April 27th – April 29th Guild Wars 2 first open beta weekend. Open to all who have per-purchased the game.
I am loving GW2. I tried out a few different character combos. My favorite was the human ranger.
The story line is really good. I also enjoy how you make choices and depending what you choose causes major changes. Like choosing if you are going to save your friend or save the whole town. Which do you choose? The life of the one or the life of the many?
Divinity’s Reach is huge and old Lion’s Arch is underwater and there is a new Lion’s Arch.
Another really cool thing is that your attacks vary depending on what weapon you are using.
GW2 is like GW in the fact that you pay once to play. You buy the core game and never pay a monthly fee.
(The whole speech was 90 minutes. I have yet to actually find the whole speech anywhere but this is the part that fox news is running with that claiming christian persecution. It sounds like it is ok for christians to use the bible to bash LGBTQ people but it is christian persecution to call them on it. What are your thoughts?)
The Bible. We’ll just talk about the Bible for a second. People often point out that they can’t help it — they can’t help with the anti-gay bullying, because it says right there in Leviticus, it says right there in Timothy, it says right there in Romans, that being gay is wrong.
We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people. The same way, the same way we have learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation. We ignore bullshit in the Bible about all sorts of things. The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waved Bibles over their heads during the Civil War and justified it. The shortest book in the New Testament is a letter from Paul to a Christian slave owner about owning his Christian slave. And Paul doesn’t say “Christians don’t own people.” Paul talks about how Christians own people.
We ignore what the Bible says about slavery, because the Bible got slavery wrong. Tim — uh, Sam Harris, in A Letter To A Christian Nation, points out that the Bible got the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced wrong. Slavery. What are the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? One hundred percent.
The Bible says that if your daughter’s not a virgin on her wedding night — if a woman isn’t a virgin on her wedding night, she shall be dragged to her father’s doorstep and stoned to death. Callista Gingrich lives. And there is no effort to amend state constitutions to make it legal to stone women to death on their wedding night if they’re not virgins. At least not yet. We don’t know where the GOP is going these days.
People are dying because people can’t clear this one last hurdle. They can’t get past this one last thing in the Bible about homosexuality.
Um, one other thing I wanna talk about is — [chuckles] — so, you can tell the Bible guys in the hall that they can come back now, because I’m done beating up the Bible. It’s funny, as someone who’s on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible, how pansy-assed some people react when you push back.
I apologize if I hurt anyone’s feelings. But. I have a right to defend myself. And to point out the hypocrisy of people who justify anti-gay bigotry by pointing to the Bible, and insisting we must live by the code of Leviticus on this one issue and no other.
Do you think that the people who walked out were being good journalists? Do you think it was ok for them to walk out and be offended?
Homeschooling is legal in many countries. Countries with the most prevalent home education movements include Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Some countries have highly regulated home education programs as an extension of the compulsory school system; others, such as Sweden and Germany, have outlawed it entirely. Brazil has a law project in process. In other countries, while not restricted by law, homeschooling is not socially acceptable or considered undesirable and is virtually non-existent.
Approximately 1,230,000 U.S. children are being taught at home, according to data in a study conducted by the National Home Education Research Institute in Salem, Oregon.
Homeschooling laws can be divided into three categories:
1.In some states, homeschooling requirements are based on its treatment as a type of private school (California, Indiana, Texas, for example) In those states, homeschools are generally required to comply with the same laws that apply to other (usually non-accredited) schools.
2.In other states, homeschool requirements are based on the unique wording of the state’s compulsory attendance statute without any specific reference to “homeschooling” (New Jersey, Maryland, for example). In those states, the requirements for homeschooling are set by the particular parameters of the compulsory attendance statute.
3.In other states (Maine, New Hampshire, Iowa, for example) homeschool requirements are based on a statute or group of statutes that specifically applies to homeschooling, although statutes often refer to homeschooling using other nomenclature (in Virginia, for example, the statutory nomenclature is “home instruction”; in South Dakota, it is “alternative instruction”; in Iowa, it is “competent private instruction”). In these states, the requirements for homeschooling are set out in the relevant statutes.
The bible makes it quite clear that children born out of wedlock cannot get into heaven, and neither can the next ten generations of their progeny. Have you looked at your family tree? What are the odds that most Christians have some bastard relative in the past ten generations?
A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD. (Deuteronomy 23:2 KJV)
One whose father and mother are not married may not come into the meeting of the Lord’s people, or any of his family to the tenth generation. (Deuteronomy 23:2 BBE)
No one born outside of a legal marriage, or any of their descendants for ten generations, can fully belong to the LORD’s people. (Deuteronomy 23:2 CEV)
Translation: If your mom’s not married when you’re born, you don’t get into Heaven. Neither do your kids. Or your kids’ kids. All the way down for 10 generations.
A newborn person cannot choose the marital status of his or her parents. A bastard is a person completely without fault. However, because of religious intolerance, bastards have been stigmatized for centuries.
It’s a good thing I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell. After all this would mean that my husband wouldn’t be allowed to go to heaven anyway. His parents weren’t married when he was born. That would mean my kids can’t either because their father is by definition a bastard, a child born out of wedlock.
