Phi for All

The book I got from my library is Seeing yourself see : eye exercises for total vision by Jim Jackson. Google had several hits for eye exercises as well, but some are pay sites. Most of it was just looking in various ways, stretching your eye muscles the way you'd stretch any other muscle. The question is, do you have the time and the discipline to do them? If you'd like to see without corrective lenses or surgery, it's a great way to go. Most of us are lazy, I'm sad to say.

Has anyone ever tried the eye exercises that supposedly strengthen the eyes so that glasses and contacts would be unneccesary? There is a whole school of thought that says glasses are like crutches and if we simply kept our eyes in shape we wouldn't need them. I checked a book out of the library once. The exercises are not hard, but it is something you'd have to do pretty religiously, just like a bodybuilder would have to do to maintain olympic form. I guess that why a lot of people just wear glasses.

You took the words right out of my mouth. But then that's why they pay Sayo the big bucks. Come to think of it, I've never seen a photo of Demosthenes and Saddam together, nor ever heard of them attending the same party. Coincidence?

And I found some links that stated it was Iranian ordinance that gassed the Kurds in Halabja. Other theories state that it was Sadaam, who was pissed that the Kurds had given shelter to Iranian soldiers. He was actually gassing the Iranians but didn't care if the Kurds got in the way because he considered them traitors to Iraq for helping the enemy. Tell me Bush wouldn't justify doing the same thing if he had evidence that Utah was harboring Osama bin Laden. Remember, gas like the type that was used in Halabja is meant to flush out an enemy. If you leave the area, you don't die. If you stay, you die. If Sadaam had wanted to kill everybody, normal explosive munitions would have done the job. The purpose of gas is to make entrenched forces leave cover and run. Then your forces can shoot the ones who pose a threat, like those carrying weapons. I'm not trying to defend Sadaam. But I try not to listen only to sound bytes like "tyrant", which automatically pass judgement, then go on to be jury and executioner as well. From the CIA's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iraq/Iran war in question: http://www.propagandamatrix.com/a_war_crime_or_an_act_of_war.htm

Papyrus made by the Egyptians predates what we now call paper, but I believe the fibrous type of paper you're referring to was first made in China. Parchment and vellum were actually made from animal skins, iirc.

Answering a question with a question is not good form. It makes us think you have no good answers and are being evasive, which I hope is not your intent. It's clear you've been eating what the media has been feeding you, but your digestive process is producing the same old crap. Next you'll accuse me of not supporting the troops because I don't support the war. I was raised to believe that questioning the intent of the leaders was the duty of the civilian, just as the soldier's duty is to follow the orders of those leaders. You sound like someone who wants to win at all costs. You're hiding behind your patriotism with phrases like "American lives" and "war on terrorism" but the issue that has been brought up here is how much is too much? If someone else cheats does that make it OK for you to cheat? Since they are beheading people it makes it just for us to torture? All of the torture assumes we'll get answers we can use to save lives. If you torture a prisoner and he still tells you nothing, will you just shrug and say, "It was worth a try"? Just like we said there's a chance Sadaam has WMDs, let's invade. Oh, well, he doesn't, but it was worth (billions of dollars) a (thousands of lives) try. Flippant, definitely. Did you know the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline Time Traveler refers to in his decidedly more informative post is worth $12,000,000,000,000 (yes, trillion) in oil and natural gas? I think this may be why we're in Baghdad instead of in Darfur.

A tyrant who abuses the citizens of his country is not "terrorizing" them. Let's not confuse things by misusing this word. Sadaam was not a terrorist, hated terrorists, and held Iraq in an iron grip to avoid having terrorists ruin his stronghold. A nation that invades the sovereign territory of another nation is the agressor, no matter how powerful. You obviously think because Sadaam killed the Kurds (who may or may not have been helping Iranian soldiers to overthrow him) that gives us the right to move in without UN sanctions. What about Sudan and Zimbabwe, North Korea, Turkey or Cuba? There are some major human rights violations going on in these countries. Why did we pick Iraq? 5000 Kurds over 70,000 Sudanese in Darfur with over 2 million people run out of their homes. Why Iraq? A favorite trick of megabusiness politics is to come up with something nasty to do and then immediately accuse your opponent of doing it. Your opponent seems guilty just by his denials, and you can always point back and say, "Hey, I accused him first!" "Liberal media" is one of the most carefully thought-out soundbytes in the history of spin-doctoring. Since 95% of the media is owned by conservative mega-corporations, how did they get to be so liberal? Please continue to think.

