ParanoiA

Well, keep in mind, this information I'm referring to was partly based on an episode of Ripley's Believe It or Not - the first time around. There was a story on a cat that rode on some biker's handlebars. He supposedly trained his cat to do this, and some other things. The narrator said something about cats being trainable, if you have the patience. As far as cats being smarter...I'm not so sure I didn't dream it.

I had always heard cats were smarter than dogs and quite trainable. I have no idea how this training would work, other than the example in the OP, and I remember wondering if you could teach an old cat new tricks. What I really appreciate is the method of training used above. I can't stand it when we people beat and scold their pets into their preferred behavior.

Well, I'm the product of the sperm and ovum. Neither the sperm, nor the ovum contain my DNA - they contribute to my DNA. Remember, I said the first cell that is me...is me. Whatever you call that step - I'm a developed "that". By the way...I resemble that quote of yours.

And this has been the crux all along. This widely accepted understanding of that definition as we here understand it is what I'm challenging. I take issue with your "accepted" definition. I know I'm in the minority on it, but I noticed, per the poll, I do have some company. I just hope they're not all religiously driven.

I enjoyed the Metallica - And Justice For All show. It was a memorable gig for me anyway, because I didn't realize the Statue of Liberty effigy was supposed to fall down at the end of the show - so, for a moment I thought I was watching a catastrophe. Also, the sound was huge and they were at their peak in song writing and performance. Another one was W.A.S.P. - yes I was into them (hey it was the 80's, give me a break...) and that was memorable because I smoked the public herb being passed around only to realize a little later that one of those must have been laced. I remember waking up several times throughout the night, very spaced out and uncomfortably screwed up. I got over it...now I wish I could find that stuff again. This last Tool show was great too. The sound was great and they're such an eccentric and progressive metal band and they hit every note perfect! I was blown away mainly by their musicianship and flawless execution. And you got to love a weirdo front man with a mohawk and cowboy belt buckle singing about california falling into the ocean - learn to swim!!

You have both just validated my point. You are considering whether or not a blastocyst is a human BASED on moral consideration - not on objective reasoning. You are arguing value. When the sun is shining through my window it is daytime. Whether or not there are moral consequences for it being daytime is irrelevant - it is daytime. Period. I believe a blastocyst is a being - period. The moral consequences are irrelevant to that conclusion. I don't empathize with it because I'm a fully developed human. See, I don't think a blastocyst has more VALUE than a developed being based on exactly what you two are saying - empathy. I can relate to a developed human - not with a glob of cells that I can't see. But that has nothing to do with whether or not it is a being. A blastocyst has no moral value, in my opinion. However, it is a being, in my opinion. Oh, and no, I'm not equivalent to a rock.

That's an out of context remark. Tanks are not good for policing - just killing people and breaking things. So, that's why our troops are dying - because we are policing face to face - not behind the steel and non-discriminatory barrel of a tank. Yes, all war should be last resort. All war will yield the death of innocent little kids and women - as if men don't count. So when you go to war, you're saying "I believe the death of women and children is necessary to resolve this situation". I take that very seriously. Yeah, I'm not aware of any 24 hour 7 day a week satellite coverage of anything on earth. Maybe there is, but I don't know about it. But better yet, what is your point? We manufactured intelligence that we didn't even need? We had at least 9 excuses for invading Iraq. I think the WMD fear was overplayed to get the public into it, but I don't think it was manufactured. Do you really think the administration would manufacture intelligence just to get egg on their face when it doesn't come true? Better yet, why would they manufacture intelligence and NOT manufacture or plant the evidence after going in? I would really like to hear that part of the conspiracy theory on that one... I hope not. So far we seem to be limiting our warring to thug gangs that run countries with religio-slavery and provide support for Islamoracist murder cowards. Again, I'm not for the war in Iraq. I wouldn't have handled anything like it is being handled by the administration - nor how it's bound to be handled by democrats - nor how it sounds like you and Mokele might have handled it. But then, I'm not religious and I have no desire to control people with god...

