Longing To Be Free . . . . . .

[jarhead]

Quote from Diane:
As far as your having a friend in Wilmington... I really doubt it

I didn't say Preacher was a friend---just a Nam vet that I correspond with on occasion. You can doubt it all you want and call me a liar---which that's pretty much what you did. Why is it you can have all your so called contacts in Elk county but you seem to be irate when I tell you I write to someone that lives over 10 miles from you. Why the anger ? I don't think Preacher is a violent type that means you any harm so why the paranoia ?

Quote from Diane:
Unfortunately, that is more of what has sadly changed on the forum over time. Nobody welcomes new members any more to make them feel welcome. No more roll call, where people were asked to share information about themselves

I just don't understand why you keep coming back to the forum when you repeatedly tell us how bad it is and how dissatisfied you are in how it's run. Have you ever PM'ed Teresa or Kjell and vented your ager to them over what a crappy job they are doing ? Maybe they would be sympathetic to your concerns. Maybe if you lived closer people would welcome you with open arms. I know I have coffee with lots of the members and talk frequently with many of them. Maybe it's just that they don't feel the need to bore others with everything they do by putting it on the forum---or face book.

Quote from Diane:
Now, Pat go drink some of Jar's brain killer home made "wine." I hear it will make your earlobes grow.

Now there you go again being rude. Did you ever stop and think that Patriot might be a recovering alcoholic and it might hurt his feelings that you make fun of him and tell him he should drink booze? Have you no shame, woman ?
One last thing. I do not know why you want to keep the name of you lucrative business a secret. I would think you would be proud of it and shout it out to the world. After all you just wrote-------

quote from Diane:
No more roll call, where people were asked to share information about themselves

I asked you to share but guess this is a one way street.

[Ross]

     You want to come home and start over? Buy that place. You and Ross can be neighbors, and you'd be lucky to have him because most would give you no help. He would, even after all your bloviating.

Dog gone it you figured me out, I have no animosity or grudges or hate don't believe in that attitude.
If I am capable of a helping hand I'd be glad to offer it without discrimination of any kind.

I was a Boy Scout at one time, many years ago, and a church goer and as a child I learned to give when I can and help when I can.

To bad people don't understand that politics is a completely different game with  all the lying and cheating and handouts to people that don't need it. And they think I am just being mean and nasty asking for a few truths. In my own way, I am just trying to help the common man that is being over taxed.

Public information with in the government especially in such a small county as ours should not be with held or hidden from the taxpayer. I believe that is illegal.

I was looking at a pamphlet at West Elk today while waiting for someone to talk with me and a lady came over and tried to remove the pamphlet from my hand. She said that is an internal pamphlet as if I was not allowed to read it. I politely reminded her that this was not a private institution and that all information is public information with the exception of disciplinary actions. She was definitely albeit politely trying to be the authoritarian IMHO. The pamphlet really didn't contain anything but forms for various things that employees can request to do. Like give leave to another person in need, or reimbursement for car mileage and other stuff. But I was very polite even though she appeared a bit put out. There wasn't a thing in there worth hiding or getting even the leat little bit upset about. Those people in the offices seem to forget who they work for.

[Patriot]

Now there you go again being rude. Did you ever stop and think that Patriot might be a recovering alcoholic and it might hurt his feelings that you make fun of him and tell him he should drink booze? Have you no shame, woman ?

*HIC*  Oh my lordy... the abusive delawares di di has driven me back to despair.... and feigned victimhood!  Quick... there's gotta be a socialist guberment program in Biden's home state that will make me feel better.  *HIC* 

[Bullwinkle]

   ROFLMAO

[mtcookson]

As far as I know, SS, which isn't that old as far as history goes, was started as a bit of an old age pension to keep old folks from literally starving to death.

That's not quite correct. In the Social Security Act of 1935 there were numerous forms of "assistance". What you're likely talking about is just a standard government welfare for the old that were needy that they called "old-age assistance". The original act still implemented the standard "old-age benefits", which were the payments you would receive monthly after retiring. Speaking of which, the very first beneficiary paid in $24.75 over her last three years of employment and received back $22,888 till she died at 100 years of age.

