Aardvark

Extremism simply means not accepting the mainstream opinions. In effect, not being a mindless conformist. In some places it is the extremists who oppose the death penalty for homosexuality.

You were right YT2095. People making up stupid conspiracy theories to try and be funny or seem clever. Failing on both counts.

So you don't care about anything that doesn't directly effect your little life? What narrow horizons you must have.

It was televised so that everyone would know he had definitely been executed. Otherwise conspiracy theories would have very rapidly spread. Get a sense of perspective.

Hi Perhaps you could be a bit more specific, what aspects are you looking at? What sort of information are you interested in? If you like PM me. I'd be happy to give you my personal impressions from living in a multicultural community.

Actually, many of the displaced people have been left homeless. Those lovely new towns haven't provided enough replacement homes and large sums of compensation and reconstruction money has simply gone missing. And a lot of highly important archaeological sites have been lost. Wrong. Large areas of flat fertile valley bottom land which does not need irrigation has been flooded. Peasants have been relocated to sloping land which can not be easily irrigated and which is significantly less fertile. The dam has led to a loss of farmland, not the opening up of new land. Actually, the effects of the dam have been to further impoverish the already poor population of the area. Driven off their land and home, losing their livelyhoods and been given derisory compensation at best. Expensive chemical fertizers which the poor farmers can ill afford when previously it was done for free. That's not a good swap. Ridiculous emotive attempt to evade the isssue. The dam has been bad for the local people and bad (!) for the dolphins. I don't know what propaganda booklet you've swallowed about the glorious benefits of this dam. But check the facts. It's a case of thousands of peasants losing their land. Of corrupt officialdom conniving in stealing from the poorest people. You talk of irrigation. This is not an area that needs it. You talk of navigation. That was already easy. You talk of new homes. And yet thousands of displaced peasants are homeless. Put aside your rose tinted spectacles and look at the actual reality, not some pleasant daydream of development and prosperity for all.

The flooding deposits fertile silt on farmland. The silt maintains the Yangtze delta. The dam stops that and so impoverishs the already poor Chinese peasants and causes a large delta to be rapidly eroded away by the sea. Build farms? perhaps you haven't noticed that the dam has flooded huge areas of farmland leading tens of thousands of peasants to become homeless and destitute. Firstly, it isn't a trade between human lives and dolphins. Secondly, the dam is bad for a lot of humans as well as the poor bloody dolphins. This dam will be gone in a few hundred years, its artifical lake will be silted up, its hydro power obsolete. For the sake of a temporary, highly questionable advantage, a species that has swum those waters for 20 million years is lost forever. If you think that is ethical, then screw your ethics.

The Yangtze dolphin is now considered extinct. We all saw it coming, it was predicted and then observed as the 3 Gorges dam and increased river traffic wiped them out. Yet another beautiful species lost as we watch. 20 million years on this planet and then gone to add a percentage onto GDP. http://www.wwf.fi/wwf/www/uploads/images/delfiini_baiji_uhanalaiset_109642.jpg http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6179407.stm I'm angry. People whitter about Iraq or social security whilst this planets priceless and irreplaceable treasures are lost forever. Too many humans.

I'd like to know what conclusions you expect to be able to draw from the answers to that question. What are you attempting to discover/prove/indicate? For myself, i'd save the white child. What does that answer tell you?

You actually think this would be a good outcome? The complete ending of diversity in favour of enforced conformity. That sounds like a mightmare to me. A nightmare that has strange echoes from the Nazis idea of a homogenous world of beautiful white people. And anyway, mixing races doesn't eliminate disease, increase intelligence and the resultant skin tone isn't golden. The only scifi story i can remember in which the worlds peoples are deliberately homogenised is a cautionary tale. I'll dig it out and find the authors name. Incidentally, does anyone notice the double standards here? Imagine if a white professor were to publicly call for the extermination of all blacks in order to solve the 'race problem'?

That seems a very odd summation of Jesus's life.

Interesting hypothetical question. Does anyone seriously think that in a nation where whites were a disadvantaged minority other groups would do anything to give the whites 'positive discrimination' 'affirmitive action' or any other special assistance?

