Michael Archer

Wait...are you sure guns break video mics? Thousands of gun videos on Youtube seem to disagree.

OH MAN, OH MAN. I've said this before on the "The Tunnel" thread. I said that I believe there's such a thing as "proper horror" and "improper horror." I said that examples of proper horror were "The Tunnel" and "Marble Hornets." I have the Season 1 DVD; it's AWESOME.

It was my birthday a week ago. *crickets chirp* "boo, you suck"

I'm going to screw up your equation. Sorry guys: The axiom we have is that "Friendship is magic[/i]. But how do we know they're interconvertible? How do we know that "all magic is friendship?" "Newts are salamanders", does not mean that all salamanders are newts; the statement should read "all newts are salamanders, but not all salamanders are newts." Likewise, "all friendship is magic, but not all magic is friendship."

Nuclear Power: not so much that it's a unbelievably great source of energy (it is), but because it's one of the greatest metaphors, ever since the New York City skyline. A power plant is the living testament to man's harness over matter and how capable he is at shaping it to suit his life better in the most efficient way possible--and outside of it, on the streets and presumably haven't washed for days, are the environmentalists screaming for its destruction.

My bad, it was a while ago (also my bad) and my memory is kind of hazy. I like your sandwich hypothetical. Alright, so if I've got this correctly: you're saying that if you come across a man who's starving, your sandwich (yours that you made and earned rightfully, let's say) morally belongs to him, despite what ever circumstances? If I was in that scenario, the sandwich morally belongs to me, or whoever I pass the right to that sandwich. I easily see myself giving him my sandwich, but depending on the circumstances, it wouldn't be a sacrifice. If he told me that he broke his leg chopping trees to gather wood to build a house to sustain his life, I would give him the sandwich; this wouldn't be a sacrifice, as his payment to me would be his virtue--I would take pleasure in admiring his work ethic, and his perseverance: things I admire in other human beings. Now, if I came across him and he said that he had his leg broken trying to rob someone else's wood and then he promptly demanded that I give him my sandwich as if he was entitled to it and threatened me with harm if I didn't, I would leg it. The former is not a sacrifice and not evil, if I gave the latter my sandwich that would be a sacrifice and that would be evil, in my morality. When you say "redistributing wealth", again, you're advocating the initiation of force on another human being. Again, you can't proclaim the "right" to treat other human beings like irrational creatures by rendering their minds useless through the use of force--this forces a contradiction. If humans are irrational, then you're irrational and cannot proclaim a "right"--a concept that only applies to rational beings. I'm not saying people lower should pay more, I'm saying that people shouldn't pay more percentages just because they're more successful; that's punishing the good for being good. I'm not an advocate of taxes, but a good start would be a flat tax: everyone pays the exact same percentage on their income. That seems fair, as far as taxes go. This is a good point. I guess when you think about this, virtues and vices really depends on your morality. My morality is: if it benefits a man's life, then it's good and it's a virtue; if it destroys a man's life, then it's evil and it's a vice. So, under this morality, when a man produces, earns a lot of money, is successful and happy, his values--his reason, his ability, his self-esteem i.e. the values that make him money--are virtues. You used the word "punishment." Are taxes "punishment?" Don't get me wrong, I agree with you if you say taxing higher is punishment. That's why I think it's unfair to "punish" people simply because they're rich. Rich people are people, too. Ideally, you should be able to breathe underwater--in fact, not breathe at all, but such is the inescapable nature of human life and existence. No one on the planet is exempt from the law of identity: a quality of man's identity is that he must produce in order to survive. Let's go back to the desert island scenario for a second: even if you made a great argument that you're entitled to other people's work, even if you somehow mustered every single language and every single concept to make a single, irrefutable argument (let's say) for the redistribution of other people's resources and why shouldn't have to work for a bare minimum--you will die if you don't work to produce. My problem with this is, partly because it reverses cause-and-effect (i.e. a man's wealth is the product of his ability to think, not the other way around, so when you initiate force and render his ability to think useless, his wealth suffers), but because it's simply not fair. It also leaves too many "whys" that are casually unanswered: why isn't an individual free to use his wealth to his best judgement? Under this system's morality, why is it considered "selfish" to buy a yacht and satisfy all your personal wants to make you happy, but it's "noble" to satisfy other people's wants? Why should someone be forced into a system of a constantly changing predator-prey relationship until the prey is exhausted and the predator becomes the new prey? Why is it an individual's virtue to serve someone else's vice? Why is that if Bill Gates said "I donate billions to people who are of less ability to me. I want a Nobel Peace prize, for I am the most moral man on earth." people would call him selfish and unworthy, but the receivers of his billions would be praised for struggling through hard times? Why is it that a loss is considered more moral than a gain if the gain in question was through achievement and ability? Why is someone getting an undeserved welfare check more moral than a businessman who makes billions of completely deserved wealth and promptly spends it on his company, and things that make him happy? My problem with this system is that its morality holds "good" to be a lack of virtue, rather than a surplus of it. My problem is that its a system of stagnation and looting, where a man has no choice and is forced to become one of either a victim who is looted or a moocher who lives off the work of the victims.

