Submit an Article | Bookmarked Articles
Viewing Articles About All - Page 5
| New Feature: Notices | March 27, 2011, 11:26AM |
 by: eon |
|
You may have noticed a 'New Notices' indicator at the top of your screen. Now, when there are replies to any forum posts, group posts, articles, polls, etc., you've participated in, you will receive a notice to let you know. To dismiss your new notices (and make the indicator disappear) simply click the 'Dismiss Notices' button from the notices page. For now, this functionality is not modifiable, however, I will be adding some control of preferences later which will allow you to decide what kind of notices you'd like to receive. Enjoy... | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [20 comments] |
|
| Why I Am Not Atheist | March 27, 2011, 12:59AM |
 by: sarywolfie |
|
This isn't intended as a direct attack at the previous featured article, it just got me thinking when I was reading it, and I wanted to share a different point of view. In the same way that it was said no one should have to prove their disbelief in anything, I think that the same is also true for someone to not have to prove their belief in something, both are correct to the person involved, the issue isn't if it is morally correct to ask someone to prove or disprove what they believe, but if it is even possible. Atheism is based in recognition of science, in theory, and religion is based in belief and faith, you cannot prove either, therefore I argue that neither are completely proven fact, and in some respects, both require a certain amount of belief. Yes, it is true that Science seeks truth, but this is also true of many religious beliefs also. Science does not have the answers to everything, some believe that it never will, and while it can easily be quoted that religion has been wrong in the past, well, once upon a time the best scientists believed that the world was flat. Both religion and science are adapting and growing. Note, "not atheist" does not mean "Christian", a mistake which I feel is made by many people who say that they are Atheists, and normally I can empathise, understand and agree with their rejection of Christian ideals. I would love to dispel the idea that someone being religious, spiritual ect means that they totally reject science, that they're less intelligent for being so, and so on, in fact I usually find that there's more peseudo intellectual Atheists than from any other religion, I have friends of all sorts of faiths, and the people that have one are much happier, more intelligent than those who don't - again this is just a PERSONAL observation, I know there's intelligent and interesting people of any belief. I should probably divulge what my faith is. I'm a Neo Pagan Druid, before all the Atheists reading this run for the hills and call me a crazy lady, let me explain some of the ideals that come with this belief. - The word Goddess makes just as much sense as the word God, male and female is equal, spiritually, in life, in death. - It is necessary to have respect for nature and the world around us, abusing the planet, or acting like humans have more right to be on the planet/live on the planet more than any other living thing is foolish. - Agreeing with and accepting modern science, supporting proven beliefs and making sure that morality and being ethical is recognised within this. - An anti dogmatic faith. - Encouraging happy, healthy lives, teaching that things like sex are perfectly natural, not morally wrong in any way (yes, no matter what gender the people involved are) and that food, drink, and celebration is good in moderation. This isn't going to become a "my religion is better than yours" argument - I'm just using the faith I know best as an example that science and religion can both be enlightening, and both can work in harmony with one another. | |
topic: Philosophy | |
[reply] [63 comments] |
|
| DS Mobile | February 20, 2011, 1:43PM |
by: eon |
|
For those of you with mobile phones that have difficulty displaying the standard version of DS, give this a try: mobile.darkstarlings.com If the site loads very slowly (or not at all) on your mobile phone, try the above address instead and see if it works better for you. If your phone already displays the site just fine, you may prefer to just stick with the standard version. | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [19 comments] |
|
| Dimensions | January 25, 2011, 7:26AM |
 by: conduit |
|
