Matt wrote:Some particular activity only turns irrational when it causes harm to the person practicing it.

Well, that's a definition of 'rational' that I've never come across before.

Or, well, irrational. Which is "not rational", and therefore dependent upon "rational".. so, same thing really.

What the fuck is this babble about? Please define your terms.

Matt wrote:

It’s therefore not a question of me refuting anything. Some particular activity only turns irrational when it causes harm to the person practicing it.

Said person might not be conscious of the harm that it's causing, or to be more precise, is not conscious of the harm that such beliefs and practices have already caused, not just historically but to the person as well.

A perfect example is the said person. It is likely the case, that said person was indoctrinated into his, now, particular religion, set of beliefs, differing from those of millions of others, and been told since childhood, when he didn't, yet, know enough about the world, or himself, and how everything worked, other religions, to have concepts, never mind opinions and decisions on questions of existence, morality and purpose. Then, he was repeatedly told, as are many children, by the parents and priest, that they are born sick, sinners, and that the only way they can be saved, the only way for their salvation, is that they believe what their parents and priest tell them about the nature of scriptures and tell them how to interpret said scripture. And if they choose to deviate from that path, then there is eternal punishment waiting for them at the end of the path they have chosen with their supposedly given free-will.

So, how's that for "harm"?

It is mental abuse. And sadly, many who have gone through this, and are still devout adherents of a given faith, do not, and often cannot see it as such, because they weren't brought up to view it as such, to view it objectively, from the outside-in.

There are many, indeed on this forum who have gone through such a life, and were able to emancipate themselves, sometimes over the course of many years, from the hold of religion, recognizing religious faith for what it is. Baseless, conveniently infallible primitive claims made about the nature of reality, myths and superstition, perpetuated and assimilated into culture and tradition through ignorance, naivete, awe, reverence and fear.

Matt, adopting any meta-system, religious or otherwise, and becoming a member of any community that shares your meta-system, has benefits. Unfortunately the religious ones come with large scale harms to those outside the community and pretty big harms to those in the community. It is more rational to find a meta-system that gives the benefits without the draw backs.

Religious meta-systems are rife with denying self, I think that's very poor. I think we each should care for ourselves and for each other.

DanDare wrote:Matt, adopting any meta-system, religious or otherwise, and becoming a member of any community that shares your meta-system, has benefits. Unfortunately the religious ones come with large scale harms to those outside the community and pretty big harms to those in the community. It is more rational to find a meta-system that gives the benefits without the draw backs.

Religious meta-systems are rife with denying self, I think that's very poor. I think we each should care for ourselves and for each others.

Of course. I fully agree.

MattHunX wrote:

DanDare wrote:Matt, adopting any meta-system, religious or otherwise, and becoming a member of any community that shares your meta-system, has benefits. Unfortunately the religious ones come with large scale harms to those outside the community and pretty big harms to those in the community. It is more rational to find a meta-system that gives the benefits without the draw backs.

Religious meta-systems are rife with denying self, I think that's very poor. I think we each should care for ourselves and for each others.

Of course. I fully agree.

I think he was talking to Matt, not you, MattHunX.

MattHunX wrote:It is mental abuse. And sadly, many who have gone through this, and are still devout adherents of a given faith, do not, and often cannot see it as such, because they weren't brought up to view it as such, to view it objectively, from the outside-in.

Coincidently I have been wondering how to post my latest musings of yesterday.

By what right does a faith have to say women must be modest, females do have a natural desire to attract a mate and a right to turn men they don’t want away.

By what right, and indeed reason does a god require burnt animals? Fuck all use to the god and upsets animal lovers.

God is all about mental cruelty/stress to someone.

Peter Brown wrote:

MattHunX wrote:It is mental abuse. And sadly, many who have gone through this, and are still devout adherents of a given faith, do not, and often cannot see it as such, because they weren't brought up to view it as such, to view it objectively, from the outside-in.

Coincidently I have been wondering how to post my latest musings of yesterday.

By what right does a faith have to say women must be modest, females do have a natural desire to attract a mate ...

Isn't it the other way around usually?

John

Goldenmane wrote:

MattHunX wrote:

DanDare wrote:Matt, adopting any meta-system, religious or otherwise, and becoming a member of any community that shares your meta-system, has benefits. Unfortunately the religious ones come with large scale harms to those outside the community and pretty big harms to those in the community. It is more rational to find a meta-system that gives the benefits without the draw backs.