You know, I've been doing a lot of thinking (while reading Atlas Shrugged, admittedly), and the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that I couldn't live by the "we are our brother's keeper" morality. Remember when I asked you if it was moral to eat when someone else needed it more than you? You said something along the lines of it was kind of unfortunate, but necessary. This morality holds evil to be that which sustains your life, but is a necessary, practical evil. In conclusion, this means that the good--moral perfection--is something that a human being will never be able to achieve which means that a human being is inherently evil. I always thought that the purpose of morality was to guide my life to help me become a better person, but this morality holds that the more I sustain my life and the happier I become, the more evil I become. When I eat when someone is hungrier than I am, I feel guilty for the simple fact that I'm taking an action to sustain my life. I wouldn't be able to live with myself like that. Because man exists and produces using reason in order to sustain his life, naturally, the more he produces, the more successful and prosperous he becomes. The greater his mind, the greater his wealth. Because a great mind is the cause of great wealth and not the other way around, this morality, in essence holds that the greater the mind, the more he must be sacrificed. This morality also holds that someone's inability is greater than someone's ability; in essence, it holds that the negative is greater than the positive. The amount of success that a businessman has is directly proportional to how much adherents of this morality says that he should be gutted. The amount of abject despondency someone has is directly proportional to how much they should be rewarded, they also say. This means that this morality attempts to reverse the roles of man's nature and to make him something that he isn't. This is why, I believe, this morality is incompatible with humans and will not achieve prosperity. This morality is causing the once great continent of Europe to fall, and America is next. See, this is the thing--and why I think this conversation is doomed to go nowhere. A man is not a ghost, so he cannot live without property. If you stick a man on a desert island, without property, he will die. A man needs property to sustain himself. You can say all you want that a man doesn't need physical goods, like food, to live, but nature will show him otherwise. I like to think the American Constitution--one of the greatest documents written in history, in my opinion and goes right up there with the Deceleration of Independence--has a lot to say in the matter. "No person...shall be...deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..." I think the founders were saying that when a man is proved to be guilty by objective facts and law, he has shown that he does not respect the rights of his fellow man, so his fellow man respond to his initiation of force in the only way it can be responded to: by force. That's why the death penalty, as a moral concept, is justified. When a man murders another man, he is at the level of an animal and there's no rational reason that he should be treated like a human being. Now, you can argue that the death penalty is too hard to implement perfectly to prevent accidents--and I would agree with you. Society is simply the sum of its individuals, so strictly speaking it is on me, and everyone else. Your second sentence confirms exactly what I'm thinking about this morality: the more successful someone is, the more he must give. This morality punishes based on virtue, not vice. Shouldn't it be the other way around? "Wage slavery?" That's a contradiction in terms. You're comparing enslavement with voluntary employment i.e. you're comparing the use of force with the voluntary cooperation of two minds. I think this stems from the fallacy that business owners paying their workers much less than they make is exploitation. I don't know how someone can think of a concept like that. Almost every single thing you do in your life is not your discovery; your computer alone is the product of decades of research and development from some of the greatest minds in history in order to bring you that convenient flashy box that halves your workload. I personally believe that if I were dropped on a desert island without any tools from the modern world, I would not last long; I rely on the knowledge passed on from me from other people who discovered it themselves. A businessman invents a processor and builds a factory and employs people; his reward is money, while the reward for the workers is--not only money, but also the knowledge that went into the chip that will make them more productive and make them have more leisure, then the workers vote into office a politician to tell the businessman how to work and under what conditions, despite the fact that these workers don't have any formal schooling and would never be able to understand a circuit board. Now, who's exploiting whom? Equating the difference between slavery and trade, is like equating the difference between a gun and man's capacity to reason. You can't claim the right to initiate force against other men. This means that you're saying that you should deal with men as if they were irrational beings; if man is an irrational being, that means you are, and you cannot claim your use of reason to use force. This is another contradiction. OWS has absolutely no knowledge on how to run a company. Yet, they advocate voting in politicians to do the running for them. Simply put, they're declaring that they are not capable of maintaining their own money, but they have the capacity to run big corporations. You say that some of the rich are responsible, while others are not; I agree with you that not all rich people are pulling government favors, but OWS disagrees with both of us. They yell "we are the 99%" and are fervent in their condemnation of the "1%" while they blank out the fact that the majority of the "1%" do not work on Wall Street and the majority of the 1% don't pull government failures. "The 1%" simply refers to the top one percent of the incomes in that country--it says nothing about what they did to earn it. OWS is scapegoating, pure and simple. Now, don't get me wrong, I completely agree that the government should get out of Wall Street and vice-versa. From what I've gathered, OWS isn't so concerned about getting the government out the economy: all they want is that the government to stop giving benefits to the upper class, and start giving it the middle class. I do not understand how this abject double-standard is getting past most people. I think OWS fails to understand that the rich are just as much human beings as anyone else. It doesn't matter that they have more money. This contradiction can be easily avoided by telling the government, "If you wouldn't do it to a family below the poverty line, don't do it to the multi-billionaire." Of course; the UN's deceleration of human rights is a perversion of the very concept of rights.