Anyway... it wasn't implemented to keep them from starving. It was sold as retirement benefits and numerous forms of assistance in the form of receiving money rather than food since "a food basket doesn't help the poor". They didn't want the old to have to live in "poorhouses" but instead be able to stay in their homes.

Kind of funny... well, ok, not really... but in their explanation of it all they state that "...taxation is spread over large groups of people to carry the cost of giving some security to those who are unfortunate or incapacitated at any one time." and immediately after that state "The colonists and frontiersmen wanted independence. ... There is no reason to think that our wants have changed."

Guess the depression was bad enough they couldn't even afford a dictionary to understand what independence meant. Wow.

It was never intended to be people's only savings, just a bump.

Key word "intentions"... need I say more? I wouldn't call it a bump either, it was supposed to be a "definite income" for old-age to supplement any savings they were able to make (if they were able to make any, they knew which income brackets were and weren't able to save). It wasn't a savings program, it was a retirement program and a horrible one.

As a side note, if you used your SS money and put it into a private fund I bet you could almost double your retirement, or more.

Yes, I do understand what you meant when you said unconstitutional. BUT Thomas Jefferson also said the document should be reviewed every so many years, I think it was nine, to see what should be altered or added to as the country grew and matured.

I think the quote you're talking about is actually quite different and, I'm pretty sure, completely taken out of context to make it look like... well, you'll see.

Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years.

From my understanding of the letter, I think people on both sides of the isle take it completely out of context. Some on the right seem to think he meant to have a constitutional convention every 19 years, some on the left seem to think he meant it should be completely rewritten every 19 years to better reflect current trends. I think both are completely wrong. You have to read the entire letter, not just the paragraph that the quote is in, and I think most clearly do not.

He's basically having a philosophical discussion with Madison, throwing him ideas based on what he's seen in France. He speaks heavily throughout on individual land rights and debts, both debts for land owners and for government. I've been trying to think of ways to do a cliff's notes version of the letter and I think the best way would be as such:

No one person or government should have a natural right to and no law shall be made that would indebt a future generation or future land owner with the current debts. On the land owner part, I'm having a hard time really coming up with a way to explain it but, essentially; At that time and all throughout history even to today, it is common practice that debts of the deceased would pass on, naturally. I think he was just trying to figure out a way to prevent that as, morally, it is wrong to pass debts to future generations. By my understanding, he spoke of land owners retaining the lands so as to keep them from being used to pay of debts, which in effect kept the land in possession of the deceased, so to speak.

On the government part of it I think he's talking about not putting future generations into debt... exactly like we are doing now. The 19 years is his estimation, based on life expectancy at that time, of essentially how long a debt should last, or how long they have to pay it off so that it isn't pushed on to the next generation.

When he's talking about the constitutions and laws, I think he's basically trying to say that any law written having to do with debt should be written to expire in 19 years, again based on the above life expectancy info. His reasoning is that it would basically be a safer way of dealing with debt than having a permanent law that, though it could be repealed later, would likely never be repealed. Which, of course, he's completely correct in that reasoning. Every time the parasites make a "temporary" law it, naturally, never goes away and become permanent until repealed (which would likely be never if it has to do with them getting more money).

Its really best to just read the letter. To me, it has absolutely nothing to do with reworking our constitution every certain period of years and has everything to do with keeping people and governments from passing debt to future generations, which as we all know is EXACTLY what is happening now to a MASSIVE extent.

I don't think the morality issue could be fixed as easily as you think unless all the TVs were turned off, or with strong parental controls, ( many parents don't care) and the violent video games outlawed and a lot of influences were eliminated.

I disagree. Sure, TV and games could affect certain people but those certain people will most likely have come from a broken home to begin with. Home is where morality will first break down, then it will be further eroded in the currently leftist public school system.

