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At 7/1/07 04:05 PM, dodo-man-1 wrote: If they weren't meant to be, why did he (supposedly) make them?

Isn't that why they invented Satan?

Anyways, it is better simply to ignore that sort of idiot and not give him signifcant attention. no, he is not correct. He is not worth talking about, period.

At 6/29/07 07:59 PM, InsertFunnyUserName wrote: The death penalty is absolutely absurd in my mind. Like said before in this thread, what if there was a mistake made? What if this person is innocent and the killer is still out there? There would be no one to give a real testimony as what happened.

There are currently about 67,000 corpses in Iraq that mostly were innocent people. The number of innocent people who would be subjected to the death penalty is negligible, and according to your own logic, putting the same person in prison for 50+ years until we figure it out would be a worse punishment than death. Every step is taken to ensure that a mistake is not made, and the actual rate of mistakes is low enough that this objection is effectively nullified.

And as to the argument of the death penalty being cheaper then keeping criminals in jail, how about we stop handing out ten year sentences to people in possession of drugs? They don't need to be in jail, they need a slap on the wrist and a trip to rehab.

I don't particularly agree with the drug policies of our nation, but a "slap on the wrist" rarely, if ever, has any effect on addicts or drug dealers. I don't believe that prison is an effective form of rehabilitation for drug use and sale, though, but that's a different issue from the Death Penalty.

Being in jail for your whole life is a hell of a lot worse and more agonizing then being sentenced to die, any way you look at it.

Two points: First of all, I don't see it as agonizing in any sense. I'm alive, I still have a chance to do what I want, and I still can live a full life and derive a sense of fulfillment and success, even if it is restricted by my environment. It is no different than the millions of people who lived and died as slaves and still found happiness.

Second, it's not about anyone's agony. It's about protecting citizerns of America, rehabilitating wayward members, and improving the overall condition of our nation. Allowing anger to cloud your judgement is purely a petty pleasure; what is more important is the consequences of your decision. Try to think clearly about this instead of emotionally.

I am completely in favor of the Death Penalty, but only when used under proper circumstances.

I believe much opposition to the Death Penalty results from two assumptions about the purpose of the Penal System. The first assumption is that criminals should be punished, regardless of rehabilitation. The second assumption is that imprisoning someone will prevent them from commiting further crimes. Both assumptions are false.

The first one justifies the anti-DP stance in which someone argues that a life-sentence is a "better punishment" of criminals because they "suffer" in prison for many years. However, punishment is irrelevant when the sole purpose is to exact revenge. Punishment is supposed to alter and improve behavior, not satisfy your hatred of a criminal. When considering this issue, we should put aside our petty desires and instead judge based on the ethics of the Death Penalty and the actual impact our treatment of criminals will have on Society.

This is where the second assumption comes into play. Most people treat the Death Penalty and a Life Sentence as if they have identical effets. However, that is not at all true. Criminals who are put in prison for life, by necessity, adapt to their new environment; metal bars and guards are not enough to stop a psychopath or rapist from acting out his desires furhter. When criminals are in prison, they can still commit crimes and perpetuate their own criminal attitudes and those of other individuals by collaborating and feeding off the criminality of one another.

Or in other words, puting someone who we believe can not be rehabilitated in prison will hurt those who still can be rehabilitated. The entire purpose of prison is to "save" criminals from their current behavior and teach them a lesson; allowing life-sentence prisoners to interact with anyone else and allowing the mixture of "hard" criminals with others only promotes the exact behavior prison is meant to eliminate. Murders, theft, rape, fraud, and violence all happen in prison still; our goal should be to prevent as much of that as reasonably possible.

Putting osmeone in prison for life may "remove" them, but it harms the rehabilitation of those who are in prison temporarily and does not prevent further criminal acts by the imprisoned. In some situations, the Death Penalty is necessary as the only solution to truly stop criminals who are so far beyond rehabilitation that they pose an extreme danger both physically and behaviorally to all those around them.

For example, we have this criminal named TERRY. He was put in prison for the murder of nine people in three families that lived along the same street. After he was in prison for a year, he attacked and severely injured a guard with his fists. He was punished further, but three months later he strangles his cellmate to death. After five years he has assaulted over a dozen guards and inmates and killed three other people in the prison. What should be done with him? Ethical restrictions placed on the Prison prevent permanent solitary confinement or other measures to keep him away from others.

In some situations, the Death Penalty becomes the only reasonable option, when an individual is so dangerous that the best course of action is simply a complete removal of the individual and any influence he or she may have on anyone. It is not a matter of "punishment" or "revenge," it is a situation of cold, hard reasoning about the damage an individual will cause if allowed to live.