Religious meta-systems are rife with denying self, I think that's very poor. I think we each should care for ourselves and for each others.

Of course. I fully agree.

I think he was talking to Matt, not you, MattHunX.

Oh, sorry! Didn't occur at the time.

z8000783 wrote:

Peter Brown wrote:

MattHunX wrote:It is mental abuse. And sadly, many who have gone through this, and are still devout adherents of a given faith, do not, and often cannot see it as such, because they weren't brought up to view it as such, to view it objectively, from the outside-in.

Coincidently I have been wondering how to post my latest musings of yesterday.

By what right does a faith have to say women must be modest, females do have a natural desire to attract a mate ...

Isn't it the other way around usually?

John

That I post without thinking how to first? Oh dear, guilty as charged, I'm not very good at subtlety am I and was practicing. :/

Hey, what happened to the OP? He's been banned. What did I miss?

Sockpuppet.

hackenslash wrote:Sockpuppet.

Ah. I do believe you called that one. Nicely spotted.

One of my many fans. Thinks he's special, bless him. He doesn't realise that he's just one of many that stalks me around the internet trying to get a rise out of me.

Each one of us acquires their own unique set of values and emotions, Dan, some rationally useful, others detrimental, some arrived at through reasoning or from what’s perceived to work in daily life, others involuntary - with irrationally-based conduct usually exacting fairly prompt penalty, depending on its nature, extent, and surrounding circumstances of course.

I doubt there’s much point delving here into how up to the age of six or seven or so, our ‘subconscious’ minds act like involuntary and indiscriminate giant blotters (influencing much of our thinking and conduct and as later capable of creating all kinds of psychological conflicts), or how we first emerge beset with a whole bundle of ancestral urges, or the influence exercised by parental upbringing and prevailing cultural norms, and so forth.

Goldenmane may choose to write all this off as ‘babble’, yet maybe there’s a bit more to it than simply settling for “a meta-system that gives the benefits without the drawbacks”?

And in order to lead a satisfactory or decent life, nurture ‘spiritual needs’ (we’re hardly robots), even the atheist needs to cough up some set of ethical values – values which by their very nature may well approximate those aspired to by mainstream religions. Thus other than paying some sort of heed to its moral precepts because they instinctively or by design feel it serves some useful purpose, how many of the greater bulk of lip service Christians actually treat the rest of the Bible as being all that serious, or allegorically?

Numerous medical surveys substantiate the benefits mentioned, Dan, showing that the net gains generally outweigh your “pretty big harms to those in the community.” Human activities taken to extremes are inevitably harmful, religion no exception. Having lived on four continents and though irritating at times, I can’t recall religion harming me personally.


Little seems to turn people on as much as playing at word definition games, Goldenmane!

The trouble with dictionary definitions though is that they often tend to raise more questions than they answer.

I said: “Some particular activity only turns irrational when it causes harm to the person practicing it.” A definition of ‘rational’ that you’ve never come across, you say.

The first definition I struck (the freedictionary) says:

The quality or condition of being rational.
A rational belief or practice.

1. the state or quality of being rational or logical
2. the possession or utilization of reason or logic
3. a reasonable or logical opinion

As self-evident I think, rational people don’t go around knowingly harming themselves, or go out of their way to make themselves miserable if they can help it. They instead seek to be happy, content, enriched, fulfilled, achieve ’self-satisfaction, nurture egos and sense of self/identity, find or add meaning to their lives, blah, blah, blah.

Just about everything they do (ignoring satisfying inescapable survival/immediate material needs) is predicated on it or stems from it, Dan’s ‘meta-system’. So, ‘the quality or condition of being rational’ by definition dictates or involves working toward such goals, with anything else irrationally-based to some degree or other.

Similar applies to hitting a tennis ball over a net, watching Hollywood movie fluff, time indulged here, our personal relationships or interactions, actively embracing atheism as more than mere disbelief or adopting some religious or other ideological practice, philosophy or behaviour.

Society may insist or persuade that we should meet a girl, get married, get a successful job, a home mortgage and a barbecue in the backyard and generally make out like a happy shopper and consumer, but if it only makes or leaves an individual miserable, it’s hardly rational behaviour for them.

And but for the potent influence of advertisers, societal and peer pressure, ‘brainwashing’ in other words, it also means we needn’t all be at each other’s throats competing for the exactly the same things, if that makes sense.

You still here?

Matt wrote:
Little seems to turn people on as much as playing at word definition games, Goldenmane!

