Moontanman

I think it's worth thinking about this what if scenario, what if Obama was indeed a draft dodger, does anyone here think his bid for president would not have evaporated immediately as the Republicans screamed with glee as this message was pasted all over every possible media outlet? It's interesting to me that this double standard almost certainly exists but it is primarily of concern to Republicans only as it applies to Democrats and not to themselves... Ethics in politics is about as important as flying saucers in Astronomy... The goal is to win no matter what and to serve the 1% no matter what....

I am going to say no, for the reason that extended periods of darkness appear to make our eyes more sensitive...

I agree, it makes voting a very distasteful exercise in futility... to be honest i think it's good that being a draft dodger is no longer the issue it once was but this sort of stuff has been used to destroy candidates in the recent past, swift boating I think is the term used... To be completely honest I posted this a bit tongue in cheek originally, but Mitt is a clown, so many of them are it gets easy to ridicule them, they are like clay pigeons, the ones with real power are the corporations that own the politicians... yes on both sides... knowing who owns them is far more important than what ever brand of politics they pretend to adhere to...

Everyone is getting sucked into this stuff rigney, I get so much of it it's demoralizing to think people would rather deceive the electorate than actually have a platform to stand on. Many times I've come across such "letters" and the wording is subtly changed to make it more difficult to look up online. I think it's despicable... The importance of being elected has surpassed any possibility of an honest campaign being feasible much less important...

I am very curious, you make these claims but I don't see how he is fundamentally any different than any other president we have had in the last several decades, you say welfare but we give out corporate welfare, something like 7 billion a years to an industry that makes many billions and doesn't need any help. Can you really say that anyone else would be less divisive? Obama has cooperated so many times with the Republicans that many Democrats seem him as a traitor to the cause. I really don't see what you seem to see, in fact the major difference between Mitt and Obama is that one is president and one wants to be...

This is something I've given considerable consideration to as well. It is often said that the radio telescope at Arecibo Puerto Rico is able to pick up a signal from a alien civilization half way across the visible universe or something like that. But the reality is that it could only detect a similar telescope that was intentionally beaming a signal directly at us, an unlikely event to be sure. To detect an earth like civilization nearby requires they focus on that one star for a period of time, they are doing a star to star search nearby but so far only null results... I'm not sure how the interstellar interference mentioned is allowed for but it is true that the Earths signals fade before they would be picked up by anything but an intensive search before they get to the nearest star...

This points to an ongoing problem of disinformation being spread about politics, from what I've seen the conservatives are far worse than the progressives but I admit to a possible sampling bias in this. No matter who does it this is blatantly dishonest, dishonorable, and should be illegal but our current culture of only wanting to read or see things that confirm our own world view has lead to this mess, news shows that don't just slant the news one way or another but actually make stuff up, often outrageous stuff that you would think that most people would at least give it a bit of skepticism but as long as it confirms their world view it is swallowed hook line and sinker...

I admit that would be tempting. Whoa.... I just crossed my legs... Can I have a new prostrate too? I agree with this, science and it's methods is the key. This is true, it is all what we make of it...

If they did it by stepping up and being an outspoken opponent of the war they would get my respect, sneaking off like he did, using money and power to get himself an out while others had to go is simply wrong. It points to his character as a human being and his insistence pretending to believe something as obtuse as creationism is an example of his current lack of honor... of course none of the republican candidates, well there was one but he didn't last very long, believe that the earth is anything but YEC, they all believe im the absolute word of their god and yes that is the christian god. They constantly use this crap to insinuate themselves into the minds of people being actively mislead by the fundamentalist christian movement and this contributes to this crap being legislated all over the country... I couldn't vote for anyone caught up in the YEC movement here, but that's all the republicans gave us this election cycle. Locally a great many people are being voted into office on the coattails of the misplaced respect given to this movement by people like Mitt who are just manipulating them for his own means... In recent years stupid is being actively trotted out as intelligence by the republican party...

Then there is the idea that food crops are as they are because we modified them in ways that cause them to, at the very least, be much more inviting to wildlife as a food source than the original wild plant was. A domesticated plant in the wild is immediately targeted and eaten, their food value is much higher than wild plants and they stick out like sore thumbs because of this... only our intervention prevents them from being eaten. Possibly there are a few domesticated plants that could survive in the wild but I have my doubts on this idea... An abandoned garden, dozens of different food plants, allowed to go to seed with out being harvested, the next spring do any of the food crop plants come back up? Without our care would any of them even survive, I've seen this happen, the only things that reappear are some perennials like asparagus, it can come back over and over but I've never seen them spread... I'll Stop, this is so strange to me, after growing up on what just a dirt farm, no equipment other than horses and mules and human power, it's difficult to imagine the food crops we grew having any chance what so ever, even with near constant attention they often failed to grow...