I've just had a quick google and found several sites where he has also posted this gibberish. On each one he just posts and runs, nowhere does he make any attempt to reply or discuss. As this is a discussion forum perhaps a moderater might decide that this thread be locked? I can't see any sign of 'Fausto Intilla' making any effort to actually discuss his 'ideas'.

Ceasefires come and go. But it does seem promising that more talking is taking place. That provides a little hope for the future, the more they talk the more they may come to see each other as human rather than simply 'the enemy'.

That's probably bad reasoning, if it were wrong in th first place then staying longer will just make it worse for the US. Well, North Korea isn't happy with the US. But North Korea is run by a homicidal drug dealing dictator. The US doesn't really have the choice of worrying about the Middle East or Korea, both areas are important to the US. Regardless of the original reasons for the Iraq war, pulling out would probably result in a collapse in Iraq with the outbreak of anarchy and civil war. So my vote is to stay in and make the best of a bad job in rebuilding Iraq. To pull out would be to abandon the Iraqi people. That would be a grave betrayal.

In my opinion stating that someone is guilty or innocent on the basis of their skin colour is plainly wrong. Just because someone is white does not make them guilty of anything any more than being black does so. Yes, racism exists. Prejudice continues. That doesn't logically lead to an argument for 'positive' discrimination. How is that a solution to that problem? A presumption that only whites are or were guilty of raping and stealing. Looking at history all peoples and civilisations have been built on the subjugation and domination of other peoples. Aztecs, Mongols, Zulus, Ottomans and the list goes on. On your reasoning the more successful a civilisation is the more guilty it is, while the weaker and more oppressed the more innocent it is. Weakness is morality, strength is sin. The Xan people (Kalahari Bushmen) inhabited all of Africa South of the Congo region. They have now virtually disappeared because of the genocidal ethnic cleansing praticised by Negroes invading from Central and East Africa. Are the Negroes of South Africa subject to 'black guilty' about the actions of their ancestors? The present day Indians of America are the descendants of people who were probably not the first to reach America. Their is some evidence that North Europeans reached America in the last ice age. Is their 'Red guilty' about the extermination of those early Northern Europeans? There is even some evidence that Australian Aboriginals reached America via the Bering Straits, That Australian Aboriginals inhabited South East Asian, living in present day Japan, Korea, South East China and Indonesia. The Mongoloid peoples drove them away, ethnically cleansed them. Is their 'Yellow Guilty' about that early act of invasion, stealing, killing and no doubt other unpleasantnessess? Fine, but i'm not subjugating them, stealing their land, raping or killing them. Now they can get on with their lives and make the best that they can. Life is still unfair, but feeding a sense of grievance and entitlement isn't going to make it any fairer. Not entirely sure who you are refering to here. Again, i'm not sure who you are referring to but i do like your passion. Anyway, if you are concerned about unfairness surely it would be better to tackle it in a more objective fashion, target those people who are underperforming. Focus help on the ill educated, the poorly housed, the low paid and unemployed. If it is true that certain ethnic groups are unfairly trated then they will receive a disproportionate amount of the help, and it will avoid the problem of wealthy members of ethnic minorities being advanced at the expense of poor whites (and what ever other ethnic groups are not favoured). In summation, 'positive' discrimination is wrong in principle and additionally does not work in practice. A bad combination.

Well, maybe, i'm not quite sure about that. Here's a link you might find interesting on the latest research into the paelobiology of the ancestoral banana http://www.inibap.org/news/ressources/File/phytoliths_fp.pdf However, here is a brilliantly funny clip for you. The banana is 'the evolutionists greatest nightmare'. This is just too good, i almost believe it is a spoof, the banana as 'proof' of Gods benevolent creation. Enjoy http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5479410612081345878

I don't want to step into a flame war here guys, but as a matter of interest seedless bananas are not just reproducd using cuttings. Another technique is to hand pollinate domesticated bananas with pollen from 'wild' seeded bananas. By doing this, one in aproximately 10,000 bananas will contain a viable seed which can be used to grow a new hybrid banana plant. This plant can then be backcrossed to produce a banana which doesn't have seeds. It's very slow work, but it is a technique which is used. So you can see that seedless bananas can and are the product of selective breeding. (and incidently, even just using cuttings there will occasionally be mutation and variation which can be selected for, sexual reproduction aids the process of selection but is not essential)

I think most people don't realise that there is any choice in the matter, that a banana is just a banana. Perhaps there is a gap in the market for high quality specialist bananas? I know i'd pay more for a blue Mexican banana! I think retailers could be missing a trick here, people are becoming more discerning and want more than just cheap food at the expense of blandness,(hope).

