At 1/4/08 03:11 PM, I-fang wrote: 1.-Actual society needs more consiouness about the actual effects of Weed, screw addiction, have you ever got high?Its like suddenly getting retarded,

Ever gotten drunk? Similar effect. Only thing is have you ever heard of someone high on pot ever doing anything violent to anyone ever? In perspective a lot of people that get drunk will start a fight if they get pissed off over something.

2.-It might screw a bit drug smuggling, but smuglers will always find a way to sell illegal stuff

Oh right like back in the alcohol bans, yep booze smugglers sure are a problem now... oh wait.

3.-Its way better to keep it illegal, less people get affected, and economy survives, and we can still get weed, but if you are too lazy about searching for dealers, you havent got enough will get high

Total bullshit if anything if weed is legal it will only generate another source of taxable income for the government.

Ohh and Kids say no to drugs!!!

Unless we say its ok for you to take them, fucking hypocritical thing to say, bet you will sometimes see on T.V anti drug adds then the very next add will be for alcohol, or an add that will try to push useless medication down your throat so you can think you will be healthier. Dealing is ok as long as a corporation does it. As far as I know alcohol and cigarettes is more harmful than Marijuana (based on real facts, not off something that the T.V told you). If alcohol and tobacco are legal I don't really see any legitimate reason for Marijuana to be illegal.

Yeah America has no soul. Its the greatest country in the world if your are rich. But otherwise its a fucking shithole.

Thats kind of a definition of a corrupt system. I wonder how it would have turned out if Britain would have never lost control.

What reason does a clone have to fight? And how would you make them fight?

I think clones would revolt against their creators.

I'm not from America, do any of these people promise anything different from the other guy? Or is it just a popularity competition?

And do any of them give a shit about the environment?

At 1/5/08 02:31 PM, Gwarfan wrote: Too bad that without us, China would become the shit hole that it was before 1960, and Russia wouldn't know what to do with itself after all the Soviet countries it owned turn their backs on them for a pro-democratic Europe.

Thats why the world hates you, because of that type of shit you say.
America also has dependency on the Chinese eg. Wal-Mart imports a lot of shit from Asian countries where they can provide a lower cost of production of goods Wal-Mart imports. Plus a lot of other countries are dependent on the Chinese economy (which I'm sure the Americans trade with also) no country can survive without trade (unless its a global empire).

Russia, uh well I'm quite sure all the soviet countries it owns would prefer having oil and natural gas supplies from Russia than have the "freedom" which the Russians seam to be so lacking to you.

Yeah I can't speak for China and Russia, but I certainly hate America and hope I never need to go there anytime, your greedy and proud beyond reason and ignorant of any other culture of your own. I understand that not all Americans are like that but until you guys start behaving like a great nation you don't deserve to be called a super power.

(I'll bet a lot of Americans response will be: Oh yeah well our country can bomb your country back to the stone age any day of the week).

Support Ethiopia? How about support Africa, that place is in a real shit situation and isn't getting out of it any time soon, and us (the Civilized world) are the reason for that continent being so fucked up.

At 12/16/07 01:44 PM, Al6200 wrote:

3. Stipends for students

Suppose you know where your going to get the funds from?

4. Launch a nuclear fusion "Manhattan Project".

I would think that more research put into space exploration and development would be a better investments. (Also you know where this money is going to come from)

5. Launch a campaign to build nuclear fission plants across the nation

No may big mistake fission plants are expensive to build, by the time they are built and start paying for themselves, more efficient renewable power generation may become available (which have no fuel costs). If your concerned about the environment I would suggest signing the Kyoto protocol so the pollution produced is canceled out somehow, which would also open up more business opportunities for renewable energy and foresting/orchids/crop farms.

6. Implement a flat income tax

Bad idea that would make tax more unfair (which would probably greatly decrease your growth rate), poor people need most of the money they earn to live off, where middle and wealthy can manage to spare more money to taxes and still live a comfortable lifestyle (although they may not be happy about that and complain the most about taxes).

They are well intended hypothetical policies but when extra funding is intended in one area you usually need to sacrifice funding in another area, or raise taxes but for some reason America seams to be very anti-taxes for some reason.