To continue the Iraq debate without hijacking Pangloss's thread any further... Ndi / Mokele - You two seem to have interpreted my post as a pro-bush, pro-war opinion piece. I'm just sharing what I believe the plan is, what I believe the intent of the administration is, in this "war on terror". It's not my plan. I've already posted what my idea was and still is. It's interesting how both of you are so adamant about condemning the US as a failure, even though not a single country has solved Islamic Terrorism to date. Nothing anyone has tried yet, has worked. So, we're all failures. No country yet has been able to stop Islamic terrorism and whether or not they fight them or obey their demands they still get attacked. At least fighting them, ruthlessly, kills some of them. The point I keep bringing up, and will never forget, is that we've been attacked by Islamic terrorists for decades. We even helped them during the 80's to get rid of the soviet invaders. We were not warring with any of their nations. We've showered them with money for oil and have provided a secure flow of funds. Yet, terrorists were created. Terrorists hated us. Terrorists have condemned the US for decades as the great Satan. It doesn't matter what we do. We can war with them or help them, or ignore them, or comply with their demands - all approaches render more terrorism. This argument that Iraq has just created more terrorists is irrelevant as there would have been more terrorists anyway. Warring with them at least limits that number via killing them - some of them anyway. I believe that is the administration's intent - to focus resources and drain them. Is it working? Well if that's their intent, then of course it's working. There are attacks daily in Iraq. There are not attacks here in the states. So, it appears to be working. I don't think it will ultimately solve anything though. These people thrive on death and religion and they'll blow themselves up for centuries to show god how much they care. You can take issue with this plan, but quit acting like I'm a proponent for it. I'm just sharing my take on it. I believe some of war mentality is justified, but I don't believe it is the correct response to this whole thing.

Hardly.. Yes, I'm equal to a blastocyst and a blastocyst is equal to me. I'm a developed blastocyst. As much as a tree is a developed seed. Sorry I didn't make that clear. I was coming fresh off that Dawkins video and was contemplating the parallel between his middle world brain bit and this blastocyst thing. See, I got into trouble going where you two are going, because I believe you are arguing value when you think you are trying to argue objectivity. So far, everyone's arguments contain an appeal to value or significance within the logic - why does a being have to matter? Why do I have to matter in order to be a being?

Oh of course, If I don't buy into the cheap liberal hype the rich corporate news networks blast in my eyeballs then I must be a cowboy conservative. And why am I being directed to defend anyone on Osama Bin Laden? I don't know why they suck at trying to find him. Well yeah the insurgents still win, but these regimes don't. It's a loss for Iran, Jordan, Syria. Democracy keeps closing in on them. They are a major supporter and supplier of suicidal maniacs and weapons for the insurgency. Either way, we lose face via the insurgency. But the puppetmasters can't afford to lose. I didn't say I liked it. I'm just saying it's obvious that Iraq is a resource drain for terrorist organizations. Remember the cold war? I'm sure you were probably pissing and moaning about Reagan too, but he basically outspent the soviets. That's how it was won. Big deficit and we'll never know what kind of catastrophy we averted. I think they're trying the same scheme here - outspend them in resources in Iraq and then turn it over to the Iraqis to run. Would also explain the lack of desire for a time table for withdrawal. What the hell are you talking about? If you could get over yourself you'd be more coherent. How the hell could anybody have any evidence on what the administrations plan is? I don't know of any leader of any country divulging strategic war plans to the adversary. I'm just making an observation and sharing an opinion. Just like you. . Yes. And did you know that food costs money? Oh those evil capitalist pigs. Yes, little one, oil is responsible for your whole way of life. You're typing on a major oil dependant. Our manufacturing, our economy, linked to oil like a lifeline. And yes, contrary to the romantic storylines on the scifi channel, we only get involved in conflicts where we have an interest. Sorry to break your starstruck heart. That's how we pick and choose our battles. That's also how you stay married. In case you missed it, our ****ing armada is bulky, heavy, resource taxing, heavily manpowered pieces of machinery. You can't just buzz over to Iran or Syria on a sunday afternoon. Iraq borders two major terror sponsoring countries. Do you own a globe? I thought you were just bragging about spain. Why is spain having to thwart terror plots when they cooperated with terrorist demands? I thought if we listened to their plight and tried to understand them, that they would stop abusing us? Didn't seem to work for Spain did it? Or do you have any ideas of your own other than just a bad case of the GWB's? I can't imagine Iraq would shut everything down that they do all over the globe. But, I think the resources these terror groups are spending in Iraq have to effect what's available for international plans. I'm just saying that Iraq does serve as a focus for their resources since they absolutely do NOT want the US to win this particular campaign. If ever there was a war to win for them, it's this one. We have the receipts. We've sold them to him. We've watched him use them. We have satelite images of him moving them. We don't have a receipt from god. We've never seen god. We don't have any satelite images of him. It's nothing like religion. We attacked Iraq because it would be easy to sieze, we'd be guaranteed access to oil, good strategic position, and easy to make excuses to start it. To end the war on terror, the administration believes you must have democracy in the region. We've tried to sit back and let it happen on its own and be tolerant of minor attacks here and there over the years. 9/11 was the end of our patience, and we have decided to accelerate that process rather than repeat the examples of all of the other countries that are regularly abused by terrorism. At least, that's my take on it.