The trouble with dictionary definitions though is that they often tend to raise more questions than they answer.

I didn't ask you for dictionary definitions. I'd prefer you define your terms in your own words, preferably in a way that makes some fucking sense and is sufficiently supported rather than simply being a bald-faced fucking assertion.

I said: “Some particular activity only turns irrational when it causes harm to the person practicing it.” A definition of ‘rational’ that you’ve never come across, you say.

The first definition I struck (the freedictionary) says:

The quality or condition of being rational.
A rational belief or practice.

1. the state or quality of being rational or logical
2. the possession or utilization of reason or logic
3. a reasonable or logical opinion

What the fuck? "Rational" defined as "being rational"? That's not a definition, that's autofellatio, and whilst in some circumstances I suppose such could be an achievement to be proud of, these are not the circumstances.

As self-evident I think, rational people don’t go around knowingly harming themselves, or go out of their way to make themselves miserable if they can help it. They instead seek to be happy, content, enriched, fulfilled, achieve ’self-satisfaction, nurture egos and sense of self/identity, find or add meaning to their lives, blah, blah, blah.

You still haven't defined your tems in any meaningful sense. You assert a relationship between "rational" and "not knowingly causing harm to oneself", but don't demonstrate the nature of that relationship, or delineate (for example) precisely what role "knowingly" has in it.

So far, I see nothing of any fucking substance here, just castles rendered of flatulence awaft on the nebulous aether.

Just about everything they do (ignoring satisfying inescapable survival/immediate material needs) is predicated on it or stems from it, Dan’s ‘meta-system’. So, ‘the quality or condition of being rational’ by definition dictates or involves working toward such goals, with anything else irrationally-based to some degree or other.

Similar applies to hitting a tennis ball over a net, watching Hollywood movie fluff, time indulged here, our personal relationships or interactions, actively embracing atheism as more than mere disbelief or adopting some religious or other ideological practice, philosophy or behaviour.

Society may insist or persuade that we should meet a girl, get married, get a successful job, a home mortgage and a barbecue in the backyard and generally make out like a happy shopper and consumer, but if it only makes or leaves an individual miserable, it’s hardly rational behaviour for them.

And but for the potent influence of advertisers, societal and peer pressure, ‘brainwashing’ in other words, it also means we needn’t all be at each other’s throats competing for the exactly the same things, if that makes sense.

Yep, just farting. Elegantly farting, and modulated to sound vaguely like a trumpet calling clarion, but still really just hot air and the whiff of shit.

Matt wrote:Each one of us acquires their own unique set of values and emotions, Dan, some rationally useful, others detrimental, some arrived at through reasoning or from what’s perceived to work in daily life, others involuntary - with irrationally-based conduct usually exacting fairly prompt penalty, depending on its nature, extent, and surrounding circumstances of course.

Except that postulating and believing in the existence of a supernatural dimension to the (little) known universe, is not a position that one arrives at through rational thinking. It is mere belief. A gut-feeling stemming from the person's own lack of or misunderstanding of their surrounding and why things happen in those surroundings.

Couple that with early childhood indoctrination when said person haven't even properly began to develop their own opinions and search for answers themselves to questions of existence and purpose, plus a need, later on, to belong to a social group, with the family, with friends sharing the same particular beliefs they were also brought up in, the need for social solidarity, and you have religious belief.

No rational approach and logic is involved in that. It is simply the passing on, the perpetuation of believing in something on lack of evidence, simply because it's tradition.

Matt wrote:I doubt there’s much point delving here into how up to the age of six or seven or so, our ‘subconscious’ minds act like involuntary and indiscriminate giant blotters (influencing much of our thinking and conduct and as later capable of creating all kinds of psychological conflicts), or how we first emerge beset with a whole bundle of ancestral urges, or the influence exercised by parental upbringing and prevailing cultural norms, and so forth.

Prevailing cultural norms in the face of evidence that disproves, or at very least, makes the validity of said beliefs obsolete, is exactly how religion managed to survive this long.

Clear example is how the bible itself starts off:

Genesis
1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
1:7 And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
1:10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
1:15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
1:18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
1:22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
1:23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
1:29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
1:30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

WRONG.

Immediately the first page is proven wrong by rational, scientific approach and observation. Any rational person, or people claiming to be using a rational approach, should be automatically skeptical and mistrusting of the rest of the Book.

Are they?

No.

The majority isn't. Hundreds of millions, from different faith, believe in their particular Book, despite it having been proved quite errant on a good number of things.

