Sisyphus

I actually went to high school with the son of one of their main writers. He came in to talk to our AP government class, along with some poor guy from a local paper who he kept insulting and accusing of being part of some big liberal media conspiracy.

I never said it was racist. But in any case, is there really a fundamental difference between discriminating based on race or on religion? True. And Jews don't get palaces, and non-Jews aren't hunted down and killed. But it's still inequality under the law. Yes, exactly! I couldn't do that, because I'm not Jewish. Unless I'm mistaken, it wouldn't even matter if my parents had been non-Jewish immigrants from Israel. Yet a Jew who hasn't had a direct ancestor living in Israel for a thousand years would get those rights.

You should copy the text before you submit, and if it doesn't show up all you have to do is paste and hit submit again.

What about working animals? Does a sheep dog count as a pet?

Those facts are right. Under mercantilist philosophy, of which Britain at the time was the prime example, colonies exist partly for the economic benefit of the mother country, to increase the export/import ratio. As such, the idea was to import raw materials from the colony, and export manufactured goods to it. Naturally there was press, but it was also heavy-handedly regulated. "Independent" is the important word. The incident I was alluding to was the Battle of Lexington and Concord, in which the British army tried to seize the armory of the local colonial militia. What exactly are the myths and distortions? Maybe I'm wrong, but you could probably do better than just contradicting me.

The point is that the exception is made for people who have no connection with Israel whatsoever beyond being Jewish. That pretty firmly establishes Israel as a Jewish state, doesn't it? How is that discriminatory? How could it not be offensive to non-Jewish Israelis?

No, sadly, Newsmax is real. And yes, the ads are hilarious. "Trick women into being attracted to you!" "Master bareknuckle boxing!" "Buy lots of GOLD!" They'd probably have a lot more credibility as a news source if their ads weren't so well targeted to the mentality of the reader.

This is purely speculative, but perhaps there is a moral to be found somewhere. I'm not committing to one, anyway. It occurs to me that if Israel had been founded not as a "Jewish state" but as a purely secular state that happened to give refuge to Jews (and anyone else, I guess), then everything since then probably would have happened very differently. (Yes, I know there are lots of non-Jewish Israeli citizens, but it was founded as a Jewish state, presents itself as such, has a Star of David on the flag, and furthermore, everyone knows it is, so shush.) Things that would be different: General Middle Eastern hatred towards Israel: It seems like it would be harder to attack a state that happened to have a large population of Jews, rather than a "Jewish state," which is perceived as a foreign invasion. Maybe a few wars could have been prevented. Maybe I'm wrong. Palestinian/Israeli conflict: I don't think Palestinians would be so eager for independence. Living in a state shared by people of different religions and ethnicities is one thing. Living in a state based around a religion that is not your own is another. The latter tends to feel like an oppressive occupation, even if it really isn't. United States foreign policy: As a secular, democratic state, it would be easy to justify supporting, and it would be worthy of said support. However, without it being a "Jewish state," the support could be more rational. There wouldn't be evangelicals supporting it unconditionally as a means to bring about the apocolypse. There also wouldn't be Jews who have no connection to Israel beyond being Jewish supporting it unconditionally and overly emotionally merely because they are Jewish. This would in turn breed less resentment among non-Jews and non-Israelis in the Middle East for that support, since it wouldn't seem like helping the other side in a holy war, which, frankly, is an understandable impression given the two aforementioned groups. I guess if I have a point it's that identifying national identities with race or religion is generally a bad idea, especially if the populace of that nation is far from uniform. But really I was just hoping for some interesting discussion. Thoughts, comments, questions, insults, or wild accusations are all welcome.

Sure, he wants peace among all humanity. Probably true, except that he doesn't consider Jews human.

"If we want freedom, there should be a nuclear civil war every 20 years." Hmmm. Maybe replace "freedom" with "Godzilla."

Yeah, sub-Saharan Africa is certainly the most free region on Earth.

Maybe, but ordinary lab rats aren't domesticated. Of course, if it turns out there is a common "domestication" process among mammals, then it's entirely possible that we humans ARE domesticated, at least partially. The beginning of civilization might have had a similar effect of selecting for amicability among humans, and so we might have actually "domesticated" ourselves.