That's a great post Ndi. Points taken. I'll reply later when I get more time.

Well, maybe you and Mokele have a good point then. Maybe the media is ate up with it - because you see it alot on TV - but not the general public. I have to admit, that's where I got the idea. And I agree, I thought "flight attendant" was actually one of the few good ones.

Exactly. You think occupation and order, government building is major combat operations?? So what was the first few weeks? Super duper major combat operations? . I don't mean Iraq would have attacked us, I'm talking about terrorism in general. Iraq didn't give a rat's ass about us, really.

So, my question is, did this sloppy writing technique just recently become an issue or is it just because I'm older and notice it more? It seems to me everything I read is getting worse and worse, in terms of grammar, spelling, capitalization and etc. And I noticed it just after computers began to proliferate.

I think this actually gets used a lot more up in the northeast part of the country. I'm in the midwest, so we don't really see that much PC nonsense except in writing. You'd have to apply for the bus driver job as a transportation specialist but everyone would say congratulations on your bus driver job.

Damn, that's an evil question. That's a "Saw" kinda predicament... Anyway, I'd save the black child since there are less of them than white. The only way I could save the white child over the other is if I had some kind of tie to it - such as the neighbor's kid, or saw him at my son's school or something. I guess I'm kind of applying my own brand of affirmative action, but at least it is self induced, and based on the only information capable of being processed quickly enough to make a decision.

Tribbles?

Sorry Sayonara, I just noticed you asked this question... Equivalent in what sense? The blastocyst hasn't developed a mind, body, emotions, consciousness yet - which are the things we associate as human being. Just like we think a rock is solid rather than mostly space. We just don't see the being in a blastocyst because we have been conditioned to relate "developed" features as a being. We've never been exposed to this level of life - so our "middle world" brains are not evolved to understand it. I wonder what Richard Dawkins thinks on this subject. Has he ever weighed in on when human life begins or when it becomes a being? Notice I'm not concered with value at the moment, since value is a different discussion.

I'm not for sure either, but I think it's more of an individual environmental system. Each person on the starship is in perfect temperature agreement. To one person it feels 75 and perfect. To another it feels 64 and perfect. Actually I just made that up, but I wish that was a reality...

This is why I never agreed with the idea of WMD's as an excuse for re-invasion. We had at least 9 valid reasons to resume war with Iraq - WMD's should have been fringe validation only. Nevertheless, are you saying Saddam just simply used up all of the WMD's we sold him and didn't want any more? Come on, that's insane. Saddam was a dangerous SOB, and Ahmadinejad is too. It doesn't make lying ok, but I think it was more distrust of the UN and anti-war governments that led them to believe they were on the right track regardless. Is the CIA not accountable for anything here? Sisyphus, this is total crap. You know better than that. We were told over and over again - repeatedly day after freaking day - that this was going to be a long process and to stay the course. Where do you think all of the animosity surrounding the phrase 'stay the course' comes from? The MEDIA and the DEMOCRATS expected it to be a food fight - the military, Rumsfeld and company, and Bush, all made it clear that this would be a long struggle. Now, I don't think even they expected it to go this long, and I do think they are somewhat shocked at the state of affairs - but they never declared victory. CNN may have. MSNBC may have. But those with a shred of common sense did not. For you, maybe. I said the masses. Most people perceive it's getting worse instead of better because of the nightly reports of bombs and so forth. I don't think there's been a single conflict on the globe since WWI that didn't have bombs in it. So, tell me this...when did it get better instead of worse in WWII? When we were losing soldiers fighting the relentless japanese, island hopping - the worst losses of WWII, the bloodiest battles - all at the END of the war - was better rather than worse? How would CNN and MSNBC have reported those battles? See, I submit that the doom and gloom is fostered by the lack of desire for war in the first place. Not that I blame anybody for that. But, when your country goes to war, against what you believe is right or correct, then you will look for and interpret everything to support your POV. However, when you look at this objectively, this is probably one of the most successful wars we've ever fought - successful in that we have a low casualty rate and highly efficient invasion and seizure. We just don't know how to build governments and force them on people without dealing with a massive insurgency - hence the long drawn out struggle echoed by the administration, repeatedly. Because no one else will do it. It's better to have a permanent insurgency in Iraq for decades to come than it is to ignore Iraq altogether and to have allowed them to develop WMD's and sell them to one or more of the 300 million Arabs that hate us. You really think that over the next 100 years, that not a single Arab state would do that? The more you think about it, the more it should scare you. It's not hard to terrorize. It's surprisingly easy. WMD's even hinted about is unacceptable. And for those who believe we've made terrorism worse, how on earth could we have made it better? If we didn't invade Iraq, they would still attack us. We were not in Iraq on 9/11. We were not in Afghanistan on 9/11. We weren't at war with anyone on 9/11. But they were at war with us since the 70's. We're still there because we can't turn our back on a mess we created - a necessary mess in my mind, but a mess nonetheless. cool, I just made up a mild tongue twister....'a necessary mess but a mess nonetheless' - say that 5 times