This isn't a rational approach. This isn't something one arrives at through reasoning, by using reason.

Matt wrote:And in order to lead a satisfactory or decent life, nurture ‘spiritual needs’ (we’re hardly robots), even the atheist needs to cough up some set of ethical values – values which by their very nature may well approximate those aspired to by mainstream religions. (1.) Thus other than paying some sort of heed to its moral precepts because they instinctively or by design feel it serves some useful purpose, how many of the greater bulk of lip service Christians actually treat the rest of the Bible as being all that serious, or allegorically(2.)?

1. I find your use of the word "even" quite offensive, since it seem to indicate along with "cough up", that you are in the belief that atheist morality comes from scriptural, religious morality, that is "approximate to those inspired by mainstream religion"

It's the other way around. Religious morality, the one set in scriptures wasn't unique to that given age, nor the particular religion. Morals are partially innate, an evolutionary trait, the rest we learn from others around us.

Certain apes and many other animals do not have access to scriptures, where this religious morality is, and yet they developed altruistic behavior. Why do you suppose that it? Quite obvious. Moral values do not come from religion, or spirituality, they come from the fallible primates who evolved as far as to create such constructs as religion.

2. Humans do not get their morality from religion. Religions get their morality from us. And it is a good things that not "many of the greater bulk of lip service Christians actually treat the rest of the Bible as being all that serious, or allegorically", for if they had, we'd be executing insubordinate children, stoning adulterers, making animal sacrifices...etc. essential be stuck in the Bronze Age. Oh, wait...in some parts of the world they still are. And they do all these things, thanks to what? Reason and logic, rationality, secularism, atheism? No, thanks to religion.

Matt wrote:Numerous medical surveys substantiate the benefits mentioned, Dan, showing that the net gains generally outweigh your “pretty big harms to those in the community.” Human activities taken to extremes are inevitably harmful, religion no exception. Having lived on four continents and though irritating at times, I can’t recall religion harming me personally.

You will find that your personal experience quickly becomes quite irrelevant when you look at news items of women getting whipped after being raped, and their rapist pardoned. Switch the scene, and you see other women getting battery acid thrown in their face for wanting to learn. Switch scenes again, and you get dead children, whose lives could have been saved my modern medicine if it weren't for their infantile, god-fearing parents who opted for prayer instead. Next scene, groups of the same like-minded individuals protesting same-sex marriages and rights of said people, celebrating at the funeral of soldiers, obstructing or have obstructed stem-cell research that is now immediately yielding some very promising results, e. g.: making previously paralyzed animals walk again. Switch the scene, again, and we have more scientifically illiterate people trying to push their religion into schools and onto others, while crying about their constitutional right and the Constitution of which they know nothing about.

Matt wrote:As self-evident I think, rational people don’t go around knowingly harming themselves, or go out of their way to make themselves miserable if they can help it. They instead seek to be happy, content, enriched, fulfilled, achieve ’self-satisfaction, nurture egos and sense of self/identity, find or add meaning to their lives, blah, blah, blah.

Just about everything they do (ignoring satisfying inescapable survival/immediate material needs) is predicated on it or stems from it, Dan’s ‘meta-system’. So, ‘the quality or condition of being rational’ by definition dictates or involves working toward such goals, with anything else irrationally-based to some degree or other.

[/quote]This has been dealt with before. People can be rational in just about every other aspects of their lives, but throw religion in their, and you have otherwise rational, well-meaning, content, fulfilled people, forcing their views on their children who are too young to know about, see, and understand the entire picture. The revelation that there are other religions often evidently come later when they were told enough times that their baseless beliefs are the right ones.

They might very well be content and fulfilled in their lives, doing what they can and knowing as much as they know, and seeing the wonders of the world and interpreting it for what they would like it all to mean.

Ignorance is bliss.

Matt wrote:Similar applies to hitting a tennis ball over a net, watching Hollywood movie fluff, time indulged here, our personal relationships or interactions, actively embracing atheism as more than mere disbelief or adopting some religious or other ideological practice, philosophy or behaviour.

It often is more than mere disbelief, since it is not a question of belief to begin with. Any self-respecting atheist, and indeed like many on this from who are ex-theist, myself excluded, came to arrive the position of atheism by looking at their own religions, and religious teaching, and looking at them hard and deep, unlike the majority of people, many of whom refuse to do the same because of a visceral, knee-jerk, ultimately emotional and infantile reaction that was drummed into many of them, as a part of their upbringing.

