrongs done by religion - again, in the absence of God, these are wrongs done by humans, and religion is irrelevant to whether they were done or not. We wouldn't be doing more or less wrong to each other with or without religion, we'd just use different excuses. My answer is that no such place has ever been demonstrated to exist and it is wildly inconsistent with both basic decency and the idea of omni-benevolence. To say that an entity could create a place like this is good, moral, and praiseworthy, is to debase language to the point of meaninglessness. All you have to do is imagine a human being attempting anything like this and you will automatically come to the conclusion that this person was the most evil person to ever exist. Every terrible thing humanity has suffered––war, starvation, poverty, loneliness, murder, rape, torture, etc.––in totality is less than the pain one lost soul would suffer. Agreed. It seems completely counter to what God is claimed to be. And to avoid this place you have to live a life no human has ever lived, and believe on no living proof that such a place is real and such an outcome is possible, and if you ask questions you get no answers only faith. Well, faith has its place in our lives (I have faith that my wife loves me, I have faith that Bo will lead us back to where we belong, I have faith that there is life somewhere else out there), but like I said before, if I gave my child a boatload of instruction and life lessons until she turned two, then left her for the rest of her life and expected her to follow those instructions to the letter despite evidence against the wisdom of those instructions and in the face of influences and societal pressures that obviate those instructions, and made a decree that if she has not followed all of those instructions to the letter until she turns 50 she'd be thrown into prison for the rest of her life, that'd probably qualify me as a pretty darned crummy dad, wouldn't it? I have a hard time believing that this is what God is, or is all about. This is not a loving God, this is an absentee father. **** Board software limits the number of quotes we can use in a single post. I've broken this up as a result; continued in next post.

How does pretending you're immortal make life meaningful? You would have to ask someone who thinks they're immortal. But you'd better do it quick, because if your head comes away from your neck, it's over! How does God make life meaningful? This is your presupposition. I don't contend that God(s) give life meaning. I contend God(s) give comfort, in much the same way that a security blanket or a cup of hot cocoa gives comfort. What is God's purpose? What is God's meaning? What's the point of him? Does he make one himself? I'd be a gazillionaire if I knew these answers. The most brilliant philosophers and theologians have been pondering this question for millennia and have no answer. If you know, by all means, out with it! All of #2 I hate to break this to you, but if God is a human creation, then these problems you're listing are human creations as well, meaning that they'll exist whether you have God(s) or not. Removing God/religion from this entire paragraph is simply word play. There are about a million different human ideas and ideals that can f#*k up your sh#t in the dreary present. You have a bug up your butt about God(s) so you focus on it, but it's just a talking point. It's as valid as waging wars over a stolen wife, or a presumed insult, or invading Iraq to avenge an attempt to assassinate your father, a former president. Removing God(s) from the world just means that humans will focus on some other reason to go all angsty on themselves. God(s) are not ONLY Linus' blanket, but used properly they are as harmless as Linus' blanket. Used improperly a teddy bear can be a murder weapon. People have been killed over the sports team they like. Welcome to humanity. Hell This is a great question. What is Hell? Why does it exist? Why would God create us, allow us to fall away/separate ourselves from him, then give us a tremendously narrow road back to him which we can ONLY travel if we believe in his son's death on the cross, and all the while the penalty for failing any of this is eternal roasting in Hell? I have no answer for this question. If you have one, I'd like to know. I'll tell you what the future of our species is - 500, 1,000 or 10,000 years from now, humans will still be living largely irrelevant lives. The common man will live a common life, do common things, die a common death, and be forgotten mere decades after he's gone. Or, if/when we solve the genetic puzzles that we're working on, we'll never die, yet remain irrelevant. Seven billion, 15 billion, 100 billion humans won't all be meaningful. In fact, none of them will have much of an impact on anything. This is the lot of man. Whether we have gods or no gods, none of it will change. That's what man is. Common and largely irrelevant. But even if your average man is driving a milk truck somewhere in Alpha Centauri and dying within a hundred miles of where he was born on some strange terraformed world, I wouldn't use the world meaningless to describe him. If falling in love, having a family, enjoying art, exploring science, facing philosophy, working, sweating, bleeding, crying, dancing, talking, arguing, debating, football, leisure, entertainment, film, literature, poetry, theater, nature, beer, and friendship are all meaningless, then I'll simply say that I prefer the meaningless a hell of a lot more than sucking my thumb, clutching my blanket, and pretending it's any different. If there is no god, then all of this paragraph is the same whether you believe in a nonexistent god or not. You believe in no god. A Christian believes in their god. A Muslim in theirs, a Hindu in theirs, etc. You all will live a life where there will be falling in love, having a family, enjoying art, exploring science, facing philosophy, working, sweating, bleeding, crying, dancing, talking, arguing, debating, football, leisure, entertainment, film, literature, poetry, theater, nature, beer, and friendship. There will be next to no difference in their lives whatsoever, or, not much difference in the life of a Deist compared to an Atheist as there is in the lives of a Packers fan compared to a Broncos fan. Or a Sports fan and a person who hates sports. What meaning do you see in life? In whatever context you wish to describe yourself, Theist, Atheist, Agnostic, whatever, what meaning will your life have had one million years from now? And how is that any different than the life of the average Christian who lives on your street? Finally, I have no idea why you would be insulted that Kate Beckinsale is, I believe, now single. But whatever. Enjoy your date.