While extra dimensions may be difficult to perceive, the idea of them is not. But in order to imagine more dimensions we must first try to imagine less. So imagine, if you will, that we exist in a 2-dimensional world and everything is flat. Indeed its not such a long time ago that we believed the earth itself was flat, and when you think about it it’s not so hard to see why either. In fact it seems like a perfectly logical and reasonable assumption to make, and at the time we had no reason to suspect that the earth was anything other than flat - it would be like living in a 2-dimensional world! So imagine a world before science, before technology, before any knowledge of the universe, and you're walking along in your 2-dimensional world when you get to thinking. How big is it? What shape is it? How far does it go? Surely it can't go on forever, there must be a limit? Every 2-dimensional object has an edge so if the earth is 2-dimensional then it must have an edge. And infact people used to think the earth did have an edge and that if you went too far you'd simply fall off. So, armed with the assumption that if you travel in a straight path you can only ever get further away from where you started, you decide to travel to the edge of the earth to see how far it goes and you pick a straight line and you keep walking and walking and then the strangest thing happens. You end up right where you started. So you pick a different direction instead and sure enough the same thing happens. In fact no matter which direction you go you always end up in exactly the same place! To someone living in a 2-dimensional world this would be an utterly bizarre experience. Like walking down to the end of the street only to find you're exactly where you were before, perhaps as an infinite street that repeats itself over and over and you'll find you can't actually get anywhere, and no matter which turning you take you always end up at the same crossroads. It’s like being in a room surrounded by doors but whichever door you go through you always end up back in the exact same room, kinda like the videogame Asteroid in which your little arrow spaceship flies off the screen only to reappear on the other side. You're trapped and unable to see any way out. But that’s when it hits you and you suddenly realise the earth isn't flat at all, its spherical! And suddenly you've discovered another dimension that you were previously unable to perceive. Far from walking in a straight line you were actually walking in a giant loop without even realising it. In fact the earth is so vast that its curvature was impossible to detect. You tried to get to the edge of the earth only to realise that there was no edge, or rather that you were on the edge the whole time! You were like an ant on a football, but even an ant leaves scent trails which help it to navigate and would eventually realise it was just going around in circles, criss-crossing its own trails. The trouble is how to get off! So suddenly you've discovered that you actually exist in a 3-dimensional world and you've realised the earth is round, and no longer are you confined to simply travelling through 2 dimensions. You are no longer restricted to going simply left or right, forward or backwards, but now you can go up or down as well. Because of earths curvature the straightest route to the furthest point, as you now realise, is down, not straight ahead. And similarly the only way to leave the surface is up. So you turn your head to the stars and begin to ask some more questions like how big is the universe? What shape is it? How far does it go? Just as every 2-dimensional object has an edge, every 3-dimensional object has a surface, so if the universe is 3-dimensional then it must of course have an outer surface, and we must be somewhere inside it. It can't go on forever. So, skip a few thousand years and suddenly you have a rocket capable of faster than light travel, and so you plot a course heading for the furthest reaches of the universe, going in a straight line all the way of course, and you keep going and going until you get to the edge of space. What do you think is going to happen? .... Yep, you guessed it. You arrived straight back on earth. And that’s when you realise there are yet more dimensions to discover. So perhaps we are not inside the universe as first thought, but rather we inhabit only a limited area of the universe, a surface structure that is wrapped around a still much larger area. There is no way of knowing just how many spatial dimensions there may be to the universe, string theory might suggest up to 11 spatial dimensions, while the Holographic Principle could even suggest that there are less dimensions than we realise, and that our 3-dimensional world is an illusion encoded in 1 dimension. In an infinite universe of course there may be an infinite amount of dimensions, if infinity even exists. And if it doesn't there could still be more than we might ever know. But the frustrating thing is that the universe is so vast and our perception so insignificant that we have no real clue as to how big the universe is or even what shape it is. So here we are, confined to the outer most layers of the universe, trapped in a measly 3 dimensions of space and unable to see what lies beyond (or within). But the only thing we can say for certain is that we can't say anything for certain. | |
topic: Philosophy | |
[reply] [9 comments] |
|
| I need you to take my poll in a bad, bad way. | January 16, 2011, 12:33AM |
by: eon |
|
Please take 30 seconds to answer the following poll question. Even if it doesn't sound interesting to you, I need to know that it doesn't interest you so I can get an idea of what percentage of our community would be on board with it: Are you ready to take it? No means yes. Thanks, guys! | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [17 comments] |
|
| On the second of our first timid steps into a new decade... | December 30, 2010, 10:39PM |