I do believe ethical constraints on the Death Penalty should be strong. Very rarely should someone be punished with it, and even more rarely for behavior only performed before imprisonment. A man who simply stabs another person to death does not warrant the Death Penalty; a serial killer who has brutally tortured and raped a dozen individuals before murdering them and mutilating the corpses does deserve consideration of the Death Penalty (much like the BTK killer); an individual who committed a series of crimes including murder outside of prison and then stubbornly continues attempts to attack and murder multiple other people in prison also should be considered for the Death Penalty.

Above all, let this point get across: the Death Penalty should be allowed, but should also be reserved for truly extreme cases of criminality where effectiely no doubt at all exists about the impossibility of rehabilitating the individual.

Further, I believe any "ethical" rejections of the Death Penalty should be reconsidered in the light of Real Life: war kills, soldiers kill, criminals kill, and millions die every year at the hands of other individuals. If any person is justified in shooting another to protect himself or his nation, then that Nation should be justified in killing an individual who poses a grave, imminent threat to the citizenry of that Nation. It is not "different"; the killing that goes on regularly is the same as that proposed by the Death Penalty.

For any individual who believes the Death Penalty should be banned based on the ethics of killing a person, I charge you to hold to your belief in all situations and be a complete Pacifist, even at the stake of your own life, and actively against any and every form of killing. If you do hold true and reject violence, war, the martial arts and other combat styles, self-defense, euthanasia, abortion, medical life-support termination, and lay blame in accidental killings, then I respect your right to hold that position. However, if you believe any form of killing is in any way justifiable under any circumstnaces, your rejection of the Death Penalty is pure fluff.

Those are my beliefs about the entire situation, but for those readers who are too lazy to actually read a full argument, I will summarize it:

I support the existance and use of the Death Penalty in extreme conditions which warrant it, but not otherwise.

At 6/29/07 03:38 PM, Proteas wrote: That's one hell of a welcome gift, I'm sure he would have appreciated a fruit basket instead.

It was obviously an attempt to make him look weak and put him off on a bad footing in fighting against terrorism. It's exactly what they did to the Spanish-- an attempt to scare the politicians and people into backing down to "protect themselves" from terrorism by hiding. However, they were foiled and this will give the PM and others more justification and support for fighting against terrorism.

At 6/28/07 09:12 AM, SlithVampir wrote: If we do find intellegent life (miniscule chance), then it won't be more than a century more advanced than ours. Earth developed and evolved about as fast as a planet could cultivate life.

What are you talking about? Don't you remember a period called the Dark Ages in Europe, and the late Middle sAges for the Islamic regions, and the massive collapse of nations during Colonialism, and the setbacks caused by WWI and WWII? All of these things slowed down our possible development speed globally, but look at how far we have progressed in what is effectively only two centuries. If the Roman Empire had never fallen and we had discovered Electricity during the 1st century AD, we could easily be a millenium past the Industrial Revolution and entering on technologies we can't even imagine now.

No, it would be very easy for aliens to be at a different technology level, especially if they found us first.

Look, this topic has shown up time and again and the answer is always the same:

1. Yes, it is unfair to the currently living.

2. Yes, it is racist because it is preferential treatment.

3. Only help based on income level/being poor can actually be justified

4. Ethnic-promoters have a strong foothold in Congress; attempts to argue against racist preferential policies are supported by Whites (who lose out) and resisted by minorities (who gain from them).

5. At some point one of the minority members will call you a racist or a majority member will tell you that you will be called a racist if you argue against preferential policies.

I thought everyone already knew about 9/11. The Conspiracy has been so thoroughly proven at this point that only an ignorant fool would argue otherwise at this point. I mean, come on, the radical Muslim conspiracy, headed by Al-Qaida, is just plain obvious from looking at the events.

If used properly, the word "Paki" shouldn't be considered a slur in any sense. If it is used ignorantly (applying it to non-Pakistani people who are just racially similar), incorrectly (full British citizens), for stereotyping (implying that heritage de-values a person), or just plain stupidly, then it is offensive, just as any other similar word would be offensive.

However, even when it is used properly and innocently, there are people who will claim to be offended. Everyone sensible needs to actively fight against these people. These are the true racists in most situations, and you should push off their accusations as effectively as possible: "Wait, you're trying to say that ethnic heritage is so central to who and what a person is that even mentioning it is offensive? I believe ethnicity does not matter in any sense, so perhaps it is you who is being racist here." (for example)

These people hide behind "Political Correctness," but they are really bigots super-sensitized to any mention of the topics about which they are biased. If they were truly unbigoted people, such words would not be offensive because they would be meaningless. The fact that they are "hot button" words for those individuals means that they are biased.