It is possible that humanity could live on indefinitely, although I admit that this is unlikely. If there are an infinite amount of universes and humanity discovers how to warp space to travel between them then humanity could theoretically exist forever. But if we assume that the universe ends, then why do you assume that nothing matters? Do most people spend their time wondering whether or not the universe will exist in billions of years hence? How much effect does this idea really have on your life? Personally, I worry about the things that I can control. I don't worry about what is going to happen in the far future. As a matter of fact, I don't care about anything that happens after I die with a few obvious exceptions. To the bold - if it all ends/goes away, and in the aftermath there is nothing and no-one to notice, then it really truly does not matter who we are or what we do. It'll all be gone, even the concept of lamenting the loss will be gone. What better definition of "nothing matters" could there be? This is point I'm making. If nothing matters, then whatever we do, whether that be religion or philosophy or gardening or rocket science, all of it will be gone, and all are equally worthy/unworthy pursuits at any specific point in time. I like your philosophy of worrying about what you can control. That makes the most sense. It's easier said than done, though - I seem to spend a lot of time worrying about the poorly timed stoplights in this stupid town, and worrying about the general idiocy of other drivers. I'd have a lot less gray hair if I could stop worrying about those two things.

Acceptable to whom? To a philosopher, or a scientist? To a person making a living writing articles debunking religion? Maybe this question is important to those people, but to the common person who lives and dies within a 100-mile radius of the point of their birth, which is the vast majority of the masses, this question is irrelevant. Religion or no religion, they're going to largely live the same meaningless life. Their individual life is so irrelevant that 20 years after their death only a handful of people recall their name, and 100 years after their death they become a name on a family tree and a couple of sentences. "Allen drove a milk truck for 24 years and earned safe driving badges each year. He was survived by Norma, Sharon and Janice, and preceded in death by his son Steven." What matter to that person if there were no religion, short of having a little more time on Sunday morning? How would it change the impact of his life? As a species our very existence is almost entirely irrelevant. Unless we have time to discover some pretty aggressive technologies and move beyond our planet, we're going to live and die as a species having done little more than dig into our planet a bit. In a million years, celestially speaking half an eyeblink, the vast majority of our impact on this planet will be gone. Our most lasting impact could be as a fossil fuel for the next species to attain dominance. The impermanence of this existence makes the very nature of the question "Where else is that acceptable" irrelevant. As for you and Ms. Beckinsale (single again, I believe?), while I highly doubt the existence of your date tomorrow night, if it comforts you to think it's going to happen, what harm does it do me that you harbor such a belief? When tomorrow night comes and goes with no date, you'll be forced to address your belief and re-evaluate it, and perhaps you'll rationalize that she had to wash that beautiful, beautiful hair of hers, and she'll be dropping by tonight instead. Again, doesn't much matter to me. I'm not interested in dating her, and even if she showed up at my door for that date, I'm already married and unable to go. It's all the same to me no matter what happens. Regarding the second bolded sentence, isn't that what "it' is all about? You doing what makes you happy, me doing what makes me happy, Kate Beckinsale doing what makes her happy? Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die, indeed. What is god good for? He clearly provides comfort to millions upon millions. He's as good as a security blanket, an aspirin, or a Kate Beckinsale fascination. He's also as dangerous as an aspirin, or a Kate Beckinsale fascination, used improperly. So let's say you find out what's true. Let's say you're utterly honest and it somehow gets you the answers that have eluded philosophers and pundits throughout history. Do you envision some great awakening by man? How will the lot of the common man be any different than it is today? And how will it be better?

Herrian's break was in-game. Why do you think this wasn't related to practice? Speaking of carrying TVs. Long ago I had a delivery truck gig and I had to take a TV to Frankie London. Me and the other BWB (Big White Boy) on my truck carried this TV up to Frankie's apartment, and put it down where he told us he wanted it. He signed all the paperwork and then he decided he didn't like where he told us to put it, so he picked it up - by himself - and moved it to another part of the living room. Dude was thin and wiry and STRONG AS AN OX. I used to think I was strong when I was young. That day I knew better.