At 12/18/07 10:18 PM, Antimatter500 wrote: wrong!
i am a liberal, i really like america. Thats why i want to fix it by keeping idiots like bush and cheney. stop generalizing.

You want to fix America? Get all the poor people to revolt overthrow the oligarchy and turn it back into a democracy. You may also need to divide the country, and put all the "patriots" into Utah and Texas (and whatever other states are stereotyped as being redneck) let that area stay as an oligarchy.

Yeah racial institutive favoritism is bullshit. I think people should only get a hand up because of their socio-economic status. And yeah racial slander against white people carries a lot less stigma than against other racial backgrounds. Thing is African and native American backgrounds have a lot on the whites so that kinda means they get to slander you and you have to just put up with it. I'm not sure how long they get to do that though.

Hey heres a thought I'm of Scottish decent I want some benefits because the English and Italians oppressed my ancestors culture and people. Its the same principal that other people ague for the only difference is our skin was the same color as our oppressors.
It must be ok to oppress people if they have the same skin color.

I may have come out as racist but the point I'm trying to make is plenty of races have been oppressed so stop expecting handouts simply because of that fact, Martin Luther King Jr. said something like "people should be judged by the quality of their character not by the color of their skin". So yeah I think there shouldn't be race universities, benefits etc. But give support to people that are disadvantaged.

Well theres not really much to revolt for these days. Mabye foreign invasion but who would want to invade Australia.

Yeah violent media is not responsible for psychos going on rampages. Violence have occurred before video games, movies, T.V, radio etc.

I think its because they are fucked in the head, bullies make the situation way worse, and retarded parents/school staff for not seeing that they were having problems. Thats the main reason they went on a rampage I think. But the fact they they could easily access semi-automatic guns is the final nail in that coffin.
No semi-automatic weapons = rampage with knives or bows or some other less efficient weapon = SWAT come in and stop their arses.

People argue that guns don't kill people, people kill people with guns. Yeah thats true but if people can't access guns then they can't as easily kill people.

At 12/17/07 11:18 AM, werner-ghost wrote: I couldn't care less, I'm going to live out the next 60-80 odd years and be fine. I don't give a damn about what happens after that. When it comes to the matter of oil running out, I just care if my country can rise to the challenge and not be dependant on foreign oil.

Unless your middle eastern, Russian, or a few others (but they are poor anyway) then your country IS dependant on foreign oil. As oil supply goes its not unlikely that we run out of it in the next few decades, better for us just to develop other efficient ways of propelling land vehicles. Its also not that far feched to predict that as natural resources begin to run out that more wars will occur, if you refer to every period in history that is one of the major causes of war.

At 12/16/07 02:10 AM, emanhattan wrote: Dude... we all just fucked the world. There is no escape! well.. except for fish

THATS IT! We can all go live in the sea, hopefully we can open up diplomatic relations with the dolphins, I'm sure with all our modern science we can attach gills to ourselves. If we can't than I'm looking at you religious people.

Duh Austin Powers has the power to seduce any woman and create orgies in any location instantly, Xena could be the goddess of identity crisis seeing as she is really a heterosexual alpha male in a female body

All else I can think of are stupid ideas, like venom being the god of dental hygiene, or George Costanza haveing the power to put people to sleep simply by speeking.

If this actually became a legitimate religion (anythings possible look at Scientology) then you will get other branch off religions eg. the church of Skywalker then religious intolerance will begin all over again.

LOL, thats the funniest religion I've seen. George Costanza, Xena and that fat guy as gods hilarious. If I was ever to follow a religion I would follow that one although I would hate listening to rammstien.

Which is?

Big deal about what happened, who cares about the specifics you will never be able to convince flag wavers that blindly follow superiors, and flag wavers lack the ability to understand views and ideas that arent their exact views and ideas let alone respect them. Usually those type of people only think free speech is ok when other people say something that they agree with.

Can either of the two stereotypes (flag wavering Christian redneck or Michael Moore wannabes that hate the country they live in but never actually do anything constructive) give me some proof that Moslem's that apparently hated America for some reason simultaneously took over 4 planes with box cutters numbering 6 to a plane and flew them into Americas military and financial headquarters, oh and some random field (oh no not the field thats where the grass grows). Which was also organized by a Bin Laden who's family has had many business deals with the Americans.