To people who don't get enough ponies in your life: you should read the My Little Pony novel. Yes, some guy wrote a novel about ponies. You think I'm joking, but I'm not. If you read all of that, you're fifty times the brony I will ever be.

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Actually, I think that would be a really good way for Ross to tie everyone over. I'm sure he's has gigabytes worth of bad takes, and since that's his actual voice, it will sound like Freeman getting mad. XD Wait...if Ross lives by himself and is really calm and reserved, it could be just a lot of stuttering. I know that I'm a very anxious person and when I make movies or record lines, I do get mad quite a bit.

Oh my god, can you seriously fix BG2? Seriously! YES, OH GOD, YES First of all, PLEASE GET RID OF ALL THOSE DUMB CLANS PLAYING THE GAME. Lol, just kidding. Hmm...well, I really wanted to like the militia class, but I couldn't. His melee sucks, and he reloads just as fast as the Continental Army. I like the Fowler's Accuracy, but I might as well just use the Revolutionarre. And, despite being smoothbore, historcially, you COULD shoot up to one hundred yards pretty accurately (the average soldier was accurate up to thirty yards).

I did some research: it's as subjective, evil, and totalitarian as any of the antitrust laws. ZEY ARE NAUGHT TO BE TRUSTED, DIMITRI.

Thank you for distracting us with that .gif. Can we not talk about sexual ponies? I would really appreciate if we could pretend that part of the internet didn't exist. God, PonyArchive now links to The Pirate Bay. I feel really ashamed to have been associated with them. Uh oh: is there an episode this Saturday? Wikipedia says yes, put ponycountdown doesn't agree. GIVE ME MAH PONIES

Halo (I wasn't too keen on Halo 3: ODST despite its moments), Call of Duties 2-MW2. And of course: Half-Life 2. It's still my favorite game of all time. You thought that they couldn't make an FPS atmospheric and engaging? YOU THOUGHT WRONG. But that's generally true of FPSes; aside from Half-Life 2, the only atmospheric parts in an FPS are Halo 1's 343 Guilty Spark level and "All Ghilled Up" from Call of Duty 4. Sometimes even to this day, I go down to the basement, pop in COD4, turn up the volume really loud, and just get lost in that level.

I really used to like Anonymous. They were funny, and they usually fought against establishments of fraud. Now, they're just anarchists. They attacked the FBI when they were investigating MegaUpload. Also, didn't they organize Occupy Wall Street? Also, remember Jesse Slaughter and her "ya dun goofed" dad? Turns out, the story behind that isn't what you think. 4chan is full of pedophiles and for every cool thing you hear Anonymous do, there's a million pedophile-ey and immature things they do.