Outlaw violent video games? Seems like a bit of a rights violation right there. I play and have played quite a few video games, some rather violent (Mini-gunning police? Yeah, pretty violent). Some of them I quite enjoy playing, blowing up all of the digital pixels... because I KNOW they are digital pixels. I KNOW that is it a GAME. I can differentiate between the virtual world and the real world. Haven't killed anyone yet. Haven't even been in a fist fight honestly.

But people seem to think violence in games is something recent... has no one played Clue? Its been around since 1949. Granted, of course, that it doesn't have the visual impact that games today have but it was still a game about a murder with a certain weapon.

Comic books started booming during the WWII era and had plenty of violence tendencies yet it didn't seem to be a big issue back then.

What's changed so much that it has gotten so much worse? Everything I've talked about above, perhaps?

No, I don't think forced euthanasia will ever happen.

Tell that to the 250,000-350,000 Germans in Nazi Germany who were put to death for disabilities, diseases, by simply being "unfit" to live in society according to the government. That was not just the elderly, it included children and infants as well and the whole thing actually began with infanticide. It was a requirement to report any newborns with disabilities and most were killed. It said that some children were even killed that didn't even have disabilities or mental issues but were deemed abnormal or anti-social. It is also said it got so bad at one point that people that just looked sick or that the doctors or nurses didn't like would be sent to the chambers.

As we all know, humans have a horrible habit of repeating history. Heck, I think Agenda 21 even alludes to using euthanasia, of course without coming out and saying it so blatantly.

What happened to the Hippocratic oath?

Prior to 1933 every German doctor took the Hippocratic Oath... but the Nazis replaced it with the Gesundheit (health) oath, an oath the the health of the Nazi state. It meant that a doctor's first duty was to promote the interests of the Nazi state, not to "do no harm".

BUT there will come a time when people who are at the end of their lives should be allowed to die with dignity. When medicine as we know it can do no more people should be allowed a good and peaceful passing without bankrupting their family. On the other hand. .How does one get past the inability of a family member to accept the passing...especially if it a child. The little girl in all the news with Cystic Fibrosis is a good example. She has had two lung transplants now...so one was 'wasted' and she is still in terrible shape. That disease is much more complicated than just a lung problem.  I wish her the best and I do understand ,but....

This is entirely different, not even remotely close to forced euthanasia. I have very little experience with it but I have gone through two cases of "pulling the plug". One there was no brain activity at all so it was quite clear they had passed. The second, he was rather young and still fully aware but his body was simply incapable of sustaining life so he was prepared and let go, receiving medication to keep the pain away during the passing. I have absolutely no issues with easing suffering in death.

[redcliffsw]

Amen! 

[Ross]

Great job mtcookson I appreciate that post.
I like  your explanation of the video games and violence.
It seems everyone wants to blame them as if violence has never been around.

I enjoyed reading the post as a whole.
Thank You

[jarhead]

Here you go MT. Video games like this is what the kiddies should be playing instead of the violent ones. Rumor is a Howard man, I won't mention his name but his initials are Kjell, is designing the soft ware for these games and some old fart from Surprise ,Az will be his production manager.

'Boob Jam' explores unsexy side of breasts
By Jillian Scharr

Published August 09, 2013
TechNewsDaily


It's no surprise that videogame characters are designed to be attractive — or that attractiveness is often engineered from a straight white male's perspective.

That means breasts. Large, voluptuous, bouncy breasts. Videogames' preponderance of well-endowed women has even created a new term — "breast physics" — to describe the process of engineering breasts to jiggle — if not realistically, at least appealingly.

But it's time to get real: Breasts are a lot more than just sexy; they can be a serious health risk. They can be a liability in athletics, or just a factor in whether a shirt fits or not. And, they can be really, really annoying.

It seems that games writer Jenn Frank was thinking of that latter reason when she tweeted earlier this week that "I'm gonna make a game called "Final Reality," and it's gonna be about how I just accidentally smeared tons of deodorant all over my left [breast]."


'What if you had to watch a sexy videogame character also buy bras?'