That breed of banana was the 'Gros Michel'. It wasn't completely wiped out and scientists are trying to cross it with the Cavendish to get a tastier and fungus resistant fruit.

And yet when you try to interpret his post you are reduced to positing what you think he might be trying to state. His post may not have used any obscure words (evolutive?) but it certainly puts them together in an obscure fashion. Nothing romantic, just an attempt to seem intelligent by writing nonsense (i use the word carefully) in an obscure and convoluted system.

It would be easier to give a response if we had a better idea of the function or benefit of these implants. What sort of benefits/uses are we being hypothetically offered here?

Sorry to be rude, but my bullshit alarm is going ballastic. No they don't. It doesn't follow the entropy principle at all. Evolution of human intelligence takes place in an open ended system, not a closed system. Therefore the entropy principle is inapplicable. Really? Do you have any evidence of increasing human intelligence since the last ice age or since the original emergence of homo sapiens? I doubt it. You do understand the difference between biology and physics don't you? Life is not a random quantum event but a series of chemical reactions strongly directed by selective pressures. That sentence does not actually make any sense. Does that mean that only a minority of mutations are benefical? If so, thanks, we already know. Intended? By whom? If we hadn't evolved we would not be where we are now. I'm blinded by your insight. If our neurons hadn't evolved the universe might not exist. Pretentious and deliberately obfusticating, in the final analysis, meaningless. Brevity rather than verbosity and pompous pontificating please.

No. I don't think that the UK is a direct democracy. Never stated it. But the UK does have directly accountable politicians. Unlike the EU. That is why the UK is a democracy. The EU isn't. Looked up the word 'patronage' yet? No. EU law automatically overides UK law. Mr Blair doesn't have any choice over that. Which still doesn't make the EU at all democratic. No. Strange distortion your attempting there:-p Which is irrelevant. You really seem to think that just because the entry was a decision taken by a democratic government makes the EU democratic. It doesn't. Which links to your oft repeated Funny, that reminds me of the way a certain organisation based in Brussels behaves. Gosh. Just like the EU! A democratic rulership which gets by without bothering with the inconvience of democracy. How efficent! Wrong. The differences between people within a country are trumped by a shared national loyalty. Without that shared bond there is nothing on which to base the democracy. Democracies deal with that by using the common bonds of nationality. Something the EU can not do. I've not bothered responding to large chunks of what you stated, largely because most of it was redundant and partly because it is too late. I may add more comments later. Simply put, The EU is a oligarchical, supra national bureaucracy. It extends control and issues laws and directives with no direct reference to the voters. The EU 'Parliament' is toothless, barely even looking at most legislation, let alone actually vetoing anything. There is no European Demos and so there can be no European democracy ( can you name any European political parties with cross border appeal?, the only exception, Sinn Fein, is the exception that proves the rule). In summary. The EU is an artifical, undemocratic organisation. Arguing otherwise reminds me of those people who used to argue that the 'Peoples Democratic Republics' of the Eastern Bloc were really democratic.

I'm fairly sure most Americans would take a rather different point of view. No problem! I seem to remember ERM, economic crisis and huge amounts of EU funded propaganda aimd at persuading the British that not abolishing the Pound would relegate the UK to poverty. Just a shame that the British people are too stubborn and contrary for even the Eurocrates to force that particular dogs breakfast on them. Funnily enough i did notice. Without anyone bothering to ask the people. Against some serious public opposition in many of the countries. That must be the democracy you think the EU displays so well:-p Pity about the Germans or the Dutch or the Spanish or the Swedes or the Finns not getting a vote on it at all. Perhaps some of them don't feel as indifferent as you profess to be? Still, never mind, as you stated, if you can't get a mandate from the voters, just do it anyway. Good old EU democracy:D Impose rules, expand control, ignore the electorate. After all, it's all in a good cause!