At 6/12/07 04:20 PM, SlithVampir wrote: I hate to break this to you, but women have the advantage of not having sex on the brain (at least a little bit) at all times. Don't try to deny it. That brain room makes a big difference.

Maybe your hormone-pumped brain is like that, but that is purely a myth with regards to the majority of men. Almost half of men think about sex on less than a daily basis, according to the
Kinsey Report .

If this thread had started better, I believe it actualyl could have become a very interesting discussion dealing with central issues within our society. It's disappointing to see how laziness and general idiocy can ruin the conversation before it even starts. Cmon, guys, isn't the entire point of this topic supposed to be mature capabilities in adolescents?

I find no reason to believe so and see no reason for it to change, so obviously no. There isn't really any more substance to your post.

I don't believe Climate Change Deniers actually exist in any real numbers. What do exist are Human-caused Global Warming Deniers, and dirty, hypocritical, despicable tactics and propaganda by the Pro-GW group has really driven a lot of people to argue against them.

One common Pro=GW step is to claim that opponents are ignorant or foolish by somehow portraying them as believing in something blatantly stupid-- like no climate change. No one has ever said the climate isn't changing because it is always changing, Anti-HMGW just say Humans aren't causing it. I see the OP has easily fallen for that one.

The whole debate is all about the massive amounts of misinformation that are flying around the airwaves. Most Pro-GW propaganda is based on blatantly false information that causes a strong enough emotional reaction to sucker in followers, as well as strong-arming anyone who doesn't agree. Anti-HMGW often relies too much on unquantified information, but always relies on the idea, "But what about other factors?" In that sense, Pro-GW people often refuse to believe anything but humans could cause it, regardless of how small or large a part of world pollution and activity we are.

Also, Pro-GW people almost always fail to recognize the natural progression of technology necessary to inevitably achieve the same goals anyways, and they attempt to force the market with impossible demands that won't be reasonable until technology has made the right developments. The changes will happen, naturally and as part of the market, way before the Doomsday prophecies of the Pro-GW crowd come true (or whatever their prophecies happen to be that time).

At 6/4/07 11:27 AM, TheSovereign wrote: Republicans can be just as stupid, if not more. Bush is a great example.

Bush isn't a very good Republican. If he had more spine, like a good Republican should have, he'd be a much better President and much more popular, even with anything and everythign he has already done.

At 6/3/07 10:53 PM, TheMason wrote:

At 6/3/07 08:19 PM, HighlyIllogical wrote: Thoughts on gays in the military?

Believe it or not, I actually agree with you that gays should be allowed to serve.

What changed my mind? Joining the military...

What I have to wonder, and you might have some insight on, is whether sexual preferences can cause uncomfortable situations and weaken the bond between soldiers in a team through awkwardness.

Would working with a gay guy on your team, perhaps one who is sexually interested in you (and you are not gay), put you ill-at-ease or create any concern or discomfort in your mind? Do you think it would for any other soldiers?

The same probably applies for women in primarily- or all-male teams; could the sexual interest of the other members interfere with the proper operation of the team or cause a distractions they attempt to complete their missions?

If any of the above are true, then they should be prevented from happening. We do not want our soldiers distracted or dealing with unnecessary problems like those while in life-or-death situations. If you are not comfortable around someone because of their sexual interest in you, can you absolutely trust them with your life? Can they trust you to protect them without any hesitation? If either can could even possible be no, then sexuality is a problem in the military, one that has to be dealt with.

If none of those answers are possible for you, any soldiers you know, or any you could imagine being in the military in decent numbers, then I see no problem whatsoever. In that case, allow open sexuality and free mixing of men and women in whatever numbers on any team. If sexuality can cause just the slightest bit of discomfort, hesitation, and loss of trust, then it is a problem and the military must work to prevent sexual tensions like that for the sake of their soldiers.

That's the only way I can imagine to decide this issue, and I am on the outside of the military so I don't personally know dozens of soldiers. This is a question for soldiers to answer, not civilians, and especially not politicians. The military needs to decide this one on its own because it is their own business, the lives of their soldiers, and deaths they have to answer for.

No, taht si not commuism, an no, communism is not an eventuality. It will never happen because it can never work because it is an idealogically driven idea, not a real economic system. It simply can't run because it isn't a real plan, so it will never come to be.