And yet, it is said, David was a ninth-generation descendant of Perez, the bastard son of Judah and Tamar (Gen. 38:24-30 ; Ruth 4:18 ; 1 Chron. 2:5-14 ) and was allowed into the assembly.
One of God’s favorites, Abraham, sired the bastard Ishmael by his mistress Hagar. Gen. 16:4, 15.
The firstborn daughter of Lot bore a son by Lot. The bastard was named Moab and is the father of the Moabites to this day. See Gen. 19:37.
Jephthah was the bastard son of Gilead and a harlot. He made a deal with God to sacrifice his daughter in return for victory in battle. Jud. 11:1.
God’s favorite, David, sired a bastard son with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah. Sam. 11:4-5.
Mary was not married when she became pregnant with Jesus so he was a bastard and according to Deuteronomy 23:2 “a bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord even unto the tenth generation.”
Theists charge that goodness and morality are the domain of the believer. They assert that, without their deity, it’s impossible to be “good” or to commit moral acts.
Morality is a product of human evolution. As the most socialized animal on earth, we have an overall better chance of survival through cooperation than doing everything on our own. Therefore, morality, including sympathy, love and the will to do good etc become wired to our brains throughout the ages.
Do you think Christians only do good because they want eternal reward?
It is the myth that religious belief is somehow necessary for morality that is providing the life support for religion in many Western societies, long after we should have been reaching for the embalming fluid.
“Good people do good things, evil people do evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” ~Steven Weinberg
Atheists are good for goodness sake. Atheists don’t rely on threats of eternal punishment to be good people. It’s likely that most religious believers have the same motivation as atheists for being good to their fellow individuals. If this is difficult to understand, consider how you might act without a belief in god or gods. Would you act immorally? More than likely not. Lacking belief in a god doesn’t make someone stop being good to their fellow man.
Do you think god is needed for a person to be good? Which god? Yahweh? Allah? Thor? Wotan? Zeus? Isis? Osiris? Loki? Odin? Mithra? Lolth? Aphrodite? Poseidon? Cronos? Horus? Beddru? Krishna? Zarathustra? Baal? Dagon? Dionysus? Enki? Gaia? Helios? Hermes? Marduk? Quetzalcoatl? Ra? Seti? Vishnu? Shiva? Xenu? Akuma? Raiden? Gekka? Bumba? Eshu? Jupiter? Romulus? Ilia? Venus? Abaangui? Ewah? Imhotep? Periboriwa? Dagda? Ishtar? Baldur? Tyr? Quetzalcoatl? Ixchel? Qi-Lin? Dievas? Adonis? Xanthus? Kali? Akka? Anubis? Sif? Mercury? Juno? Brahma? Frith? Eric Clapton? Or one of tens of thousands of others?
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Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a serious and often life-threatening disorder that is characterized by severe emotional pain and difficulties managing emotions. The problems associated with BPD include impulsivity (including suicidality and self-harm), severe negative emotion such as anger and/or shame, chaotic relationships, an extreme fear of abandonment, and accompanying difficulties maintaining a stable and accepting sense of self
Completed suicide occurs in 8%-10% of individuals with this disorder, and self-mutilative acts (e.g., cutting or burning) and suicide threats and attempts are very common. Recurrent job losses, interrupted education, and broken marriages are common.
Very stressful or chaotic childhoods are commonly reported (e.g., physical and sexual abuse, neglect, hostile conflict, and early parental loss or separation). Mood disorders, Substance-Related Disorders, Eating Disorders (usually Bulimia), Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, and other Personality Disorders frequently co-occur with this disorder.
Individuals with BPD can be very sensitive to the way others treat them, reacting strongly to perceived criticism or hurtfulness. Their feelings about others often shift from positive to negative, generally after a disappointment or perceived threat of losing someone. Self-image can also change rapidly from extremely positive to extremely negative. Impulsive behaviors are common, including alcohol or drug abuse, unsafe sex, gambling and recklessness in general.
Individuals with BPD are at high risk of developing other psychological disorders such as anxiety and depression. Other symptoms of BPD, such as dissociation, are frequently linked to severely traumatic childhood experiences, which some put forth as one of the many root causes of the borderline personality.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fourth edition, DSM IV-TR, a widely used manual for diagnosing mental disorders, defines borderline personality disorder (in Axis II Cluster B) as:
A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image and affects, as well as marked impulsivity, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Note: Do not include suicidal or self-injuring behavior covered in Criterion 5 2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. 3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self. 4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving). Note: Do not include suicidal or self-injuring behavior covered in Criterion 5 5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or self-injuring behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars (excoriation) or picking at oneself. 6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days). 7. Chronic feelings of emptiness 8. Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights). 9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms
It is a requirement of DSM-IV that a diagnosis of any specific personality disorder also satisfies a set of general personality disorder criteria.
When comparing individuals diagnosed with BPD to those diagnosed with other personality disorders, the former showed a higher rate of also meeting criteria for: anxiety disorders mood disorders (including clinical depression and bipolar disorder) eating disorders (including anorexia nervosa and bulimia) dissociative disorders
Numerous studies have shown a strong correlation between child abuse, especially child sexual abuse, and development of BPD. Many individuals with BPD report to have had a history of abuse and neglect as young children. They were also much more likely to report having caregivers (of both genders) deny the validity of their thoughts and feelings.