by: eon |
|
I hope you kids are tearing it up tonight and tomorrow night. I hope all of your resolutions come to fruition and FFS, I hope you have an awesome friend to kiss at midnight. As always, be safe and report your exploits back to headquarters. (That would be right here.) | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [11 comments] |
|
| Two United as One: Marriage as the reunion of the separated duad. | December 14, 2010, 11:14PM |
 by: Aesyra |
|
Joseph Campbell says that “[Marriage] is the reunion of the separated duad. Originally you were one.” He is not the first to state that we were once one and become one again through the ritual of marriage; Plato also supported this idea in Symposium during Aristophanes’ speech concerning the “Three Genders Theory.”2 To further support the idea that marriage reunites two who were originally one, The Bible repeatedly emphasizes the husband and wife becoming “one flesh.”3 We spend our lives trying to find our other halves so that we can make ourselves whole again. When two people join a marriage, they give themselves to each other, make sacrifices to the relationship and connect on a deeper level than just the physical—they come together on a spiritual level, thus making them one with each other. Campbell supports this, saying “you are now two in the world, but the recognition of the spiritual identity is what marriage is.”4 He says that the two become “one flesh”, though he does not mean in the literal sense, as that would be a biological impossibility.5 Rather, he means that by consistently putting effort into the marriage and focusing on it instead of one’s self—both counterparts must constantly work to achieve this—then the two people essentially become one, united through marriage. We see his support of this when he says, “…and if you are acquiescing constantly to [the marriage] instead of to individual personal whim, you come to realize that that is true—the two really are one.”6 At one point, Bill Moyers states, “So marriage is utterly incompatible with the idea of doing one’s own thing.”7 He is basically saying that because the two people become one person, neither of the two can go off and do something different than the other, or do something without that other person present. Campbell counters this statement, explaining that “it is in a sense doing one’s own thing, but the one isn’t just you, it’s the two together as one.” When one enters a marriage, it is no longer “my life” or “your life”—it becomes “our life”, both lives combined into one. What one person does affects and reflects back on the other, whether in a positive or a negative way. This is the uniting of two lives into one through marriage. Campbell was not the first to believe that we start out as one person, then are separated into two people and constantly search for our other halves in order to be whole again. Plato also believed this, as shown in his classic book Symposium during Aristophanes’ speech. Aristophanes speech contains an allegory which is used to explain why human beings spend most of their lives searching for their “other half” as well as how we came to be separated from these other halves.2 In the allegory, Aristophanes explains that there used to be three genders consisting of: male, female and one consisting of both male and female—the third has “died out.” He goes on to form a picture of what their appearances were: “…they were round, with their backs and sides forming a circle. They had four hands and the same number of legs, and two absolutely identical faces on a cylindrical neck. They had a single head for their two faces (which were on opposite sides), four ears, two sets of genitals, and every other part of their bodies was how you’d imagine it on the basis of what I’ve said.”3 Because they were so strong and ambitious, they attempted to take on the gods. The gods, with Zeus as their leader, held a council and decided that they could not commit genocide—not out of compassion for the human race, but because without the humans, the gods would have no one to sacrifice to them—yet they could not allow the humans to go unpunished. Zeus decided to weaken the human race by splitting them into halves, and so “he cut every member of the human race in half” and commanded Apollo “to twist every divided person’s face and half-neck round towards the gash…[and to] heal their wounds. So Apollo twisted their heads around, and pulled the skin together from all over their bodies on to what is now called the stomach (think of purses being closed by draw-strings), leaving only a single opening in the middle of the stomach, which we call the navel, where he tied the skin up into a knot.”2 The humans began to die out because they refused to eat or do anything at all without their other halves. “Zeus took pity on them…[he] moved their genitals round to the front of their bodies and thus introduced intercourse between two human beings, with the man as the agent of generation taking place within the woman.”3 The allegory explains how we were at one time one with another person, and now, being separate—cut in half—we reunite spiritually through the bonds of marriage. This is what marriage is. Like Joseph