So if a government can show that it committed what the world community considers an illegal act in order to protect it's citizens, it's OK by you? Or does that only go for what the US does?

I can imagine many similar scenarios where I, as an individual and not a government, might use illegal methods to save my immediate family. But as Ophiolite pointed out earlier in this thread, I would expect to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law for my crime. I would do this willingly to save my family. And I could sleep at night.

Is it partly television & cinema that lead us to believe torture methods are acceptable? When we see the hero get fried for awhile with a car battery, then shrug off the effects and go on to vanquish the evil enemy, does it make something so heinous less objectionable? Do we really believe there are no long term effects of torture or are we simply justifying that, "Hey, they were evil first, it's OK, you know, an eye for an eye"?

Welcome, doc. Be sure to check out the Official Joke thread in General Discussion. Read them all and add any that we've missed, keeping in mind our younger members.

To me, this is the perfect summation of my feelings on the matter. In just sixty-odd years, we have sunk so low that we can contemplate the torture of prisoners and not be shocked at ourselves. The enemy hasn't gotten any worse, but we seem to have lost our humanity.

Thanks Sayo, I needed that. Btw, did you realize that this thread is the first hit when you google "Sami Mohammad Ali Said al-Jaaf"? Tying together what we've been discussing, why does anyone think torture will get answers we can trust anyway? Terrorists work in compartmented cells so damaging knowledge is minimized, no one person can divulge too much. And by fueling religious hatred further by using such techniques, aren't we just insuring they'll never work?

Wow. Who have you been listening to? Nobody was terrorizing Iraq under Sadaam, so don't EVEN try to use that. The fact that the people are being terrorized now is because we overthrew their powerful tyrant, leaving a vacuum which we were incapable of filling, since we went in with no exit strategy and went out of our way to ignore their culture. There is no doubt that Sadaam was a bad guy, but he was NOT the fountain of terrorism you are painting him as now. I think it has everything to do with it! Terrorists pray that we'll get mad and strike them back. In fact, the harder we strike back, the more terrorists we create. They blow up a building, we level a city. Torture prisoners for information. In the eyes of their followers can't you see the injustice that represents? Can't you place yourself in their shoes for just a moment and see that? I'm really not asking you to sympathize with them, just to see that they are just as capable of becoming enraged at injustice and barbarism as we are. Who is the bigger agressor here in their eyes, the superpower or the small middle Eastern country with no leader? The only way to fight terrorism is by talking peace. Take the fire out of their arguments and suddenly they can't find followers. Without followers who are willing to die for the cause and act as fuel, terrorism suffocates and is snuffed out. Just. Like. Fire.

Worse quick. I think you meant worse quick. We thought it was bad before. Invading made it really bad. How does staying there make it better or save more lives? Wouldn't you have to kill everyone who could possibly ever turn to terrorism to end the terrorist threat? Could this be one of those times when it's better to fight fire with water rather than more fire?

There is a yawning gulf of difference between what toni was doing and what Plankman/Philboetc/Spaceman/Artorius/sicko was doing. While toni felt the need to erase herself from all forum thread posts because she felt her views weren't being taken seriously (a sad error), Plankman got his jollies from stirring up trouble virtually every time he posted. He made no effort to hide the fact that he laughed as he tried to pit people against each other so tempers would flare and members would be at each others throats. Like that old Star Trek episode where the alien entity fueled arguments and fed off the negative emotions, Plankman loved to PM people and imply that everyone else was saying bad things about them behind their backs. His mission seemed to be to split this community apart, and I'm glad to see that strong minds were able to fight off this mental case. As for the others, well, there was a full moon earlier this week....

