Funny (political, religious) pictures

That actually doesn't apply. Gas's argument isn't that "there are bigger problems that we need to worry about" but rather "your so called huge problem is actually, statistically, insignificant and not the epidemic you seem to think it is." He's also right on that: mass shootings get a lot of press but are rare enough that it can take months for a new one to occur. It's just they are given a lot of media play because "if it bleeds, it leads".

Gun violence itself is an issue, but it's not like we have a huge surplus of people going for a bodycount.
 
Going by that graph, about 3750-4000.
1 dead, 11 shot at birthday party on Detroit's west side
er... 3751-4001.

--Patrick
Do the math again. I somehow doubt that there are 2,000,000 murders in the USA each year. (If 4,000=0.2% then 100% must be 2,000,000). Methinks 2 million is total number of deaths per year, all causes. That's plausible (if low) for a population in the 300 million range IMO. Which says that Patrick, you did your math wrong.
 
Do the math again[...], you did your math wrong.
Dude. To tell PatrThom that... that's like 10 times worse than calling somebody's mother a whore.
I'm not infallible, and I'm notoriously lax with my arithmetic. Let's check my work:

Lessee...330,000,000 total population * 0.006 = 1,980,000 total murders * 0.002 = 3960 total victims of shooting sprees.
That's 3750 < x < 4000, all right.

HOWEVER you are correct, since the blue graph is not "total population," it is "total deaths."
This was an assumption I incorrectly made when I started this whole arithmetic thing.
So my math is correct, it is my initial position which was wrong.

Applying those same calculations to the real numbers goes as follows:
Total deaths (2013) = 2,596,993 * 0.006 = 15,582 total murders * 0.002 = 31 total victims of shooting sprees.

--Patrick
 
Last edited:
PatrThom isn't wrong, merely inaccurate - since he never specified "per year". There's about 12K homicides in the USA per year, depending on your definition. Out of those, about 80 are "mass shooting" terrain - which corresponds to the 0.6% in the graph, by the way (it's technically 0.7% but rounding and graphs....heh).
In total, since WWII, he's about on the money.

*edit* or, taken as an aspect of the total population and who could expect to die from it, apparently, according to that darn ninja over there!
 
I'm glad you found your error. It's just that I'm surprised you didn't see your result and do a "sanity check" when the numbers come out so far outta whack.

Either way, everything seems on the right scale for discussion now!


And, engineer beats math geek today. :)
 
I'm glad you found your error. It's just that I'm surprised you didn't see your result and do a "sanity check" when the numbers come out so far outta whack.
Either way, everything seems on the right scale for discussion now!
And, engineer beats math geek today. :)
I had no ballpark in my head as to what the numbers should've been (not even in a Fermi sense), so I never even noticed that they were off.
Also, I'm no math geek. If anything, I'm also an engineer. I just never specialized (unless you count Music). This has limited my career opportunities.

--Patrick
 

Cajungal

Staff member


I know this is how religious people comfort themselves sometimes, but this sounds insane to me. Would someone really tell their kid this? If someone had told my paranoid ass this when I was a child, I would have misbehaved to try and live longer.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Well, and if I can be a wet blanket for a moment, I think the metaphor means its God picking the flowers and of the good ones are there for going to heaven as soon as possible. But what do I know, I'm just another former Lutheran/Methodist apostate.
 

Cajungal

Staff member
Sure, I get that. I'm just thinking of all the dark, morbid stuff I heard ad a kid that fits this theme. If you're young and afraid of death, this is not a comforting thought.

Reminds me of the day in middle school when I learned that despair is a grave sin...meaning that if I felt *too* guilty and bad I was making myself unfit for heaven.
 
So what I am picking up from this is that God has created a planet of soul growing meat creatures so he can harvest them, rending the most noble ones depriving them of a full life, so he can plant their blooming souls into his ghost bouquet and place them in some golden vase till they wither and must begin the harvest anew.

This seems like it should be the album of some sore of new music genre...Martha Metal.
 
Sure, I get that. I'm just thinking of all the dark, morbid stuff I heard ad a kid that fits this theme. If you're young and afraid of death, this is not a comforting thought.

Reminds me of the day in middle school when I learned that despair is a grave sin...meaning that if I felt *too* guilty and bad I was making myself unfit for heaven.
There's a reason when I was able to chose between my Catholic side and my Lutheran side, I chose Lutheran. Essentially, the ELCA is all "eh, just say you love Jesus and you're good" (mind you, this was before I became a godless heathen atheist).
 
I thought the ELCA was okay with teh gayz nowadays? Or am I confusing them with another synod?
That's Missouri Synod. They're as fundamentalist as the most hard core catholic sects. ELCA was the first to elect a lesbian bishop, so quite the opposite.
 
This world where the pope is too liberal for conservatives and today is equal to 9/11 in the minds of some is proof that sometimes, it's not so bad a place. The fucking salt over the supreme court today is a thing of beauty.





Fuck, it's all so familiar.




The best is when people go hate crazy and stop making any sense at all.



On no, not you Tails!



The mental gymnastics at work with some folk are astounding.

Are you Christians ready to continue to be persecuted!? See, by not allowing systematic persecution of others, you're the ones being persecuted. LOGIC!

 
Last edited:

Spoiler alert. It's not an ISIS flag, and that is most assuredly not Arabic.
I don't know how long this will stay up, so enjoy it while you can.

--Patrick
 
Top