A minute later, she tweeted, "What if you had to watch a sexy videogame character also buy bras, cry softly when she can't find one that fits and go in for mammograms?"



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/08/09/boob-jam-game-development-challenge/?intcmp=features#ixzz2bTpPdF4o

[mtcookson]

Read more of the article and checked out their "games". What they have on there, I'm pretty sure, wasn't what she intended. One guy made a "game" that literally consists of walking two naked people around a "level" switching male and female roles each level. Unless it wasn't done it was just walking an obstacle course. Saw a video of it on YouTube, fortunately. Had I actually played it I think my IQ would have dropped too much to even type this, though the video alone was enough to made my head hurt.

The next turned from a game to an all text "interactive story" where you simply make two choices in the story. Which character you want to play, a transgender man or a woman, and whether after reading a completely ridiculous story you get to make a choice of whether to continue the story and go on to the final, horrific part of the story, which I'll not share so as not to torture and disgust you all.

Those were the only two. May be more coming, may not... but I don't care. That was just dumb. The whole reason she started it was because a company altered the female lead character in one of their games by increasing her cup size from a C to a D (helloooooo... she aged from 21 to 521 in the game, surely she'll gain a little size in cryostasis or whatever form of extended sleep she was in ). I bet when she read that she imagined them altering her from a "decently" sized female character to one unable to run around without giving herself black eyes when actually Japanese cup sizes are different. In American sizes she was actually originally a B and is now a C, from my understanding. Not really a massive jump there, though it would probably make her look a little less girl like and more woman like.

It is kind of odd now that I think of it though. I've played a lot of Japanese games and watched a lot of their anime and they have a serious obsession with portraying young kids, generally mid-teens as the heroes. I'm surprised she even started the story at age 20. I'd say a serious majority of their stories involve kids younger than 18. Many usually involve kids while they are in our equivalent of high school and aged around 15 to 16.

Back to that particular game. They did also add "jiggling" to her character but that's actually been around for quite a while now in games and isn't even the first for this particular game's series. They actually did it in 1997 with the release of their best ever selling game of that series, and that definitely had no less than American D's. On the physics part of it, they've actually been working toward implementing more and more physics in games for quite a while now. It used to be you could shoot at a wall, for instance, and nothing would happen. Then before long you would discolor the walls. Then little bits of the wall would come out at you but they would reappear after time or if you shot other stuff. Now, they're getting to where you shoot a wall and it might be heavily damaged or even completely destroyed. As the technology gets better the physics will continue to improve and before long become more life like. Heck, even Angry Birds is completely based on physics.

Anyway, the story did make me think of an interesting trend in gaming though... a lot of new games are starting to get a little more into adding sexual scenarios to their games. Some occasional female nudity has been around for quite some time in only the most "extreme" of games but its starting to get a little more prevalent and now there are some out there that have full blown sex scenes (movie style where you see nudity but not that full act i.e. porn). I think some though might have ventured close to or even into porn by showing more and further having you control the "motions". Even heard about one game with two guys... um, yeah.

Violence in games might have an affect on some and I think worse case might slightly desensitize people to violence but I highly doubt it would turn even 0.0001% into violent fighters or killers (side note: 0.0001% I just pulled out of nowhere but wanted to find what that number might actually be. Based on current estimates, 0.0001% of gamers worldwide would be approximately 400,000+. They estimate 60% to 70% of the world population plays video games. Means my 0.0001% might even be too high even ). Sex on the other hand, or worse porn, would have a major, harmful affect on players. Porn is absolutely known to cause major problems for people, young and old, single and married. I even know personally of a marriage destroyed by porn. It is scientifically shown to cause measurable affects on the brain, especially in teenagers that are starting to develop those types of feelings. There's nothing good that comes of it... and to put it into games? I see major trouble brewing with that one.

Porn causes enough problems with people just watching it... imagine what might happen when they get full control. If game makers so choose they could easily let a person control any and every aspect of what is happening. It would likely unlock the doors to a whole new level of porn addiction.