Ok, so it's Britain's fault. Cool. Just kidding... Thanks for the history lesson. It sounds like the location of Israel was a combination of religious reasoning and British declaration. It still seems rather rotten that Palestine is chosen for Israel's homeland when both Palestinians and Israelis have arguably equal claim to that land in terms of historical presence. I can see why they're pissed. However I can also see Israel's POV. They have to live somewhere and they have religious ties to that region as equally, if not moreso than the palestinians. It's too bad the Persians can't accept a shared Jerusalem. I've always liked the two state solution, but then I don't live there and I don't fully understand the consequences of that solution. Why are the palestinians not in agreement with that resolution? Is it about Jerusalem?

A) I'm not sure who you're referencing here, but every conflict we've gotten into since vietnam has been been predicted by anti-war folks as another vietnam. Saying the same thing over and over again until it finally comes arguably true doesn't qualify as a prediction. B) The public was misled on what? WMD's have been found. And we know he had WMD's because we have the receipts. You're blinded by Bush hatred if you seriously believe Saddam didn't use the months and months of pre-invasion lead time to hide them. And terrorism is all over the globe so we could have invaded about 5 different countries and it would just about be justified. C) The mission most certainly isn't accomplished. But it isn't all doom and gloom either. WWII would have looked like a "vietnam" the whole time if you covered every horrible thing that happened. War is horrible. Every war is disgusting with losses on both sides. What do you expect? A food fight? I've posted the losses of previous wars before, so I guess I'll have to do it again. Just wish the news media would do their job instead of pushing their agenda... War Casualties KIA Revolutionary War 10,623 4,435 War of 1812 6,765 2,260 Mexican-American War 17,435 1,733 Civil War 970,227 184,594 Spanish-American War 4,108 385 World War I 320,710 53,513 World War II 1,078,162 292,131 Korean War 136,935 33,651 Vietnam War 211,471 47,369 Gulf War 760 148 Iraq War (3/19/03) 2,921 2,397 (I can't figure out how to spread the numbers out so you can see it better...sorry. The links below will take you right to it and it's MUCH easier to read) http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/casualties_of_war.htm - all war data except for Iraq http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/ - Iraq war data So, 19 times as many soldiers will have to die before it matches that of vietnam. Vietnam was 7.5 years in length. The math just doesn't support that this is another vietnam, not even close. There are only 4 wars in this list that meet or exceed the time we have spent in Iraq. I count 45 months in Iraq. WWII was 44 (292,000 KIA). Revolutionary war was 80 (4,435 KIA). Civil war was 48 (184,000 KIA). And of course, vietnam was 90 (47,000 KIA). Compare that with Iraq, 45 months and 2,397 KIA. I use KIA in my analysis because it is the nightly reports of violence and dead soldiers that lead the masses to believe we're losing over there. I don't see that. However, I do believe we are losing right now. Losing as in being unable to stop the influx of insurgency. There's no way an american of any kind can stop an insurgency. There's no way to do it "right" as long as we are doing it. Since no one else will fight terrorism, rather than accept it as a way of life and negotiate with and empower it, we have no choice but to do it how we're doing it.

Hey quarkie...I didn't throw you under the bus. I was still chuckling when I typed it. Maybe you're paranoid...I know a thing or two about paranoia ya' know...

Apparently Rhino's too...

Well yes. I don't know anyone who wouldn't. I can't imagine having to explain why. A better question would be 'why not'.