I'm a skeptical person so I don't believe stories that sound unbelievable without proof presented, so if America and its allies (where I live) are going to use that story to legitimize wars, then I want some fucking proof.

To Asians before they were familiar to these crappy middle eastern religions where everyone has to do what the priest says, there was no difference between philosophy and religion so really its just a difference in definition that you have a problem with.

lol what the hell, there isn't anything wrong with eating meat. It tastes good, its more efficient for our body to digest, it has plenty of energy, plenty of protein, plus if eating animals is wrong do you think we should stop other animals eating other animals?
I think hunting and unregulated fishing is unpractical (unless you live a primitive lifestyle), because well its not managed which could mean the extinction of certain animals which we like to eat. I've worked in Industrial based farms.
I'm not sure if you realize but animal respect is a major rule in farming which includes the slaughter of the animals (which method is given by local animal protection authorities), if fact if I were to treat a animal badly (eg. decided to kick a chicken around to release some stress) would result in me getting fired and possible legal action. That whole anti mainstream farming sentient is completive advertising to support the organic farming fad which I'll admit I'm sure the animals enjoy it being less crowded but they are treated in the same way and fed the same type of food and in the end we kill them and eat them anyway so they served only a purpose they served is porvideing a meal for us. Also industrial style farming produces very large economies of scale compared to organic farming and supports more jobs in rural areas than organic or crop farms.

But I do think that if people couldn't slaughter an animal should they ever need to for meat, then they shouldn't really eat meat they really just developed a mental block.

Does it really matter, if the Government really did it then they would never own up to it, also I would hope the Government of the US is not that retarded where they destroy their world trade center which in turn would open up a political pandoria's box.

I don't completely trust that everything that us said to be true, I think I can remember back in 2001 seeing Rice on tv saying that "They had information linking Osama with the attacks and that information will be released to the public in due time." As far as I know that information hasn't been released yet.

I think the attacks occurred out of incompetence of the US government to act at that time, but really two wrongs don't make a right (mathematically it does but not in real life), an eye for an eye mentality never ends a situation because your side ends up blinding the other side which in turn sets out to blind your side.

Sure they can, though something very serious and bad usually needs to happen before countries unite or break away. I predict either the North gets starved half to death to the point where the army runs out of food and forces a revolt. Or North invades the allies jump in to help the South, China and possibly Iran jump in to help the North, WW3 occurs which ends with either our self destruction from nukes, or one of the sides concede after a very lengthy conflict, the world is split in two again and the cold war begins again.

Can someone tell me what happened that made Korea split in the first place.

I thought of food franchises because their advertising can be extremely persuasive to young children. Yes of course its reasonable for a company to try and sell their products, but the way they advertise for children relates to certain emotions, and when you relate any consumable with an emotion or escape from an emotion then addiction can develop (even with non addictive substance eg. alcohol).

Sure the parents have to give in to their kids but sometimes nagging can just becomes too much, you can't beat your kids anymore (I'm not supporting beating your kids) so you either have to try to endure it or give in. Not every one has an iron will.

I listed the government because of their lack of determination to do anything meaningful about this, they don't need to ban fast food but they could fund free school meals which are actually healthy, the whole healthy food gimmick is hardly healthy a lot of the time, in Australia school canteens only sell pies on certain days but they substitute with pasta, pasta is hardly a healthier choice your only replacing fat with energy and carbohydrates.

Natural behavior may also be influencing this, your body and genes don't know that we are no longer hunting for our food, so maybe thats why theres no kind of natural reaction to get up and run off the energy we just consumed, this kind of behavior needs to be programmed into our brains (good thing this programmed behavior easily overrules primal behavior, or otherwise we would never show any restraint).