It's a good question, and the answer is probably as varied as each of the seven billion people on this planet. I can't define spirituality for you, because your life path makes it mean something different than what it means to me. We can sit down and drink the same beer, and you're going to like it or not like it individually from my tastes. Where we can probably all agree is that "spirituality" is dangerous when it takes on one of many forms, including but not limited to the mind control and rationalized oppression that manhattan brought up, or in deceit intended to gain power or exert undue influence on another. In its simplest form a belief in a god, meditation, a faith in some unknown "higher power" or whatever form your spirituality takes is not inherently damaging, just as a gun, no matter how powerful, is not inherently dangerous. It's when these things are wielded against another that they become dangerous. If there is no god(s) and this is all just an accident (I'm grooving on the "we're living inside a black hole" theory right now - it makes a lot of sense), then individual spirituality is errant, but not inherently dangerous. I see no harm in someone living a life praying to a nonexistent god, expecting to go to a nonexistent heaven at their death. It makes them happy, it comforts them, and it does nobody any harm. It's Linus' blanket. But I don't have to give examples of where religion (organized spirituality) goes wrong, and I think we can take it as a given that it's been responsible for many, many harms inflicted on the world. But if there is no god, this is all an accident, and we either fall back into the Big Crunch or we expand forever into the Big Rip, then nothing we do, whether we invent gods or live as innocents or dominate the Universe or never existed, none of it really matters anyway... so who cares? There's no point in the knowledge, and even though I want to know everything, knowing does me no good. If there is a god then I'd like to know where he's been, because if I behaved toward my child the way god has behaved toward his, I'd be cited for abandonment. It's a pretty crummy thing to have no proof, to have no way of having proof, and to know that if you had proof it would obviate your existence (or at least your freedom). Meh. I said I wouldn't get into this stuff. But whatever.

Considering Nebraska has a tenured law professor as it's Chancellor, I think they'll be fine haha Who is also the person who stated it would be inappropriate for us to pay a penalty, with everything that's gone on. It's possible we'll back down, pay a nominal fee, and walk away quietly. But I would so very dearly love for that steel that we all know is inside Osborne to show itself once again and drag this thing through the muddy courts. Because then there will be no place for the Dan Beebes and the Deloss Doddses of the world to hide their shenanigans - and that goes for several other schools in this soon-to-be-defunct conference. I get this mental image sometimes of our Chancellor staring down Beebe and Dodds, lawsuit in hand, biting off the words, "What you have to ask yourselves, punks, is, 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punks?" In that daydream I refer to him as Dirty Harvey.

I've been close enough to shake Alex's hand twice, and he looks pretty scrawny. It's amazing to me that he can generate that much force from that wiry body. But it doesn't really matter if he's 115 or 315 lbs as long as he can play his position. It's all in the physics. The physics, not the physiques?

This is basically the case that several people laid out for UNL to pay nothing in exit fees. I could search for the thread talking about it but I'm not going to. This is the hard copy of what we already knew had been said, I believe.

Median teacher salary for the nation or which region? You can't use national statistics when you're speaking about a specific region because COL differences make those numbers irrelevant.

You absolutely cannot blame this on the parents. The kid was old enough to make his own decisions. I can't believe that your children (presuming you have children) always make Roxy-pleasing decisions in everything they do. As a parent all you can do is instill all of your best intentions into the child, then hope for the best. They're still going to make mistakes, they're still going to do dumb things and some of them are going to do outrageously dumb and/or criminal things. We can't blame every set of parents for every dumb thing every kid does. Sometimes kids just choose a dumb path. My sister and I had the exact same upbringing. I've held steady jobs for 22 years; she's never held a job longer than six months in her life. I've raised a family with love and attention; she largely ignored her children and they had to be raised by our parents and Boys Town. There is NO WAY my parents are responsible for my idiot sister. You can't just blame these parents. It's possible they did everything right and the kid still made a very, very bad choice.

That lead in doesn't sound like what they read. I'm sure there are several that Dan B sent out. Did they say who did the FOIA request and/or which school it was from?

Next thing you'll tell me is the tooth fairy was just my mom leaving a quarter under my pillow. I don't believe your lies.

I don't know if this is the one USC is reading right now, but you can read the one he sent to member institutions to "save" them HERE.

Wow - what a huge gap in possibilities. From nothing at all to no longer on the team. That pretty much covers every outcome, doesn't it? Aren't those the only possibilities - either he will be a Husker or he won't? I'm just saying don't try to dismiss this as the kid taking a final or having problems unrelated to his position on the football team. The question is why wouldn't he be on the roster, and that runs a huge gamut of possibilities. If you have info, spill it. If not... That's what rumorville is for. Speaking of...

Wow - what a huge gap in possibilities. From nothing at all to no longer on the team. That pretty much covers every outcome, doesn't it?