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?

Good one.

I find it odd that Israel is held to a different standard than Hezbollah and other terror groups. Same with America. Israel and America actually target the bad guys and accidentally kill innocent people - sometimes because of the "atrocity strategy" used by these groups and sometimes because we made a mistake and missed or didn't know they were there. These terror groups or freedom fighters, depending where you stand, purposely target innocent people over and over again and never even so much as say they're sorry. But the media harps on Israel and America about the civilian casualties. I don't think I've seen a single bit of coverage, except on fox news, that implicates these other groups for anything at all. They're portrayed as a bunch of poor people just "doing the best they can" to fight a rich, advanced warmongering army. Too bad we only care about poor people killed for god. Not the "rich" ones. But I guess that's right in line with the liberal ideology of hating the rich.

How many people really think that was a genuine question of clarity? I think it was a rhetorical question so you could turn around and deny having an opinion when challenged about it...just like you're doing now. Millions of people believe it. And millions of people believe otherwise. You're welcomed to your own beliefs, at least here in America anyway.

I'm not sure I saw Wourm make a post on here, but judging your post I'm assuming you meant me. Yeah I'm not sure about the FDA thing either, but I do know that the market place is much more responsive than the government is about things. Look at the whole Carb diet fad. Wendy's, McDonalds, Burger King and all the rest of them had "Carb Friendly" meals on menus practically overnight. Competition drives them to give people what they want. If you want crap, they'll sell it to you. If you want good stuff, they'll sell it to you. They don't care either way. Government is sloooooowwwwww and sloppy. No one in government cares about being efficient or giving people what they want, they aren't competing with anybody. Well I guess you could say they're competing with the rest of the governments of the world, but as long as half the world is war torn and decades in the past there's no real competition. The free market does solve alot of problems on its own. But big business and corporations are evil. I think there would always need to be some kind of watch dog over this size of business, especially when they are dealing with other countries and their governments potentially causing problems that we the people have to go fight over - like oil. I'm far more focused on eliminating the current tax structure, inviting other countries to build their businesses here in the US, providing jobs and keeping the manufacturing industry here instead of turning into a obese consumer society that has to have everything made in other countries to be the least bit affordable. Another major appeal, to me anyway, to libertarian style governing, is the elimination of victimless crime. I don't like the idea of people rotting in prison because they grew a plant some people don't like. Or the idea, the nerve, that we can tell two grown adults that they can't have sex in trade for money. This is all nosey, ammoral crap that both liberals and conservatives are guilty of.

That was a blatant strawman, by definition. He did not say there are no palestinian children being killed, rather that their killers are misrepresented. He's making the point that Hezbollah uses innocent people by putting them in the line of fire one way or another and then playing the atrocity card with the perfect snapshot to support it.

But that's just it. Libertarianism is pragmatic. Instead of trying to legislate and mold the people into some goofy politically correct expectation with law books that take a forest to publish, you put the responsibility back where it belongs - on the public. People see government as the great "legitimator" ( yes that's a word ) and safety net, regulator of all right and wrong in the country. I was listening to a talk show on my way home tonight and they were talking about America's overweight problem. This lady called in and blamed the government for our food containing high fructose corn syrup and etc. I couldn't believe it. She went on to say the government should do something about cheap "poor folks" food not being good for you, to make more "affordable" healthy food. This is nuts. Do you see how ridiculous the expectation of our government has become? Not bad. I hadn't thought of anti-aircraft missles. But I believe, even under a libertarian based government, there would still be limits. I also don't like the idea of a privatized police force. And I don't care much for their take on national security. They have some other funky ideas too that I don't agree with, but I have more in common with the libertarian label than any of the others...

I absolutely believe it. It's like playing "house" to these idiots. This is how they play. This is what they do. It's right in line with how all of these weirdos say Israel's response is out of proportion. They think they're trading punches - not fighting a war. That's like me coming over to someone's house and punching the first person that opens the door right in the face. Then cry about how unfair it is that they beat the living hell out of me on the front lawn.

Some women have this down to an art...that's why we try to get them drunk first.

Because neither will become a human on it's own, so that means they are not a potential human. When they come together, they will become a human - you actually have to step in to stop that from happening. That's why they freeze them. Once again...I'm just stating the obvious while others try to rationalize their way around it.

Ummm...is that part of "trying to cultivate an atmosphere of egalitarian debate" ? Sorry, but I've noticed a trend here where moderators don't practice what they preach. If you look at the quotes above and the quotes below, there's no difference in tone. It's all typical smart aleck behaviour that ALL of us are guilty of from time to time. Any worse and I would understand, but I don't think he said anything that wasn't consistent with the tone he got from you. Pangloss, I don't want to get on your bad side, I really don't, but it's hard for me not to say something in this case. I haven't really noticed it much from you, but other moderators are much worse.