At 5/30/07 10:50 PM, Elfer wrote: I'm just wondering how you handle currency storage. Do you file it according to mass or something? I just keep bills in my wallet and coins in my pocket. At night, I put the coins next to my wallet, and all is right with the world.

And what could be more inefficient and awkward? Wallets are for holding money. Pocket coins jingle, incessantly, and wallet coins mess up your wallet. Pocket coins are very poorly contained, can't be organized, and can easily be lost. Wallet coins bulk up your wallet too much. $1 bills, on the other hand, make no noise, sit flat in your wallet, stay in place, can be easily organized in bill stacks, are hard to lose, and match the rest of the system of bills.

With minor coins, tossing them into a jar each night is fine, but $1 coins just creates a hell of a lot of trouble for something that isn't worth any of the money that is saved.

But in theory, shouldn't you also cover the costs for people who do want a change, or people who don't care whether you use coins or not?

Why would I ever do that? This is America, land of individual empowerment and pay-your-own-damn-bills. I expect every single one of those people to pay their share as well, and if they are actively opposed to it just imagine that their share is being switched out to another cause and Chuck Norris is picking up the tab.

Bills are costly to maintain and aren't durable at all, especially ones of low denomination that get handled a lot like ones and twos. Seriously, using coins is not that big of a fucking deal. And if you're so against coins and inconvenience, why are you in favour of keeping the penny around? It seems inconsistent.

In all the time from 1990 to when the $2 was discontinued, I only ever saw two people have or use a $2 bill. It is redundant and entirely pointless because the $1 bill is common and requires less change-making. The $2 bill is rightly dumped; however, the $1 bill is fairly durable and if necessary can be redesigned to make it more durable. I sure don't usually have $1 bills disintegrating on me ever, so I have no reason to care about the durability.

Using coins is an inconvenience and particularly annoynig for an amount as important as $1. All that matters here is that the cost, all the annoyance, cost of switching over, and habit changing, is smaller than the benefit, $1 per year. The same is true of pennies, where the cost is an undercut of the money system, increased complexity for purchases, increased money loss from stores rounding up, a counter-intuitive pay system, and just the loss of Lincoln, for the same benefit, $1 per year.

Regardless of what stupid ideals or penny-pinching (would you prefer "nickel-pinching"?) are driving you to want the system changed, the costs incurred by changing the system outweigh the nearly insigificant benefits. Too bad for you.

At 2/13/07 10:31 PM, JMHX wrote: It wouldn't be pleasant changing out the bills for the coins over the first few years, but if we are really desiring some kind of economic common sense in our currency policy, dropping the penny and the dollar bill are the quickest ways to make up nearly half a billion dollars in wasted money.

Half a billion in wasted money? Our government wastes 2,800 billion dollars of our money every year. The benefit that I see, as a citizen, is effectively nothing, while the costs incurred by the changes will be large.

1. I don't want coins in my wallet. A stack of 20 bills is flat enough that I don't even notice a difference in the size of my wallet. A pile of 20 quarters is unwieldy, troublesome, and downright annoying as it damages my wallet and pokes into me when I sit down.

2. When you mix coins and bills, handling money becomes much, much more annoying. Dimes, nickels, pennies, and often quarters can be easily ignored in transactions, but dollar bills/coins are only awkward. I'm half Canadian, so I've spent quite a bit of time across the border; loonies are significantly more annoying to handle and keep than dollar bills. They may be relatively small and thin compared to the pattern of our coins, but they are simply inconvenient and hard to keep track of.

3. Every citizen has to deal with the annoyances and frustrations of your attempted change, but the net benefit is effectively insignificant overall. For all the trouble, sore bottoms, and damaged wallets, what do the American citizens get for this change? $1 per year, each.

A very direct cost/benefit analysis as a male citizen of the United States has led me to conclude that I do not want to eliminate the dollar bill in favor of coins. I will gladly continue to donate $1 per year to the government to ensure that enough $1 bills stay in circulation.

In fact, I will even donate a further $1 per year to even out the cost and keep the penny in circulation as well. Hell, I'll just hand the government $200 in taxes this year and call the cost covered for my lifetime. The other couple thousand I give? They can keep it for whatever they want, but I expect to see $1 bills in my wallet and pennies in my jar.

At 5/28/07 10:04 PM, Dr-Worm wrote: 2. What do you think happens more often, a volcano erupting or someone driving a car?

Well, there are some volcanoes that have been erupting nonstop for years, so I believe volcano eruptions are continual and there are enough cars now in the world that at any one time a car is always being driven. Therefore, neither happens more often. There is always someone driving a car and a volcano eruptings.