Campbell, Plato believed that we were once one, and through marriage our souls are reunited with our other half, making us whole and complete. The Holy Bible also greatly supports Campbell’s belief that marriage unites two people, two lives, into one life. Repeatedly throughout the sacred text is the emphasis on marriage uniting two people into “one flesh,” allegorically speaking.4 The full verse found in Genesis 2:23-24 reads: “And Adam said, This [is] now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” The theme occurs once more in the Gospel of Mathew. “…This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” Keeping with the repeated scripture, yet again we see “For this reason man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” Time and time again we see the appearance of marriage meaning that two people will be joined as one throughout the bible. In conclusion, Joseph Campbell strongly believes that what defines marriage is two people coming together as two halves of a whole, reuniting spiritually to complete each other through the union of matrimony. Plato presented his belief in the reuniting of two people into one through his character, Aristophanes, in Symposium. To further support Campbell’s idea one only needs to look at the Bible, which has been the top seller of books for years, which constantly emphasizes the union of the two into the one throughout the entire text. Works Cited Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. New York: Doubleday, 1988. Plato. Symposium. Trans. Robin Waterfield. New York: Oxford University, 1994. The Holy Bible: King James Version. Zondervan, 2010. | |
topic: Various | |
[reply] [5 comments] |
|
| The Holidays, They Are Upon Us | December 8, 2010, 8:49AM |
by: eon |
|
Just a wish that you all enjoy the season safely. Be merry and bright and FFS, only sober when you have to be! | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [11 comments] |
|
| Peer Deterioration Makes For Peer Determination | December 8, 2010, 8:16AM |
 by: Youngster_Joey |
|
Movies today portray high schools as a watering hole for students acted out by suave looking twenty-two-year-old actors and actresses. You have your jocks, your preps, your overly-nice, overly-quiet normal kids. Your band nerds, dramatic speech-giving theater peeps, your thugs, your geeks, and that one cool teacher that will let you bend the rules while still teaching you a moral lesson to be learned in life who will eventually be fired but then brought back through popular demand. But what makes this far-too-cliche high school so different from our own? The nerd doesn't get the prettiest girl in the whole school, score a fat sack, get at least one high five from the most athletic guy in the there-is-way-too-many-lockers-in-this hallway, find White Castle, and doesn't move up the bar in his popularity ladder. In the movie, the nerd always prevails. Therefore, people tend to brush off reality. In middle school, I was the subject of much verbal abuse. I was young, chubby, more nonathletic than a lava lamp, and puberty had just discovered me faster than Bill Gates makes a million and was less reluctant to let go than Rose Calvert when the Titanic sank. By the time I reached eighth grade, I was used to taunts like Pizza Face, Beaver Teeth, and Cousin It (because my hair was down to my waist and constantly covered my face). Just before I left middle school for good, my class couldn't help but push forth the urge to embarrass me in front of my peers one last time. As I fell asleep during the quarterly exam, the student behind me cleverly placed a pencil eraser into the crack of my buttocks. While this is all fun and games, imagine how I felt waking up to a class of twenty-six students laughing at how funny an eraser is sticking out of my crack while I sleep. Okay, I understand, it's still a little bit funny. Even for me now, I can't help but stifle a snicker, but at that moment, that eraser was a reminder that middle school was a food chain and I was at the bottom of it. Middle school is the worst. Children are at the age where they have just realized they need to seek approval from other peers, guided by movie cliches to strive to have the biggest sleepover or the coolest Air Force Ones and they'll say just about anything for the attention. The thing about middle school bullying is the bully isn't intentionally trying to make that person hurt on the inside. What they want is a reaction from the people around them. They want their peers to laugh at the awful joke they made and have people acknowledge how witty they are. Even in this situation: Becky asks Kyle out to the school dance, but Kyle is dating Ashley. Ashley finds out. Now she has a personal vendetta against Becky for trying to hit on her boyfriend. Every time she sees Becky in the hallway, she taunts her by throwing things at her and calling her a slut. While Ashley may be trying to hurt Becky's feelings, she's also trying to prove a point. "I am a bad ass bitch. Don't fuck with my man." She wants the acknowledgment for her actions and is using Becky as a lesson to be learned. To me, middle school bullying was normal. It was the chain of command that I conquered in high school. After