Sisyphus

Well then you're just doing a great disservice to the smart kids. Education should be a dialogue. Lecturing is a sham. Why even have a teacher at all? They can just read the book.

My dog will eat all sorts of plants. He used to to eat whole sticks, too, and it never seemed to bother him. Additionally, its been my experience that most dogs LOVE fruit of various kinds, particularly stuff like apples and pears. They're certainly not strict carnivores.

I'm not sure it was inconceivable. Hezbollah was already a minority, just a loud and violent one. The majority of Lebanese already resented Syria at least as much as Israel. It's unclear whether there are more or less Lebanese sympathetic to Hezbollah now, but at least those who are anti-Hezbollah have gotten angrier and are more likely to do something about it.

Well it's been a more or less continuous change from completely incomprehensible (ever try to read Beowulf?) to contemporary English, but if there has to be a cutoff, then I'd say the transition from Middle English to Modern English, which took place around 1450-1550 and was distinguished mainly by pronunciation of vowels changing roughly to how they are pronounced today.

What you described is basically what an electric engine is.

If, as I've heard convincingly hypothesized, the real goal of Hezbollah is to prevent the liberalization of Lebanon, they've done very well for themselves. This has been a major economic and cultural setback for Lebanon.

But for anything other than water, a liter is not a kilogram. So it wouldn't make any sense for people to measure volume by mass for one thing and volume for everthing else. But in common experience, weight and mass are proportional in all cases and therefore interchangable. Oh, and it's NeWton, by the way. Show the man some respect!

By reason I meant cause. If there are two options, and something causes me to choose one over the other, that is deterministic. If there is no such cause, it is random. FREE will, then, is a meaningless phrase as you're using it. However, I think you'll find that what you're looking for in "free will" is not absent from a deterministic or random world. You seem stuck on the notion that such things somehow make us less than conscious, willful beings who should be held responsible for our actions. In fact, it does nothing of the sort.

I admit I thought all of those things were true. Weren't the tombs in the Valley of the Kings similarly empty, with the exception of Tutankhamen? Didn't enough centuries go by when the pyramids were essentially open that it wouldn't be surprising if there was nothing at all left?

And how, exactly, would such nonmaterial things change anything? If a soul does something, it either does it for a reason (deterministic) or not (random.) Material vs. immaterial has nothing to do with it. Further, there is nothing in the limitation to these two options that precludes free will. A choice is a choice, a will is a will.

If you're going to buy a Dell, take advantage of the fact that there are so many of them out there. Before you buy one, google the model you're interested in for common problems. If there are any, there's bound to be lots of people complaining about them. I should have done that before I bought my Dell 5100 laptop, since they all have MAJOR overheating problems that develop after a few months, something I would have known if I'd been smart enough to do more research ahead of time.

So Bush is Ahmadinejad lite? You know, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

Yeah, I guess I should add, how will the U.S. react if the leadership changes but the government essentially stays the same? Will they reevaluate their whole policy and actually talk to Cuba?

Fidel Castro seems to be recovering from his surgery, but even if he does, he is 80 years old and won't be around forever. It is also important to note that he has not specifically mentioned any plans to reassume power from his brother, and the rumors are that there are plans for a permanent transition. However you look at it, a new era for Cuba is close at hand. Or is it? Despite seemingly everyone's predictions, there are no signs of unusual unrest in Cuba whatsoever. Everything appears to be running smoothly, which seems to disprove the theory that American policy towards Cuba is based on, namely, that the regime is fragile and will die with its leader. So what's going to happen when Castro is officially out of power or dead? Will it be just business as usual, as it appears to be? Is the lack of significant reaction among the Cuban people we're seeing now just the signs of a delayed reaction? Have we once again been shown how disgruntled exiles are unreliable sources of intelligence at best?

'Fraid I missed it. What did he say?

Since the whole concept of the bill is based on the fact that good, qualified teachers will magically appear out of nowhere to replace the bad ones, I'm fairly skeptical of the whole thing. It's a simpleminded "apply capitalism to everything" approach, but that doesn't work when you have to make sure everybody gets by, or if, shall we say, you don't want to leave any children behind.

Hey. If you exclude grandmothers from the guidelines, they'll go out and recruit some grandmothers.

All I'm saying is that there has been plenty of public debate which emphasized the notion that "the terrorists hate us because they hate our freedom," whether or not it is explicitly said that this is the only reason. I distinctly remember more than one Bush speach to that effect, and (believe it or not) I do listen to conservative talk radio sometimes, and that's the only reason they ever mention at all. However, I think it's quite fair to say that that is silly. mooeypoo, all those things you mention, about how they see our capitalism and our secularism as decadent and immoral - yes, yes they do. That's why they do all they can to establish oppressive, Taliban-like theocracies in the Islamic world. But there's a big difference between that and going outside the Islamic world to attack others. They attack us not because we're a free society, but because they see us as meddling in their society. They'd rather be insulated in their own little medieval world, not having to deal with infidels like us at all. Sweden has nothing to do with them, and hence, they couldn't care less how many Swedes doom themselves to eternal torment.

Well, what would be the advantage of THAT over an orbitting telescope? Does seem a shame not to use such a big moon for something, though, doesn't? Maybe eventually power generation? Huge solar or thermoelectric arrays, and electricity beamed via laser and collectors on Earth? I guess you'd need self-replicating and self-maintaining machines for that to be practical...

Any idea how long a complete recycle would take? For that matter, how long does it take on Earth?

I'm not sure what the advantage would be that orbitting and geostationary satellites wouldn't provide.

I did say nominally. The more relevant examples would be Hamas and Hezbollah.

But Sweden is much more socially liberal than the U.S. or the U.K., and just as democratic. The fact that the targeting of nations is based on international issues and not, say, "freedom," is precisely the point. They terrorize their own people and would love a strict Islamic theocracy, but as for us infidels, I think they'd rather just have nothing to do with us.