Sure, volcanic eruptions and car travel happen at diifferent rates, but the impact of each event is massively different as well.

At 5/28/07 01:24 PM, cookie wrote: it was the Great War. WW2 was mostly in Europe and Asia as well, didnt touch American soil but thats called a world war as well.

WW2 did in fact touch American soil. The Japanese assault on the island chain of Alaska successfully took quite a few islands and we had to fight for control of them back.

At 5/28/07 08:54 AM, ForumGuy wrote: Hmm, thats an interesting idea. I wonder how these universes got to be parallel in the first place.

Well, as I sort of mentioned before, the creation of a parallel universe may help to explain the asymmetry of our own universe. Why do we have more matter than anti-matter when they are created in pairs? Why do we have so much energy from nothing? We've always known that gravity drops off at an oddly 4-dimensional rate, so Dark Matter may even be the gravity of our sister primarily-anti-matter universe.

I guess. I would assume that the single even is the big bang. I see what you are saying. I wonder whether these universes would have similar dimensions to us, or whether they would have a W-axis, no Z-axis, or something else completely.

Well, basically what you are wondering is if the parallel universe will have the same basic 3 (4) dimensions as our own. By the assumption of it being parallel, I would have to say it should. Otherwise, I don't see how it could possibly be in any way similar to our universe since matter is 3-dimensional and does not appear to sustain a 4th (5th) dimensional structure. Time may or may not also be a critical dimension (the nature of time is currently unknown).

Well, money can increase quality, and that will, in turn, increase intelligence. I too am disappointed with engineering. I need to skip my lunch period in order to continue taking choir and to take engineering too.

Oh, money can definitely help, but we have a lot of our key systems in America completely assbackwards. Science is the lifeblood of our nation, but it tends to get ignored by the mass of sports-fanatic, dreary-cublice-working, beerfest workers.

I guess. Abstract science is very motivating, but I can see how the general public will overlook the longterm goals. I can see how hard science would be more motivational.

Also, it is much easier to write a grant proposal for Hard Science because you are promising a marketable technology to your investors. Hard Science really is the heart of technological development, so it can't be forgotten.

Yeah, the poor like handouts. Due to the low taxes they are supposedly paying, shouldn't they be able to purchase things like health insurance without outside help?

No, and that's the problem. By definition, the poor don't have enough disposable cash (or waste what they do have). If you barely have enough money to stay in your house and eat each day, insurance costs way too much money. Heck, you could buy a month of meals for 5 people with the insurance money most people pay.

Darn, triumphed by the media again. I do not really know about foreign affairs, except from what my parents and teachers tell me, so I guess I am pretty influenced by that. I hate the American media system.

Yeah, the American media is pretty frustrating. At one point a long time ago they were actually pretty good... then Vietnam happened and they realized showing death and violence gets readers (or at least they assume it does). I don't actually believe the people want to hear that anymore, but the news media is obsessed with the idea because it's easy and requires little to no work on their part.

Well, not all who live the high life work twice as hard. How hard do you think Britney Spears works? I do agree that people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have worked hard for their money, but this popstar culture really can make me angry sometimes.

You say that about Britney Spears, but do you actually know what that kind of career entails? She probably worked many more hours per week training dance choreography, learning songs, maintaining her singing voice-- and the key thing is, at an ultra-high risk level. If her voice is ruined, or a song flops, or she suddenly loses popularity, she done. She can't earn any more money. Acting and singing is a lot like playing the Lottery all the time, and so it has to have a high payout for all those who lose.

At 5/27/07 10:09 PM, bcdemon wrote: ROFL, a person who blames their computer keyboard for spelling errors thinks Bush should be re-elected? Go Figure...

Ever had a keyboard with keys that stick or that just isn't very good? Keyboards can cause typos very easily, so I don't see why you decided to be all arrogant about that comment.

At 5/27/07 08:45 PM, ForumGuy wrote: Right, and when are you going to govern some mindless corpses??

Necromancers love that sort of thing, from what I've heard, and that's the exact point. You will never have a situation that would benefit from Communism in reality.

(Double Post - Had bug that posted my first one early.)

At 5/27/07 08:45 PM, ForumGuy wrote: Well, remember, I am 13 so I don't know what a mechanistic reason is. I DO however know what the big bang was. I was under the assumption that the big bang was isolated solely to this universe. I might have been wrong, though.

Mechanistic means "determined mechanically." It is always a good idea to use Dictionary.com if you don't know a word. In context, it meant an inanimate cause and effect, similar to gravity pulling a raindrop down from the sky. No sentience is involved.

