Pangloss

I've read that there's an undercurrent of political opposition in Iran, but international disputes generally work against that undercurrent (increasing support for the government). Those reports do not make it sound to me like "only a fraction of the population supports the leaders", but I can see how that might be generally possible if you look at it from the day-to-day perspective. The socio-political environment seems more like Cuba than North Korea.

Seriously? I thought you were supposed to eat veggies because they were good for you. I didn't realize they were also low-calorie. You can actually fill up just as much as you would have done with beef+pasta+desert and still lose weight?

SmallIsPower, where is your source for the data you posted above, please? Did you just make that stuff up, or what? You posted it; cough up a source or retract it. As for your wild flight of fancy about inheritance, the fact is that the vast, overwhelming majority of wealthy Americans are "first generation rich". Fewer than 20% of them actually inherited their wealth. And hey, look at me, I got a source!

I suppose you have a point there; I was wrong to declare your assessment false. I do think the bipartisanship on this particular bill was more than we've seen in the past, but of course if it was really all that "bipartisan" then it would obviously be veto-proof.

From their perspective, this is the same thing. After all, all abortions are performed at parental behest. But I do think you're on the right general track. IMO the best way to approach this issue with fundamentalists is to forget about the benefits issue entirely, and focus on the differences between this and abortion. If you focus on benefits, they're just going to sit behind a the "two wrongs don't make a right" wall and ignore it, or even worse shove a "Hitler experimented on the Jews, too" kind of argument. If we can somehow drive a perception wedge between "abortion" and "embryos" in even far-right people's minds, then the issue could be won. Just some random mussings.

Do any of the anti-hunger drugs/treatments actually work, or are they all just smoke and mirrors?

Source, please? Whatever the source, those stats don't tell the "whole story" either. At the very least, they ignore obvious changes like the shift to a service economy (which began two years after your baby-boom stat) and more subtle changes like the tremendous growth of the entertainment and sports industries. The reason both parents work isn't because they can't put food on the table, it's because they can't manage a BMW, and X-Box 360, *and* a wide-screen HDTV. Pretending like they're "struggling" just by redefining the concept of "struggle" does a disservice to objective debate.

Dang, Phil, you beat me to it. This phrase is clearly in error: In fact one of the things that was so interesting about this bill is that it enjoyed such bi-partisan support. Some of the Republican party's most stalwart pro-life Senators voted for this bill, including Bill Frist and Orin Hatch, and even presumed presidential candidate John McCain, who has been making great efforts to win over the religious right recently, voted for it. Even more interesting, President Bush said repeatedly that he wanted to find out what the science was and what the American people thought. Well, both of those things have happened, and nearly everyone of consequence has come around on this issue -- except President Bush. Which pretty much leaves this entirely in the realm of one man's personal opinion about whether or not this is murder. I guess I can respect that, to a certain extent, and I understand that we put these people in office to govern based on their own views. But they're also supposed to represent our views, and that clearly is not happening here. The good news out of all of this is that it's clearly not a long-term resolution. The moment the next president steps into the White House, the ban will be effectively over. The only real question is whether or not that will come too late for researchers reliant upon American governmental funding.

How many Starfleet Engineers does it take to change a light bulb? None. If you run a phased inverse tachyon burst through the main emitter array grid and multiplex it with a subspace standing wave locked back into a diagnostic mode filter, you'll bleed off most of the static warpfield instabilities through the higher verteron harmonics of the dechyon field and get at least another 60 Watts out of the old one.

That's a valid point, I agree. There's no evidence of it at all, it's just speculation/opinion, based on the well-established, factual connections between Hezbollah and Iran. Kinda like when people say that Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction. Hint, hint.

That is a moral equivalence argument. It denies the clear and obvious fact that Hezbollah is deliberately targetting civilians, and Israel is not. By your facile argument the state of Massachusetts is just as guilty of terrorism as Hezbollah because poor engineering at the Big Dig got a woman killed last week! I happen to share your general viewpoint, I just think that kind of cheap-shotting completely fails to advance the discourse. For that matter, I'm going to chastise you for this one too: Same deal -- you slide in a cheap shot that you know you cannot support and that nobody can respond to without taking the thread off course (and rest assured, I am monitoring this thread closely -- fair warning).

