walrusman

I honestly had no idea. I would never say that to someone with that knowledge. I apologize, whole-heartedly. With that in mind, you're doing quite well actually. Now, I'm impressed. Again, I am sorry.

And the same thing happened when white kids starting befriending black kids decades ago. Everytime we push the envelope of equality there will be the backlash until it becomes accepted. It's this backlash and controversy that gets people talking about it and minds get changed - mostly for the better. I realize these kids didn't make the "choice" to be in this position, but whatever society happens to believe should not deter what is right. Somewhere, sometime, somebody is going to have to be the object of this controversy until the bigots become outnumbered and society changes its proverbial mind.

Dak - I always get that response. You automatically assume I didn't do any critical thinking and jumped to the first obvious conclusion. I'm not a sheep, Dak. I know that the vast majority of muslims are peaceful. But, their religion isn't. It's oppressive and imperical in its nature. Islam is the only religion nuttier than Christianity. I think you meant Koran. The Torah is Judaism. And that has been in there from the beginning and all of this fighting has been going on for centuries, so what good is that doing anybody? And "you shouldn't kill people" is a children's message. I have yet to hear a muslim tell me any of these suicide bombers will go to hell for what they did. That religion is wrong. What kind of thinking (brainwashing) doesn't punish someone who kills innocent people? Targeting women and children. Religions and gods are man made fairy tales, and this particular tale was fabricated by oppressive, misogynistic spinsters.

I agree Jim. Time to call a spade a spade. Christianity had it's slaughter-fest in our history and now it's Islam. It's not a religion of peace, just read a little of the Koran yourself and you'll see what I mean. Also, check out http://www.obsessionthemovie.com. Nice trailer. But it shows a mere snapshot of the rhetoric that's been coming from that part of the world for decades. Death to America. When Islam rules the world. They have twisted an already twisted religion and taken it the next step. Remember, Hitler mesmerized his people. He won their hearts and minds and deceived them with propaganda. That's the EXACT same thing going on over there, only multiple countries in on the act. They learned from Hitler. Did we?

And that's the impossible delimma. I can't stand Bush. He's bought and paid for. But all of this middle east fighting is not his fault as people like to say. When I saw these Arabs completely lose their mind and literally kill people over a freaking cartoon, I realized that none of this is his fault, clinton's fault, carter's fault. You can point to this and that and say so-and-so didn't do this or that right, but in the end there just is not a diplomatic bone in the bodies of these Arabs. And that is the crux of the problem. There is no way they are going to relax and enjoy life with a little tolerance for each other. It seems the only way to end all of this, is for one side to exterminate the other. Force. Plain old, natural born force. Sad really. I'm not advocating that. Just seems futile.

It's been my understand that dogs can hear higher frequencies than us, but what about lower ones? How about the bandwidth of our voice? When I'm training my dog, I use alot of body language with verbal commands and she's right on target with me. But when I stop moving and just give verbal commands she doesn't seem to pick up unless I say the word just right. Was wondering, to what capacity do dogs hear our words? How do they interpret this apparent "charlie brown" gibberish?

I held a woman prisoner once. When I went to visit my old girlfriend in oklahoma state penitentiary I held her tight the whole time. Ok that was stupid, but I couldn't help it.

You always seem like you're all wound up about stuff. Relax a little. That was an impathetic question. That's what I usually get from folks against gay marriage. Instead, Severian has some good arguments. Do you?

I couldn't agree more. As silly as it sounds, it seems my country is more religiously driven than I ever thought. Any talk of multiple wives or husbands, gay marriage - anything that the bible says is wrong, is viciously lobbied against here. I guess they didn't read the parts where jesus changed the hearts and minds of the people - on their own turf. For some reason, living life in reverence of christ has come to mean legislating their idea of morallity - NOT changing the hearts and minds of anybody but the house and senate. Gee...this kind of ties in with the other post about social freedoms. Imagine if the religious right were the ones deciding what was "socially damaging" and what wasn't.

I guess I was thinking it would be the same basic proportion you would see in our vegetation. But that's an interesting direction... Anyway, I don't know anything about this. I have no idea what plant holds more iron than another, or how much for that matter. Really? I figured it would be opposite. I figured you'd have a nice fair proportion of blue collar and white collar workers, with a few specialists smart enough to figure out this new world and direct them from there. SkepticLance - great take except I don't want my humans to advance any actually. That's why I was trying to eliminate ores from the equation. But then we need iron to live, so it's going to have to be available in some edible form like plant life. But then that also opens the door for humans to exploit that large scale and advance - bringing me back where I started. I was hoping I was wrong, but I'm afraid we're just too damn persistant.

I like the idea, but I wonder if you might run into problems with the axiom such that to correct a bad side effect of it would require too big of a deviation to live with. Especially if the problem is close to the foundation of the logic behind it. But I'm not sure I really understand it anyway.

I'm surprised you're asking me that. I thought my position was a little more transparent than that. I don't think it's anybody's business who wants to marry who or what they're doing in their bedroom. Don't get me wrong, I love a good porn flick, as long as it's hetero-style. And it's just as silly to be against gay marriage because somebody else will benefit from it and you won't. Sounds a little introverted and spiteful. Why not hold the "statement of judgement from the state" thing with more value and deny the government the right to tell us how to live our lives? You seem pretty smart, I can't imagine you don't see the sense in that.

Great replies. Agriculture never dawned on me really. That's why I come here to ask these questions. And I like SkepticLance's theory on the advancement of metals. In short, you all are basically agreeing that a relative mastery of agriculture would allow a division of labor, thus leading to scholars and etc which would lead us to discovery of these metals and other things. So allow me to append the question a little then... If humans had the "knowledge" of metals already - say thousands of present day humans from all different walks of life suddenly zapped to another planet or something (not my storyline, but works for this parallel) where these minerals were only found in typical plant life but no "ores" to speak of - could we still advance like we have? Electrical networks, machines, and etc. I'm wondering how inventive and pioneering we can really be. Seems futile to try and figure out how to extract these minerals from vegetaion to forge metals, but then I wouldn't be all that surprised if we could do it. What do you all think?

Severian, YT2095, Gcol.... What's your problem with it? Let me guess...their marriage somehow adversely effects yours?