Matt wrote:Society may insist or persuade that we should meet a girl, get married, get a successful job, a home mortgage and a barbecue in the backyard and generally make out like a happy shopper and consumer, but if it only makes or leaves an individual miserable, it’s hardly rational behaviour for them.

And but for the potent influence of advertisers, societal and peer pressure, ‘brainwashing’ in other words, it also means we needn’t all be at each other’s throats competing for the exactly the same things, if that makes sense.

This is rich. In certain cultures, in certain "societies" where religion seems to be dominant people, particularly women do not even get to choose who to meet with or who to marry or what jobs they are allowed to have.

People are being excommunicated from their own "loving" church, and being shunned be family and friends for simply having a divorce. Others who commit the even greater sin, of becoming atheist, are treated much worse.

Since you like to give your anecdotes of what you experience and how rosy the world is to you, let me give an anecdote from someone whose friend, a guy 17yrs old, who got thrown out on the street by his "loving" parents simply for becoming an atheist, simply for a lack of belief in the infantile, baseless, dangerous and indeed harmful, tenets of his faith, which was christianity btw.

It is not society that often insists on these behaviors, for people, it's religion, and it is ultimately irrational behavior, precisely because it comes from religion.

MattHunX wrote:

People are being excommunicated from their own "loving" church, and being shunned be family and friends for simply having a divorce. Others who commit the even greater sin, of becoming atheist, are treated much worse.

You said a lot, but I’ll comment on just one of your (excellent) points, excommunication.

The (loving) church has no problems using excommunication against evil people that seek divorce, or god forbid, vile homosexuals or evil women that have an abortion to save their own life. This nun for example did what she felt was in the best interests of the pregnant woman.

Sister Margaret McBride has been demoted from her position at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, AZ after participating in the approval of an abortion for a critically ill patient in 2009. McBride was part of the hospital ethics committee that approved an abortion for a patient with pulmonary hypertension, which can be made fatal by pregnancy. Hospital officials say the procedure was necessary to save the patient’s life

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, the leader of the Phoenix archdiocese, said McBride was “automatically excommunicated” for acting to save a woman’s life. What role Olmsted played in McBride’s demotion is unknown.

http://camelswithhammers.com/2010/05/18/legalism-over-life-nun-performs-life-saving-abortion-and-gets-excommunicated/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication_of_Margaret_McBride

That’s one example of charitable love by the church, if anyone wants 1000s more, let me know.

So let’s see if we have our facts here. A woman’s life was saved despite the loss of the fetus rather than having 2 dead and she was excommunicated for it.

Now to my point! During WWII Hitler’s Pope (Pope Pius XII) was the head of the church while the Nazis ran rampant throughout Europe. I don’t need to even mention what they did, we all know.

Now here’s the strange part! Not one (I’ll repeat that for anyone that is a theist or an apologist for the church) not one Nazi was excommunicated! I’ve researched it (although I’m certainly open to correction) and I’ve yet to find a single Nazi (regardless of his butchery) that received an excommunication from the church that represents the god of love here on earth.

In fact, not only were the Nazi butchers ignored by Pius XII, he had the German Catholic churches open up their birth/marriage records to the SS so that anyone with a Jewish background could be rounded up for extermination.

Now since the Catholic Church lives in the land of La-La, what do you suppose they’ll do with a pope that directly or indirectly, not only didn’t excommunicate any Nazis, but in fact aided them in rounding up the evil Jews in Germany, and of course, a pope that didn’t denounce the evils of Nazism, well they plan on doing this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/02/world/europe/02iht-letter.html

Yes, they want to make that pathetic prick a saint!

My fervent hope is that they don’t make him the Patron Saint of the Jews.

It really defies belief how the Catholic Church can operate in such a hypocritical manner and yet millions of fools profess their love and devotion to such an institute of unmitigated evil, corruption and lack of empathy for humans.

It was said by P.T. Barnum that 'There’s a sucker born every minute'.

Did he mean a Catholic one?

Skinny Puppy wrote:

http://camelswithhammers.com/2010/05/18/legalism-over-life-nun-performs-life-saving-abortion-and-gets-excommunicated/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication_of_Margaret_McBride

That’s one example of charitable love by the church, if anyone wants 1000s more, let me know.

Great post. I would be very happy if you provided more, I've got a few apologists that need to get nipped in the bud. As far as I'm concerned, such a list would be thoroughly on-topic