We really don't know that much about the Big Bang, and we know literally nothing about parallel universes because we can't interact with them yet (if they exist). There is no reason at all why the Big Bang shouldn't affect every universe that is parallel to our own (that's almost a requisite of it being "parallel" since an empty parallel universe is boring). It might also help to explain the origin of the energy that created the Big Bang-- perhaps the divergence of universes released dimensional potential energy, much like a chemical reaction.

Now, how is mine more unlikely? For all we know, they are all equally possible.

Complexity. Assumptions. Both of these make answers less and less likely, regardless of how much we know about the actual situation. An infinite number of universes that are constantly spawning is inherently more complex than a finite number that originated in a single event, so it is also less probable.

The assumption that "Free Will" exists in actuality and has the power to split the entire universe into seperate dimensions is far more complex and unlikely than the assumption that a known universe-creating event may have created other universes. Your idea is less likely because it requires far more things to be true and has very few or no connections to known information.

Well, I read Scientific American, and I remember read about quantum foam a few months ago. It was really crazy stuff. I think they were somewhat sure, and not just making stuff up, or theorizing.

As far as I am aware, quantum foam is entirely speculative at this point. You may have mis-remembered the article. Wormholes have never been confirmed in any situation, it is just theorized that they may exist in quantum foam, a rare and very short-term annihilation event between virtual particles. It is not something stable, nor is it something we can even interact with at this point, if it exists.

To my knowledge, there aren't even any machines capable of observing anything significantly below the quark level, and virtual particles are so hard to catch already that the chance of finding high enough energy ones is virtually zero.

Researches, eh? I think that if half the people who work in the costly, commercial, flawed entertainment business went and got Ph.D.s, we would have enough researchers. That is not going to happen, so I think we should advocate for science in schools, so the next generation has enough researchers.

I also support increase Science education and encouragement, and am particularly disappointed by the lack of Engineering subject matter before College. High Schools are very poorly designed at this point in time and most schooling is ineffective and very narrow. However,

Science always has the opponents like the one who posted earlier, who believe that dealing with self-made, impossible to eliminate problems (usually caused by poor education) should receive all of the money we have. Apparently, throwing money at socially deep-rooted problems is supposed to help solve them.

Well, yes, for advances in the hard, true science field. If you are talking about abstract, faceless things which we are only beginning to delve into, than the military does nothing. I am advocating for more abstract science, rather than hard science. That will come later.

Abstract science is all well and good, but hard science is what creates quality of life improvements and literally drives our economy. While you are entitled to your opinion, I believe that all science should be supported and hard science is absolutely necessary to our society.

Jesus, if Bush was smart and cut taxes for the poor and raised taxes for the rich, those programs would be unnecessary. Really, we need to have lower taxes for the lower class. They do not bring the government too much money, but the take up a lot in entitlements.

The poor pay effectively no taxes at all. It's not a matter of taxing burden, but spoiled hearts, greedy hands, poor education, and liberal hearts that believe they must be "helped" with handouts. Entitlements are called "Mandatory" spending because it is impossible for Congress or the President to get rid of them without a massive voting block overthrowing the politicians. The poor like handouts.

Well, yes, I see what you mean, but whenever we stick our nose into foreign affairs (except Desert Shield and Desert Storm), we end up failing and wasting a lot of money.

I can understand that you have an Isolationist viewpoint, but I disagree with your assertion that foreign affairs always leads to failure. The problem I believe is a matter of outlook-- a success in foreign affairs is almost always invisible and involves nothing happening except a slow improvement. A failure can appear spectacular and correcting it can be costly and is always highly publicized.

For example, Afghanistan is nearly a success, but for that reason you hear nothing about it at all; it is only Iraq, where we are not being quite as successful, that you hear news about. The media is fairly biased towards sensational news, not actual world updates, and the public always tends to focus on the next crisis or tragedy, regardless of whether it is even real or not.

Well, I think that if everyone enjoyed their jobs, communism would be accepted. Not everyone likes their jobs, so Communism will fail.

It's more than that, though. Communism entails restrictions on your Freedom-- on who you can be. Some people enjoy living the "high life," spending all their money on expensive parties and material objects, but then they work twice as hard to pay for their habits. Others prefer to live modestly and not spend as much.

Some people are intelligent and invest in new companies, or research, or particular enterprises, and so they earn money back. It is investment that drives our entire economy and nation. Communism seeks to eliminate investment and money earning in general in the name of Equality, but they don't seem to understand that there is no such thing as equality! Everyone is different, prefers different things, spends money differently, is worth a different amount of money. Communism destroys the ideas of incentives, fair compensation, investment, experience, and improvement, all in the name of a worthless ideal.