Ron Paul, although I want him to win, is not going to. I'm probably going to abstain from voting rather than vote for Santorum or Romney when they win. I'd rather Obama and the socialists get the blame when the country goes to hell, rather than some religious nut who claims to support capitalism. ztVMib1T4T4 Yeah, for a little bit. At least Perry never said that it would be a good thing for Iran to have a nuke. You know, you're like the tenth person to say that to me today! I don't understand why it's so difficult for people to realize that many American voters live in countries other than the United States. I actually have to agree with you. His foreign policy and everything you said is what's keeping him from being a perfect candidate. Wow, the Republican party SUCKS nowadays!

I guess you're right. But the life expectancy did shoot up tremendously after the industrial revolution. I'm not too sure about that. Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than United States, and even Canada (just barely). I think it's more a measure of quality of medicine and access, but moving on: The American concept of rights stem from an individual's own life. The reasoning is that if it is right for a man to survive and live, then it is his right to work for his life. All the rights, like the ones outlined in the Deceleration of Independence, comes from the axiom that it is right for a man to live. Being "rich" simply means "having a lot of property" and the right to property is a corollary to the right to life, so you have the right to be rich because you have the right to own property. I like to think the saying "a fool and his money are soon parted" has a lot of gravity in this situation. No matter how wealthy a family will be, it will disappear if that wealth is not sustained by the same drive and perseverance that created the wealth in the first place. And on a practical matter, it wouldn't really be fair to expropriate that family's money as they technically weren't doing anything illegal. Basically, what I'm saying is that once slavery has been outlawed, the family must sustain their wealth through legitimate means; if they don't they go bankrupt. If they're still rich hundreds of years later, they must have been doing something right. And after the slave family is free to make money, it's not fair to them to blame something that happened hundreds of years ago for their economic failure (if they're still experiencing it that many years later). Native Americans? That's a sticky, controversial subject for another day, but suffice to say that they were society based on tribal worship and collectivism. They didn't even believe that an individual had the right to live for himself, or to own property. As for my opinion on the Mexican-American war: while America was technically wrong (there, I said it), I would like to remind you that was the evil, feudal, slave-holding Southern states that did that. The reason why there's so much emphasis on property rights is, as I've said before, is that property rights come from the right to life. As a society that puts emphasis on an individual's right to life, naturally, it makes sense that an equal amount of emphasis is on property rights. Do you think that human rights and property rights are separate, opposite, or equal? I'm asking, since I believe that property rights and human rights are one in the same. I don't see it as affirming the actions of ancestors. It's more like, "what they did is wrong, but from here on out, this will be a country of freedom and justice." It's not perfect, but you have to look at what the alternative is. My family is from South Africa and the government has all these affirmative action plans for blacks and asians. The South African government is fighting racism with racism. Which is, if I may quote Mike (this is the Accursed Farm forums after all!), "like trying to put out a fire by burning down another building". That's what believe any law that tries to protect rights by abridging the rights of others is like. No one said creating wealth was easy. Granted, it's probably easier to sustain a large some of money than it is to grow it from scratch, but the root of growth and sustaining of wealth is the same: freedom and reason. As for Africa, their land is plagued by war and corruption. The little progress they make is always seized by rebels and looters. Africa is a perfect example of why it's important to have a strong government that protects the freedoms and rights of all. I'm pretty sure that capitalism created the middle class. As for what I would do? I would try to start a business and make money, but that's really just about it. Again, this is an issue of collectivism being automatically assumed to be that status quo. You're putting the burden of the working class onto me without even questioning the notion that it's my responsibility. All I will say is that if you show a North Korean peasant, a Sudanese peasant, and a Liberian peasent, your working class and said: "these are our peasants", they would probably say that our peasants live like kings. OWS is blaming the elite of our society for being rich. The businessmen are rich, while they aren't. It really sounds like they're blaming the rich people for the fact that they're not rich. I think this attitude comes from the incorrect notion that money is a static quantity that simply switches hands every now and then.

Nuclear is great. It's safe, it's efficient, and it's clean. Nuclear power plants take a really long time to build, but they're worth it. I also like nuclear, because it exposes the environmentalists anti-human, anti-captalist ulterior motives. If they truly believed what they preached, they would love nuclear power the most--but they hate it the most. Nuclear power is the cleanest and most reliable form of energy there is. Wind and Solar aren't practical on the scale that they're needed and they're really unreliable. Oil is good but I think, if Ross is right, it's going to peak soon. Australia and Canada have a lot of Uranium, so that's really good.