As far as I know, the second amendment, like the rest of the original Bill of Rights, was born out of resentment towards British treatment of the colonies, and a desire to guarantee that the new federal government would be unable to carry out similar abuses. Specifically, when the colonial authorities started to fear rebellion, they tried to disarm the local militias which would be the principal threat should it come to violence. Not an unreasonable idea, IMO, but it showed an unacceptable level of disrespect which basically compounded with the other offenses of mercantilism. We Americans weren't allowed to manufacture our own goods, have our own independent press, and lot of other rights. Then the crown wanted to take away our ability to even provide for own defense, which led to a little incident in Massachusetts... So, in short, I think you are partially right, but only partially. A federal government which takes away its citizens' right to independently organize to defend themselves is a government which fears its people, and a government with reason to fear its people has no right existing. But I don't think it was a decision based on "eventually we'll have to rebel against our own government of the people," but rather, it is one way of ensuring that it always is of the people.

"Domestication" also might have a scientific, genetic basis. There were experiments conducted on rats and foxes wherein they were selected for breeding based solely on amicability. Within 60 generations both populations were not only completely docile and friendly, but underwent completely unexpected physical changes, as well. Their fur became spotted, their tails curved, and, most surprising of all, they became smarter. There have been suggestions that humans are a "domesticated" form of great ape, the domestication in question arising in a self-feeding loop together with civilization.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/52984 It was only a matter of time.

Wikipedia has the exchange as the following: Matt Lauer: “I don’t want to let this 'within the law issue' slip though. I mean, if, in fact, there was water boarding used with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and for the viewers, that’s basically when you strap someone to a board and you make them feel as if they’re going to drown by putting them underwater, if that was legal and within the law, why couldn’t you do it at Guantanamo? Why did you have to go to a secret location around the world?” President Bush: “I’m not going to talk about techniques. And, I’m not going explain to the enemy what we’re doing. All I’m telling you is that you’ve asked me whether or not we’re doing things to protect the American people, and I want the American people to know we are doing so." Oh, well ok then.

By gravitational shape I was just viewing gravity as a "geometrical" property of space itself. Like the "heavy objects on rubber sheet" analogy. Good question. The short answer is that it's not nothing, it's space. I don't think I can explain the long answer very well (hence the original question), but I think generally space is viewed as having some inherent metric which can change relative to material objects. That's why the universe can expand, and everything can get farther apart, but nothing actually has to "move." The analogy I had in mind was the expanding balloon, where points on its surface don't move across its surface, but still grow farther apart since the surface itself is increasing in size. Except the "surface" here is three-dimensional empty space.

Indeed. I would bet a large percentage of Americans are nearly non-practicing, basically secular Christians. But that does make the anti-atheist prejudice all the stranger. I don't understand it, but I'll give it some thought.

By "empty space," I mean space empty of all matter. I realize this a huge question. Maybe I should ask, if you were take a one meter cube of space from way out between the galaxies, clean out any stray ions or whatnot, what could you say about it? Presumably it has EM waves passing through it in all directions, constantly. It also has a gravitational "shape," right? And it can expand and contract, theoretically? But does that expansion/contraction mean anything without reference to objects? That was a tangled mess of a question. I'll leave it open if anyone wants to touch it.

Who's burning churches? What form is this supposed "Muslim anger" taking? And what was the actual context of the Pope's original speach? What was he actually trying to say? I ask merely for information. Just as it would be stupid to get angry at the Pope for something he wasn't actually saying, I wouldn't want to chastise an entire religion when I haven't even seen what anyone is doing.

Yes. Anything noticable would take a billion years, and if the moon slows down, it moves farther away, not closer.

No, I wasn't, because that's not the technology I was talking about. Those are both big barrages, almost like dams. The turbines I'm talking about would be freestanding (or floating, really), and operate just like windmills, harnessing horizontal movement of water. They could be placed anywhere there are strong currents.

That looks really interesting. I'll order a copy.

No, not while it's a gas.

Do a lot of poisonous plants cause inner ear problems?