Consider this thought experiment. A crystal rod is growing out of a solution, the rod grows only along one axis and it does so it gets longer but the rod it's self still exists away from the active crystallization site. I look at our awareness as the active site of crystallization the already crystallized rod is the past, the active site of "awareness" cannot travel back along the rod but the rod still exists... The future is still being crystallized and so has no real form other than potential... edited for spelling

Can i infer from this that you do not think that the universe has some existence independent of the observer? I'm not sure I know how to express this but I am going to try. Your assertion, to me at lease, seems to violate the general principles of relativity, from your point of view I can see a universal time, it's now everywhere, no past, no future, just now. Time obviously passes at different rates for different observes so how could there be a now any place but behind your eyes? Your idea would also seem to wipe away the past as though it is immaterial, My thoughts on this is that it's more likely the entire past and present exist but the future is similar to an uncollapsed wave function, something we have not measured yet and our consciousnesses, our awareness is limited to the present, memories of the past and guesses about the future. I think it's possible that awareness is simply our brains measurement of the future as it happens and it's quite possible we exist at every point along that life line and always will...

That is what I was trying to say Janus but you did a better job....

Yes but the insinuation that first contact must come from a different galaxy is a bit of a strawman isn't it? As CaptainPanic pointed out There are many stars with in a reasonable distance from us, "one or two" of the most interesting lie 4.5 light years away, two sun like stars high metal content and quite possible two planetary systems. While I don't really expect a flying saucer to land on the White House lawn anytime soon to say we will never even make radio contact is more than a bit pessimistic I think...

Thanks for the information on that, I was unaware of the link between corn and Teosinte. Thanks for clearing the up the sterility thing, for some reason i was reading it that one of the dangers of current GM plants was hybridization. The sterile thing seemed to be separate somehow... I still think they idea of food crops escaping into the wild is less than supported, you jump from food crops to domestic plants but I see a slight difference being that while all food crops are domesticated not all domesticated plants are food crops. Some domesticated plants escape into the wild with out help, transferring something like herbicide resistance to elephant ear would be a bad thing... I don't think it needs it... even where it's grown for food... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taro This stuff is going wild where I live, we used to be too far north...

That's a great post dude...

Of course there is a point to life but if you comb your hair right no one will notice.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PQ6335puOc How can you find anything if you have ceased to exist?

There are lots of stuff I hate about liberals but most of it is stuff that i consider to be nutty and not deserving of any real consideration. The whole idea that the liberal tent is big enough to cover everyone is at the root of the problem...

I think that's a legitimate question, if the GM plants are sterile then how can they pollinate wild relatives? there are no wild maze plants btw... and the idea that GM corn or potatoes or any other GM plant might take over the wild is a bit of fear mongering isn't it?

No not at all, I actually mistook him for someone else, Colonel West has his own problems, i wonder if you would have been so active in your attack if Cenk had been taking crap about Obama, he gives him hell regularly...

Agreed I live in area of the country with tree farms, as they are cut they are replanted in huge swaths, square miles of tree farms, most people assume they are natural forests but if you look close as you drive by you can see they are miles and miles of straight rows of trees... Oh yeah, they are owned by International Paper Co. Actually I have, mostly online to be honest but more than a few times in real life I've been accused of somehow being disrespectful of someones religious beliefs when they were trying to preach to me on the street, this has happened when people knock on my door to bring me the good news as well... In line at the grocery store, at the license plate store, any place I stand in line... Sometimes I think I attract these nutters...

WOW! What a reaction, do you watch FOX News?

So, the truth of the matter matters not to you but the the fact that you don't like the message bearer is more important? Rigney, i can't believe you would rather accept lies than the truth no matter where it comes from... Sometimes the truth is not what we want to believe and sometimes it's brought by people we don't like but the facts speak for themselves...

Ancestor worshipers might disagree... What is the cause of a particular atom decaying? No the Judeo_Christian god does not have any evidence, none... Why can the cause not be something natural and explainable? Why does it have to be a god? What then would you call evidence? Confirming there is no god would require god like powers of knowledge, it will never happen, but that doesn't support the existence of a god, but he will be pushed into smaller and smaller places... http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html#homochirality Genesis makes the claim that god created all animals to reproduce after their own kind, there is no wiggle room for evolution on the scale we see in the fossil record... How about the prophecies that did not come true, one real big one would be this Again I ask what would be evidence of abiogenesis you would accept? I do appreciate you watching those videos but I am puzzled as to how they or the processes described are not evidence.... What would you consider evidence?

I honestly don't know if i should laugh or cry...