Great episode. I really need to rent The Music Man sometime. The last time I saw it was on stage when I was about six years old. All I remember is the "whaddyatalk" scene at the very beginning; that always made me laugh. I also vaguely recall there were some catchy tunes in it, like "Gary Indiana". I used to sing that one all the time.

I learned that a loud noise will blow out a camera. Why does it do that? How do you fix it? Next episode!

The problem is that on Master, if you don't have armor, you die pretty quickly. How do mages stay alive? Wards seem kind of useless, IMO.

I voted "Other" for a very strong Constitutional Republic government. The only power the majority has in such a system is electing certain officials to extremely limited positions of power. The majority never, ever, has the power to vote away a man's rights. I can't believe how many people on this thread, and smart people presumably, are defending democracy! Democracy can be just as bad as a dictatorship. Do you know why Socrates was executed? Not because he was breaking the law or anything, not because the court had empirical evidence to prove that he was breaking the law, not because he was actually violating peoples rights, but because Democratic Ancient Greece voted on it. That's the evil of democracy. Democracy means majority rule; it means that might makes right. To illustrate this, black people in the post-civil war South were the minority while the KKK was the majority. Democracy says that it's ok for the KKK to lynch a black man, since he's the minority and they're the majority. A proper government is bound by a strong constitution and is implemented solely to protect rights. Simply put: the government is a representative of the people which only uses force in retaliation; if you don't have the right to initiate force on someone or mug them on the street, then you can't give the government authority to do that.

Ron Paul, what a complicated man. He's so right on a lot of things. It's really refreshing to see him oppose the other Republican lunatics on the right grounds. Sometimes, after he talks, I wish I was there just so I could say: "QFT, Dr. Paul!" But he's wrong on a lot of things as well, to the point where it actually undermines the good stuff he says. Still, his heart is in the right place and I can't say that about any other candidate. I registered as a Republican a few days ago; I was going to vote for Rick Perry, but I didn't like his ad.

I remember googling a link to the new episode. I came across Equestria Daily and Derpy was plastered all over the sight. I didn't give her a second glance, and quickly found the link to the episode. I was pleasantly surprised and I guess I'm ashamed to admit that I did bronygasm pretty hard. I'm so glad I didn't pick up on the clues on Equestria Daily. Can you imagine if you had that spoiled for you? Oh come on, you shouldn't be reading forums on My Little Pony if you hadn't seen the new episode! It's very much a character-driven show, like The Big Bang Theory or Seinfeld; the show is not going to be enjoyable if you don't like any of the characters. Three episodes in? I'd say, if a single character hasn't implanted herself deep within your heart, I wouldn't count on it happening anytime soon. As soon as the character Rainbow Dash made her first appearance in episode one, I instantly knew I was going to love her the most. The only reason I kept watching after the pilot was for more Rainbow Dash. It was around episode four or five that I really started to love all the characters and their cute little antics. What do you have doubts about? That it won't be that good? The stories aren't spectacular per se; for me, they're only good because I get to see these characters that I know and love in different scenarios. The characters are cute and extremely likeable--now that I think about it, that's the only thing the show has going for it. Sometimes, they cut to these three little ponies called The Cutie Mark Crusaders. The episodes with them are extremely sub-par. I speculate that the reason for this is because it doesn't have enough of the mane six. Even in the CMC episodes, the only good parts are the parts where the mane six make an appearance. Think about it, everyone else: remember the episode "Call of the Cutie"? Name two parts you remember. I bet more than half of you said "Rainbow Dash's solution" and "Cupcakes." So, yeah. What character do you like, HoboJim? Or, what character do you find the most tolerable? If it's Twilight, watch Season 2 Episode 3 and then decide if you want to keep watching. If you like Applejack, watch Season 1 Episode 4. If you like Rainbow Dash, watch Season 1 Episode 16. If you like Pinkie Pie, watch Season 1 Episode 25. If you like Rarity, watch Season 1 Episode 14. If you like Fluttershy, watch Season 1 Episode 9. After watching one of those, at that point, you're on your own. But seriously, how does your heart not melt when you see this:

Shouldn't you ask me to a dinner and a movie first?