People should be paying more attention to this issue, only really in the current generation has it become a problem, it is an epidemic in rich countries (terrible that rich countries die from heart attacks and develop diabetes from overeating while poor countries have people starving to death) and poses significant future problems to those societies. Search child obesity you might find out its a bit more serious than you thought, here is an article from a .org website it has UK statistics but still fairly relevant to other "western" countries (never cite .com websites, their goal is to get lots of hits so info might be made up to make more interesting) The Consequences of Childhood Overweight and Obesity

Fat kids. They are apparently a problem to society as they usually grow up to be fat adults, which apparently need more health care than fitter people putting a strain on the system, affect productivity, and usually have a decreased life expectancy.

So who's to blame:
The kids?
The parents?
Society?
The govenment?
Food franchises?
Anyone else I haven't mentioned?
And what should we do about it?

Assuming this forum is still discussing science and religion, and not an English competition.

Science attempts to understand the natural world and attempt to explain why and how it is, religion attempts to explain why and how we are here, no reason to conflict. The problem is back in the day before we could explain nature religion attempted to fill the gap of science, religion did a lousy job at it.

I think religious people feel threatened by science because it may make them question their beliefs, if one thing is wrong in the religious explination then all of it may be wrong, people should realise that things written in the bible and various holy texts were some middle eastern persons interpretation of the world.

Most religions just seam like one gigantic book club to me, but hey believe what ever you want to believe. Well it may have been a very important code of conduct manual back in the times when people were killing each other over a turnip but hardly significant now that we have progressive laws.

There are plenty of posts already covering US health.

At 11/27/07 12:48 AM, Findustries wrote: Everything will be fine for the first year, then watch our economy go to the shit.

If that happens then the liberals also couldn't do anything about it. As far as economic policy goes Rudd has almost the same strategy that Costello had.

Plus I think we give the liberals too much credit about the state of our economy, the government doesn't run the companies that make all the money, as far as I can see is if your raise taxes (GST) and not spend it on anything then clearly the government is going to generate surplus. As far as giving tax breaks to corporations and rich people go I think they hardly have an effect on the economy, I think this because any tax breaks a corporations gets usually go into executive bonuses, it just seams like it would maybe give slight boost of growth in luxury goods and services, and may give slight revenue increase in construction companies (building bigger mansions).

I don't have any knowledge in macroeconomics but it just seams that giving tax benefits to a lower % demographic will not have much of an effect, although I may be wrong.

Everyone seams to focus on punishment, why don't we try and find out what causes crime and asses those issues. Ever since we have built prisons crime has still occurred, we have had prisons for 1000s of years so its kind of an indication that that system doesn't work, even after reforms free countries have introduced crimes are still being committed.

I think executions may have prevented crimes back in the medieval times but this is because they were conducted in a brutal and public way. It scares the population much like a dictatorships. If someone will not stop murdering people well then I not sure what you are ment to do with those people, couldn't you just put them into the army or something.

Just seams stupid to not take a preventative approach to a recurring issue, people put fire alarms and smoke detectors into buildings so you can minimize the damage of fires, we give people vaccines so they wont get a disease etc.

At 11/26/07 05:25 AM, JarrodK wrote: Rudd's a smart ass and all his deputies are ex-union officials, they will take over.

Key part of the word is ex, the unions dislike rudd as much as the liberals at the moment, instead of giving the labor party their usual political donation they gave to the greens instead. Plus whats wrong with unions anyway they only interfere with corporations when they become socially irresponsible.
Plus what possible incentive would someone have in doing things in the intrests of a faction with they are no longer part of?

Abortion is not murder if you were to charge anyone, it would be more defined as manslaughter (if you actually wanted to define a bunch of cells as human). Plus if mothers develop post natal depression they may even kill off their born baby (which can usually get away with that if they can prove they had post natal depression).
Call me inhumane but what do you do with an unwanted life? Do we give it a shitty life or do we stop that life from developing. If your pro life that may mean your also pro suffering (look at all the 3rd world people).
I also don't get how we value life, people who are "pro-life" (which also may be in favor of wars) will usually not give a shit about animal life, and you can forget them careing about microscopic life shouldn't they never wash themselves so they dont kill the life thats growing on them, how do we value human life higher than any other life. If it weren't for this unnatural environment we have built ourselves we would still be killing crippled babies.
Being "pro-life" is a contradiction because if the world followed those views the world would be way more overpopulated, or most of us would be dead from AIDS, and being completely pro life means you would have to stop eating.