Sorry for intruding here, but it's more a correction of knowledge than a correction of your thinking, implying a process. Many warrior cultures throughout history, from the Greeks to the Japanese, found it convenient and acceptable to have homosexual relationships, especially when on campaign far from home. It was neither preferable nor bizarre, simply different and convenient. I find it interesting that many people quote St. Paul as condemning homosexuality in the Bible when there is plenty of evidence that, as Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee, he was a practicing homosexual.

I'm sure you've noticed an erosion of our American values over the years. We were the good guys in days gone by, in large part due to our adherence to the philosophy that we will not stoop to the level of those who would oppress others. We got to wear the white hat because we stood against tyranny and oppression and offered freedom as a basic right for all who sided with us. If your bio is correct, you were a kid during WWII, but you could have fought in Korea. Did this erosion of values make Vietnam possible? To me, each war since WWII has seen the US become dirtier and dirtier. Has that really benefitted us? You earn the right to freedom by NOT acting like the animals you are fighting against. We have always made our share of mistakes. There are things that go on behind the scenes in war that aren't pretty, but in the old days they weren't public knowledge either. Now we know about them in vivid detail, and I think we need to take an even stronger stance against oppression in all it's forms, because now we know the truth. I want to be absolutely sure I'm fighting for a just cause, not just 'cause I'm stronger.

Truth serum was my immediate thought as well, but when I looked into it, I found that I had a very Hollywood concept of them (like when bullets strike near the hero and are heard at the same time). Truth drugs are a lot like hypnosis. You can't force a person to do something that is outside their nature. If loyalty to the cause is strong, or if by divulging info to the enemy they will lose their place in heaven, truth serums won't work in most cases.

Artorius drowned. A ship adrift on Life's sea? A boatload of crap?

Don't hold me to this, but I believe it's because many pseudoscientific posts end up using metaphysical arguments to back themselves up, and vice versa. It is not an attempt to group them together intellectually, it just saves time and arguments about where to place certain threads.

For me, this boils down to a question of whether or not we want to win this war by any means possible. If we allow that drugs can be used (which many consider to be a form of torture), how much easier will it be to just give the prisoner the occasional shock from a car battery, just to get them talking? And from there it just keeps escalating. If you have justified in your own mind that since these people are terrorists and our lives mean nothing to them, therefore it's OK to feel the reverse, you have started down a very dark road which will eventually lead you to justify any means to get what you want. Where do you think the terrorists got this doctrine? I couldn't get any of you to torture or kill someone just by telling you that they deserved it. But if I slowly build up a picture in your mind, step by step, that you will be doing a good thing, that your goodness will be triumphing over evil, helping you to overcome all the moral barriers to violence and mayhem you have carefully built up over your lifetime, I might succeed. This is what we have to fight against, allowing our sense of what is right to be eroded a little at a time. Let these prisoners be roughed up a little to get them to talk and soon enough we'll be videotaping their beheadings so we can show their families our system of justice.

This is the ONLY morally defensible stance to take when one succumbs to the need for torture, imo. It acknowledges both the desire for justice and the need for responsibility for one's actions. It is too easy to justify criminal action against those we've labeled as criminals. As Ophiolite has demonstrated here, the moral high ground is the best place from which to defend oneself.

Two hunters, Mad Mardigan and Douglas, went moose hunting every winter without success. Finally, they came up with a foolproof plan. They got a very authentic female moose costume and learned the mating call of a female moose. The plan was to hide in the costume, lure the bull, then come out of the costume and shoot him. They set themselves up on the edge of a clearing, donned their costume and began to give the moose love call. Before long, their call was answered as a bull came crashing out of the forest and into the clearing. When the bull was close enough, Mad Mardigan, who was in the front of the costume, said, "Okay, let's get out and get him." After a moment that seemed like an eternity, Douglas, who was in the back, shouted, "The zipper is stuck! What are we going to do?" Mad Mardigan said, "Well, I'm going to start nibbling grass, but you'd better brace yourself."