Should a job in a deep-level Coal Mine with a high chance of injury or death be worth the same amount of money as a job at a McDonalds? Should a 70 hours-per-week job as a Surgeon that required 20 years of experience be worth the same amount of money as a 10 hours-per-week job mowing lawns? The basic idea of Communism is simply foolish and stupid because it doesn't work. It's not an economic system at all, it's an economic catastrophe wrapped around the emotional ideal of "Equality," and usually based on the presumption of an unfair system. It ignores Freedom or Economy.

Well, not necessarily Self-interest. The greed is what corrupts the leaders of the communisms.

But Self-Interest is what destroys Communism from the ground upward. Everyone who is held back by Communism will want it removed. Only those who would otherwise be worse off, the lazy, unskilled, or poor, can ever accept it. More often than not in reality, Communism means tearing down the Rich and murdering them, rather than improving life for everyone.

Right, and when are you going to govern some mindless corpses??

I'm proud to be an American, even if I have a dual citizenship in Canada.

At 5/27/07 07:46 PM, ForumGuy wrote: This got me thinking about parallel universes. That is where my theory comes in, stating that if one exists, than there must be infinite.

That is not necessarily true; you rely on the basic assumption that parallel universes are created by a division from our own universe due to a Free Will or similar decision, which is unlikely. Parallel universes could have originated at the Big Bang (where did all the anti-matter go?), or a highly rare Mechanistic reason could create new parallel universes (a highly improbable quantum effect, so only one or a few have ever happened).

Under the mechanism you appear to assume for the creation of parallel universes, your thought would be true, but that mechanism is not the only possibility and is actually more unlikely than most others.

Now, how are we going to get to these universes? I was reading about quantum foam, the little foamy stuff that is smaller than quarks

Okay, you're jumping a bit far ahead. We can't even get to the nearest planet in our solar system, nor do we even understand a lot of quantum effects; any plans about wormholes like that or parallel universe development is pure speculation and only worth a story it may write.

At the rate that we were advancing earlier in the last century, you would think that we would have discovered more of this technology, but sadly, we did not. The massive scientific countries, that have the budget to do these far-fetched research projects, meaning Russia, the US and China, really have no perspective on the human race in the long run.

Science progresses at its own rate, but yes funding would help. The primary problem most countries face, though, is not a lack of money but a lack of researchers. Each research project always clamors for more money, but it's the limited numbers of researchers that prevents many projects from happening yet. The inter-relatedness of technology also hurts a lot of areas until the proper technology is available.

We keep developing new weapons, to combat new things. It costs money. Money that the US doesn't have. Lets do a bit of imagining for a minute. Remove the military, weapons, and the whole military budget from all of the aforementioned countries.

Your efforts are misguided. The military actually makes most of the best technological developments that everyone else benefits from. Without rockets, how would we have gotten into space? Without military information networks, how would we be talking even now on the Internet? Our military is one of the best research groups in the world.

If you really want to free up money for research, remove Entitlements.
2007 Budget

Military: 17%
Entitlements: 58%

And that's just counting the 4 big Entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Welfare). Most of the military costs have nothing to do with developing weapons and primarily go to defending our country, but Entitlement programs cost more than 1.6 trillion dollars. If you want money for research, that money should go to it, not the Defense budget.

You would think that Bush would have learned. Back in Vietnam, we wasted money, and once we finished, Saigon fell. It was just a waste of time and money. You would expect Bush to realize the similarities and connect them together. I hate how the government lies about this stuff. They say "Oh, we are almost out! We are winning!" The problem is that 2 years later, we are still in there. This makes me think that a pure democracy would sometimes be a good thing.

Regardless of the superficial similarities between Iraq and Vietnam, the two are fundamentally different.

Vietnam was a loss because we attempted to fight a containment war against an opponent funded and supported by an enemy Superpower. We could never finish the war for fear that we would trigger a bigger one, so we just sat there doing nothing.

Iraq, on the other hand, is an attempt to stabilize a region against petty tribalism and enemies so poor they can barely afford guns. There is no actual military challenge here, just brute fighting, and the real problem is the political complexity of the region. Iraq is actually confronting the problem, while Vietnam was an attempt to deal with another problem indirectly.

A good governmental system in Communism. Everyone gets what they need and the only do what the are trained to do.