Actually, I recently read about a game someone is working on to nearly do just that perhaps. Its supposed to be based on Roman times sooooo... the whole point of the game is basically to have sex and even orgies. Whether they get the funding to pull it off, who knows. I don't think it would matter either way though, it will probably continue to get worse as games "progress".

I mentioned gaming technology above for physics, there's another aspect that is also worth mentioning... and that's graphics. With every new game comes more and more detailed graphics. As the hardware gets more powerful they are able to make things look more realistic. It will probably get to the point where a game character will become indistinguishable from a real human. They are already so very close that it could potentially happen in the next year or two. By that point it would most definitely be no different than porn if they so choose... worse actually. Like I said, the control part of it could take things to a whole new level. Not only could you control what happens, you could probably even design your own character as well. You can actually already do that in most games already. I definitely see very harmful addictions coming if they start doing that.


Oh yeah, suppose I should mention lolicons as well. So uh... that's a genre of Japanese anime and manga (cartoons and comic books basically, term is also used to describe those that watch it/read it) and its even getting into gaming with some Korean games so far that I've seen. In the anime and manga it, generally, consists of child-like female characters that are often portrayed in "erotic-cute", as they like to call it, manners like skimpy clothing, sexual type scenarios, some even portray them nude, and worse still in actual sexual acts. . In the first game I've seen with them they were barely clothed girls wearing basically a thong, in Korea, and in the censored American version they were wearing basically normal underwear or a bikini bottom type garment. Everyone kind of blew up about it when it first came out which resulted in the censored-version underwear change.

There have been some prosecutions in the U.S. over a few guys having animations with sexual acts but so far there are questions to the constitutionality of the law as the cases I've seen, the defendants also had real child porn, not just animated. I haven't read the law but apparently child porn, and potentially animated, is illegal when it is "obscene" (unsure of their legal definition for that) but when cases come up on the animated ones they are trying to fight the constitutionality of it under Free Speech. Not sure how that will play out.

Back to the games. In the newest one to come out of Korea they are everything but nude, wearing basically inch wide straps in some cases. In the American version their skin was changed to make it look like clothing but skimpy outfits remained. The older looking bunch were clothed but in some cases the clothing was see through in parts. What's real crazy though is you can install somewhat easily available, player made modifications to make all of the characters completely nude if so chosen. Oh, and that modification isn't available for just that game. I think people have made them available for nearly any popular game with female characters in it.

[Diane Amberg]

Wow. What a lot to read.
...Jar... I am not even remotely angry. You can't take a joke unless you do it, as you do many, many times? You admit you are full of it. As far as "knowing" someone in Wilmington.... Considering how many pot shots you all take at this little state, I'm surprised you'd even admit it. Perhaps you do know someone.  So what?
I have nothing to prove. Ask him about Newark Charter ,if he reads the local rag, he'll know about it. Why do you want me to identify my company?  I told you it's named after my mom. You accuse me of bragging, but when I don't ,ya don't like that either. Look up Delaware business licenses and you'll find it.
Again, I am indeed mourning the nice forum as it started....has nothing to do with who runs it, nor would I expect them to say much more than they already have. You few were told more than once to stop the personal attacks and it has not happened, at least with some of you.
As far as violent video games...ya let your kids play them, that's up to you. I don't like it... and I did mean children. Adults can do what they want and unfortunately do.  Yes, they can desensitize certain personalities..I didn't know you wanted an expose on all forms of things that can have a negative influence on people. I was trying to be short!
   MT, you are absolutely right, I could have taken all my SS money, if I could have predicted when I would die, and made more on my own.  Most people don't know how and shouldn't be expected to. I can't make squat now with savings/investments because of the economic situation and the older I get, the less risk I'm willing to take.  I'm comfortable and always will be, but I won't use myself as a measure for most people. Since it has become fashionable out there to attack me over anything I say. Go ahead and be as rude and make fun of me as much as you want. I have the last laugh...  Some of the junk in those recent post are so far out there I won't even respond.  . Off to eat out with friends.