puberty finally reared its ugly head, I shone my bright and shiny mirror against it and it look one look at itself and vanquished into the stone statue that was the reminder of my hurt. After the graduation of middle school, I put down anyone who was smaller and weaker. My taunts were funny and the class had its approval. That was until the day I met Rebbecca. Rebbecca was the new girl who had just moved from Tennessee. She was awkwardly skinny with a pointy chin and acne had struck her at a terrible time in her life. Her first day of school, she sat next to me on the bus and plugged in her headphones and asked me what kind of music I liked. I turned my nose up at her taste of garbage metal bands but continued on my casual chit-chat of things like internet, poetry, and parties. See, the thing about nerdy kids is that they're always easy to make fun of when someone is around. But we both lived in the same small town forty minutes from school that had a total population of zip. For a whole forty minutes or so, Rebbecca was assigned to sit next to me alone. With no one around to hear my taunts, my heart just wasn't in it. To make matters worse, she became my lab partner due to a seating arrangement in my science class. Not only did I have to sit next to her for an hour and twenty minutes on a bus route, but now spend an extra forty minutes talking to her about a subject I sucked at and she prevailed in. I started to talk to her regularly. I didn't stick up for her when my other class mates would start to poke fun at her, but I didn't make my move to join in their reindeer games for fear of never finishing my science homework and facing an awkward ride home. Instead, I would copy her answers while she wrote in her dairy at our lab table. The weird thing about Rebbecca is that she always took her diary and hid it into the small crevice under our table, but I never bothered to read it. Now wait, I promise this story will bring clarity to the point I am going to make. One day, Rebbecca's awkward personality jolted from her body and wreaked havoc on my La-La Land. While riding the bus, Rebbecca would always get on after me, but in the afternoon, I would get off the bus before her. Due to the bus route and the town equaling no more than sixty square feet, we both had a decent idea of where the other lived. In fact, we lived less than two miles apart. As I was exiting the bus one day, Rebbecca casually points to my home and asks, "Is that where you live?" At the time, I gave it no thought, shrugged my backpack onto my shoulders and replied, "Yeah, that house right there." My nightmare began. Mom was making macaroni and cheese with fried chicken. My grandparents were seated around the table playing Uno. I was watching the television when my doorbell rang. It had been at least an hour since I had walked off the school bus, which apparently, was enough time for Rebbecca to walk all the way to my house. My mom had that very disappointed tone that says in that motherly way, "You shouldn't invite people to dinner without telling me because I didn't make enough." Needless to say, it was awkward timing. "Lee, would you please fix your friend a plate of food. It's polite," my mom would say. I would reply, "Uh, um, yeah. Uh...what do you...uh, eat?" Rebbecca took two servings of everything at once and my mother gave me more disapproving glares, as if I were the one taking two servings instead. After a minute or two, the atmosphere relaxed and my elders began to carry on a conversation about politics. For the life of me, I can't remember what was said to this day that made Rebbecca jump up from my dinner table, but I know something my family said upset her. Upset her so bad that she jumped up from the table and stormed at full speed to my front door. Unfortunately for Rebbecca, she forgot about the full-glass door and ran full-steam-ahead into it, nearly knocking herself unconscious. After picking herself up from the floor, she proceeded to open the door and take off running down the street. My family sat in silence for a good ten minutes before my mother calmly said, "Lee, please don't invite your friends over anymore. Thank you," and took a dainty bite of her food. Needless to say, I was embarrassed of Rebbecca's actions. Our bus rides grew quiet. I started to do my own science home work. In secret, I would whisper to my friends how strange she was and how she just randomly showed up to my house. It didn't take long for the story to travel. Soon, Rebbecca became the target of humiliation as students would say, "Watch out. There's a door there, Rebbecca" or "Hey, are you gonna walk to my house, too?" All the fingers pointed back to me. Rebbecca dug herself further into her diary during science class. It only got worse as the school tried to save money by car pooling the smaller routes on the short bus and Rebbecca had to ride first class all the way to school with the mentally unfit. Then one day, Rebbecca just stopped showing up. Rumors were that her parents had suddenly moved her back to Tennessee. During science class, I sat alone at my large lab table. I gave up on doing my work and would idly stare at the window and push gum wads under my desk. As I took out my