Which would suck. Greatly. I want what I want and I want to do what I want to do. Let me live my own life instead of having anyone else tell me how I should live it or what I am capable of doing. For all the crap of Communism being "great in theory," it sucks horribly. It's just that no one is ever smart enough to look at the full picture and seem to think that supposed equality is utopian.

The problem lies in the root of human thinking. Humanity runs on greed. Really. We all usually want what is best for us, no matter what fronts we sometimes put up. It isn't something we can just engineer out. We need to actually change how people are brought up. We should foster a caring environment, rather than the harsh school system and harsh working conditions after. We need to get greed out of ourselves.

I think you are thoroughly confusing Greed and Self-Interest. Greed is an excess, overwhelming desire for physical goods, money, and/or the power to acquire those goods. Self-interest is actually giving a damn about yourself and your own life. Self-interest is good, necessary, and the most important thing Humanity can have.

Then, and only then, will Communism work on a large scale. It was an interesting concept, but it did not work.

Communism is great for the purpose of governing corpses or other mindless entities, but it is not a reasonable system to enforce on Humans or any being with free will or intelligence.

At 5/26/07 10:18 PM, jonjon123 wrote: there is also evidence that dinosaurs and humans roamed the earth with one another.

No, there isn't, because they didn't. Not only is it common knowledge that the two did not exist at the same time, but the explosion of Mammalian development happened because the Dinosaurs all died. Humans came a lot later after that explosion of development, so there really is no possibility of them coexisting with dinosaurs according to all known evidence.

it is not ignorance. by chance do you do what an S-curve graph is. it' one of the most basic concepts in biology to graph the growth of a population. when some one makes one of these humans they typically do so to find a carying capacity. but i know two scientists who used it to graph an approximate start of humans. the got about 5,000 B.C. this just about what the bible says.

Do you realize how absurdly wrong even the basic concept of apply an S-curve to humans is? There's a little thing called technology that shoots it all to hell because it introduces unpredictable, long-term variables with sudden, massive effects. No logistic curve can accurately map human population changes to the degree of "defeating" actual evidence.

how on earth could you make such an idiodic statement there is plenty of evidence against evolution.

No, no there is not. The only "evidence" against evolution is imaginary proofs that can't withstand any scrutiny, and the pile of evidence support evolution is vast, solid, and continuously increasing. Anti-Evolution people always try to jump on potential exceptions/unusual cases to "disprove" evolution, but they don't have any actual facts.

ignore what? arguments can be made on either side of evolution.
i personaly know many scintists who do not accept.

I highly doubt that.

argh... if you put me through anymore stress i will start coughing up blood. arguments can be made either way. it really sounds like you got information off one extreemly one-sided web site

Did you actually research any information? Ever?

there are still major unknowns in the theory of evolution.

Only in the sense of areas we have not fill in the details for, not fundamental flaws or gaps.

your logic in this situation is basically since you know everthing anyone who dissagrees with you is wrong...
how could i have been so naive?

Opinion polls are cosistantly demonstrated as wrong in common experience, as far as I am concerned. Simply because a CBS poll says about 50% of the people who responded said something doens't mean it actually applies to the whole nation.

At 5/24/07 10:50 PM, Tal-con wrote:

At 5/24/07 10:32 PM, Mark2000 wrote: A great man who gave christians a voice! Christians have been raping the world for 2000 year, man.

Question: Which religion has been attributed to the world's worst dictators Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong?

Except for the fact that these men were not religiously motivated. If any of them had decided "Okay, we need to genocidally slaughter all of the Believers," then Athiesm would be at fault, but all of them were tyrants for economic, political, and social reasons, not religion.

At 5/23/07 10:29 PM, MortifiedPenguins wrote:

At 5/23/07 10:26 PM, Draconias wrote:

At 5/23/07 09:54 PM, MortifiedPenguins wrote:

Where's the nazi?

Have you been reading his posts?

There national socialist dribble.

Actually, the horrid blockishness of his posts and his radically absurd statements made me refuse his concept so quickly that I forgot to scan through for the Nazi references. Good catch. If he actually used paragraphs I might have given him enough credit to read his whole thing.

At 5/23/07 09:54 PM, MortifiedPenguins wrote: Oh fucking Christ not a nazi.

Fuck this, I'm not getting into an argument with a hate monger.

Where's the nazi?

At 5/23/07 09:32 PM, EKublai wrote: And isn’t it about time?

No!

It's that simple. We do not need more bigoted holidays celebrating minority cultures, and we may actually need the opposite-- a shoring up of the traditional American culture so that it can integrate these minorities instead of setting them up on their own pedestals.