Ecoli is right, and talking about the Lebanese PM's cease fire demand as if it were an "offer" indicates a severe misunderstanding of the political and tactical situation, not to mention what the man was actually saying. He was asking for the UN to step in and broker a deal. As to whether Israel's actions constitute "terrorism", I disagree. They're attacking strategic targets, I agree, but that's not the same thing as deliberately attacking civilians. More to the point, their actions have a specific, tactical purpose that has nothing to do with instilling fear. I may not entirely agree with it, but pawning it off with an easy label like "terrorism" just undermines the debate.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/health/HealthRepublish_1689438.htm

A thread already exists for this here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=21968

Thanks bascule, I edited the first post for the sake of clarity.

What exactly does that prove, Bascule? Be more specific, please. A number of different assertions are flying around in this thread.

That kinda sounds like it might be a compliment to the first lady.

Actually that's not biggotry, it's closed-mindedness. I had the same gut-reaction to Severian's post, but I stopped and took some time to think about it, and dug past my surface response into a deeper meaning, where I found some truth. That's what we're about here, you know. Dismissiveness is easy. Exchanging ideas with open minds is hard. And one of the things that I think is MOST hard for all of us Americans to do right now is to listen. To anybody.

This thread had better become relevent and interesting in a big hurry, or it's going to find itself in the recycling bin on the basis of being utterly worthless and immature in the extreme, and therefore counter to our purpose here.

That would certainly be the case when it comes to the North Korea situation, yeah. The Dems are pounding the administration right now for its policy of not negotiating with North Korea, but the rest of the world seems to be on the same page with the administration, favoring the joint international approach. That might not be so true about other situations (Darfor comes to mind), but I do think you have an interesting point there. I've often said Americans should pay more attention to world opinion, and this would seem to be another example. Incidentally (returning to the subject at hand), Iran released a statement today supporting a cease-fire. It cannot be a coincidence that this follows the joint statement supporting Israel from the G8, and another joint statement about Iran's nuclear efforts, indicating that the G8 has managed to return to the business that it was supposed to be doing. Iran took its best shot, and it failed. Interesting blog post in Die Welt along these lines: http://www.welt.de/z/plog/blog.php/the_free_west/the_free_wests_weblog/2006/07/17/is_iran_losing_touch

I get the same feeling quite often. Unfortunately I don't think my country is allowed to do that sort of thing. We get bashed when we step back from the table in order to not reward despots and terrorists. (North Korea comes to mind.) In a sense that's part of Bush's approach here, and it's the right approach. We saw France and Russia condemn Israel with equal weight on Thursday. But Friday they released a statement together that blamed the entire thing on Hezbollah, and merely called on Israel to be careful. Clearly Bush/Rice had an impact in their internal discussions. This is one of the things that irks me about partisan opposition. There's no question in my mind that we'll see Maddy "Look, I'm a girl!" Albright and half the Clinton cabinet making the rounds on Sunday telling us how much worse Bush is making things. Never mind the fact that he's playing exactly the same kinds of cards that they played, and if it wasn't for partisanship they'd be agreeing with most of the White House's moves. Don't get me wrong, Bush blunders as much as he succeeds (maybe more). I just get a little sick of the absolute determination to make him all wrong, all the time.

I don't know, but to steal a baseball metaphor, they likely just stepped up to the plate, swinging away. This time they happened to hit one out of the park.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said today on "This Week" that Iran has accomplished its goal of distracting the G8 summit. They were set to talk about what to do about Iran and putting up a united front against Iran. Now they're talking exclusively about Israel instead, and any sign of unity has been destroyed by France and Russia's condemnations of Israel's escalation. I thought Putin's comments were incredibly hypocritical yesterday, calling for moderation. Take a look in the mirror, Vlad.