large wad of Big Red and pressed them under the table, I felt my fingers brush the edges of a spiral notebook. Rebbecca's diary. In which I will give you the honor of reading a piece or two she wrote about me and others things because I've kept it all these years: "Journal, (September 10th, 2006) This move really sucks. Today I unpacked all my clothes and my computer. The internet isn't set up at our house yet so I printed off some neat pages to put in the front of my binders for school. The girl I sit next to seems pretty cool. She has her lip pierced and she's only fifteen. My parents would never let me do anything like that, but as soon as I turn eighteen, they can't tell me what to do." "Journal, (September 12th, 2006) The girl I six next to on the bus is my lab partner is science. We had to pick partners today, and since I was sitting next to her, we got paired together. She doesn't really do anything, but she always telling other classmates that physical science doesn't apply to her because she's isn't going to grow up to teach it." "Dear Journal, (September 20th, 2006) I hate gym class and that it's required in able to graduate. These preppy girls were asking me what I do to make my hair so pretty, but after they started laughing, I realized they were making fun of me. I hope at some point, they have kids who are really ugly and they feel bad about ever making fun of someone. (Later that day:) Kid stuck gum in my hair. Mom had to cut five inches off to make it even. I really hate this school." "October (no date listed) I just want to die." "October 18th, 2006 I was feeling upset, but Heather made a joke about how Mr. Gordon's wife washed his whites with his colored and now he has to wear pink socks. I think that's his excuse. Hahaha. Made me feel better for a little bit." "Journal, October 19th, 2006 I went to go visit Heather today, but they were busy eating. I got really upset when her stepdad said something about construction failing due to Mexican immigration. I think this country was found on immigration, so it's only fair. I think she hates me now." "October 28th, 2006 Heather told some people about what happened, but she made it seem like I stalked her or something, so now people just make fun of me and they don't even know why I left her house. She's quiet in science class now. Kind of feel like I lost a friend, but I am used to this rejection." After reading her journal, I remembered the remorse and rejection I went through in middle school. I remembered the struggle for my peer's acceptance, and just trying to feel like I belong in a crowd of people, and while trying to do that, I had alienated someone who was striving for the same thing. I had ultimately become the bully and I was feeling pretty crappy about it. I was the reason she was crying herself to sleep at night, even though my simple action was so small in itself. Two years later, I'm sitting next to a boy named Josh in English class. He is slightly overweight and smells of Jell-O Pudding packs. He has the misfortune of his body fat giving him sagging breasts. We're discussing what we're doing for the weekend when we hear a snicker a few desks from us. I can hear one of the boy's discussing Josh's weight and loudly referring to his fat as "tits" and "manboobs". Josh's eyes fall to his desk. It is middle school all over again. "Hey, aren't you guys a little too old to be making fun of people anymore? Grow up." I saw Josh smile. I could hardly believe the words had left my mouth, but the satisfaction was more than I could ever receive from making fun of someone. | |
topic: Life | |
[reply] [20 comments] |
|
| Is there such a thing as free will? | November 1, 2010, 7:55PM |
 by: XxkrimsonxangelxX |
|
I think not. If there was a thing as free will,why would we ask others for there adive? Free will is exactly what its called,FREE WILL. Think about it,other peoples opinions factor in to make our decisions,that alter our thoughts,an change what we want sometimes. We do not have free will,because society tells us what we can,and cannot do. Are parents control every aspect of our lives until we are 18. And are friends,there opinions change the way we think about doing things. In modern day America,the man is the one that purposes,correct? an if a female does it,its frowned upon,but if we have free will,why cant we as women,ask the man we love to marry us? Its frowned upon that a girl asks a boy out,if its not for the sadie hawkens dance at school? is that not controling our Free will? Making marjuana illegal,thats controlling are free will right? its a natraul herb,that when it drys it is able to be smoked,but since they cant tax it,they make it illegal. homosexuality is frowned upon,an that isnt a choice,you are born like that, an people try an control who are sexual partners are,who we love who we wanna be with. if we really do have free will as the bible says we do,why is it everything controls us,controls what we do,alters us? why cant we love unconditionally,marry who we want,do what we want,an not have people frown upon us? do you believe there is free will? | |
topic: Life | |
[reply] [3 comments] |
|
| pages: back 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 next |