Aileron

If someone wants the media's attention, they mount a protest. The problem with hatred is that one needs to have first hand experience with someone who hates in order to understand it. Lets just say I know of such a person in my real life. There are certain rules that followers of hatred follow which are neither rational nor logical, though they do not know they are following them because rule #1 of following hatred is to not regonize the fact that one has suc!@#$%^&*bed to hatred. Rule #2 states that the target of the hatred is always wrong and that the target causes all wrong in the world. If Andrew hates Bill and Charlie walks up and punches Andrew in the face, Andrew will blame Bill for it. Rule #3 states that a hater always has a "justification" for his/her actions. Usually this amounts to some pathetic excuse, though sometimes they can use a valid justification and just overreact. A hypothetical (admittingly extreme) example would be a hater who sees his target jay-walk and "executes" him for it by running him over in his car. Rule #4 is that all acts are tailored to sow as much hate in the target as possible. This rule scares me. While it is ultimately up the the target to decide what to do, what it does demonstrate is that because of the complication of the human mind, our hatred can in many ways behave like a sentient independant lifeform (in this case by having a desire to reproduce by spreading to other people). There are also a few myths attached to hatred Myth #1: Haters can't love. Infact, they can. The hatefull desire will allow love in order to follow Rule #4 in an attempt to recruit nuetrals to the side of the host. Besides, the other base evil desires will appreciate any individual who is beneficial to the host, and thus will allow love out of self interest. Myth #2: Haters are incapable of intelligence. While true logic and reason does indeed escape haters, a level of intelligence in the host allows the hatefull desire to create a facade of reason. Humankind's greater levels of reason abhores hatred, forcing the desire to conceal itself as much as possible. The desire creates the facade in order to preserve the host's social standing and as an attempt to recruit more persons into the hatefull cause. Myth #3: Hate makes the host stronger and more determined. It certainly makes the host feel as such, but in reality it brings euphoria and tunnel-vision. While in some cases it can release adreneline into the blood, that pales in comparison to the level that stronger more righteous desires are capable of releasing, such as a mother's desire to save her baby from a life-threatening situation. Suffice to say terrorists show every sign of hatred that I can think of from my own personal experience. They have their targets who they blame for everything that goes wrong, their excuses, and they use methods not designed to achieve victory or even sympathy, but in attempts to sow hatred into their enemies.

I don't like the second hand reports of the event. Most of the people I saw there were giving Bush standing ovations - granted that's probably just them being political. Still, most of the newspaper articles I read about it had implied that it was a hostile audience, which it wasn't. Yes, there are a lot of new democrats, but most of the new democrats are moderates who are willing to compromise. I think bipartisanship has a chance this time around. (Bipartisanship was never going to happen with one side with a strong majority in all houses, and that is no way the fault of any persons, its just a fact of life.) Bush didn't really state a hard plan on reaching that oil goal though. He did have plans two for health care, and two for illegal immigration, and one for education. He stated the usual policy of "invest money in energy sources that are not gasoline" and increasing the domestic supply of oil. Stating a goal that should be met provides motivation and is a sign of leadership, and he has made steps towards it, but he doesn't have an actuall plan in place. I guess its just hard with two years left in your term to tell 300 million people that they have to stop driving their SUVs. Global warming though is always blamed for any weather occurance. It has been blamed for Hurricane Katrina and for the Tsunami in Asia. As for Katrina, hurricanes rountinely occur in the Carribean and hurricanes of the magnitude of Katrina, though not so common, are not of unnatural strength. What caused Katrina to be so devastating is that its path happened to go directly over a major metropolis. It wasn't any stronger than normal, it was just that more people were in its way. As for the Tsunami, it was caused by a geothermic pattern that has been going on for thousands of years. Remember, global warming is supposed to raise the temperature 1 degree every century, !@#$%^&*uming the build-up of gases stays at its current rate, which it won't because stable chemical systems, and more commonly biochemical systems, such as the Earth's biosphere, have internal processes that lessen extremes. (For instance, blood as internal chemistry which maintains an ideal PH level.) !@#$%^&*uming global warming is true, the effects will not be seen for decades. Granted, we have no right to cause problems for our decendants, but the environmentalists' insistance that every natural problem that occurs is a result of global warming is not helping their cause, especially the arguements that stat that global warming is making the world colder. No one will ever believe those.

The inadequacy of the U.N. aside, the critical point I would like to make here is that Israel wasn't formed by an actual conquest. It was territory that the UK aquired in WWI, due to Ottoman's involvement. The UK went into WWI to preserve the balance of power in Europe and aquiring territories in the Middle East was the last thing on their mind. They decided to have Israel formed out of part of that territory. It may not have been a well liked decision in the area, but it was not a conquest. I guess under that cir!@#$%^&*stance I might fight the decision, and the arab world did fight the decision. They fought a war. However, eventually that open war ended and treaties were signed. The decision then facing some arabs is to accept the treaty or to give in to hatred and attempt terrorism. When Hamas or Hezbollah blows up a school bus or a theatre, that has nothing to do with liberating territories. That is about fulfilling their hatred. By treaty, Israel's claim to the territory is legitimate. If one has a desire to retake that territory, they may do so, though Israel should not be criticised for stopping such attempts. The murder of civilians however accomplishes nothing. You can't expect Israel to just stand there and take hit after hit. If party A kills the civilians party B, party A has no right to complain if party B takes their !@#$%^&*es out the following week. If Hamas and Hezbollah want to fight, then they want to fight, and therefore should not get protection from the possibility of losing that fight. If you gamble and lose your life savings, its not the casino's fault, but your own.

I actually tried to pull a trick a few posts back when discussing religion. Actually, the golden age of scientific and cultural advancement occurred because of the Mihna. Basically its like what Peter the Great did to Russia. Sure he was brutal and authoritarian, but by being so he really caused Russia to advance. The Mihna under Al Mamu'n was similar. My opinion that the Christian inquisition was similar. SeVeR, you just simply have no comprehension of what real political power is. Not the kind where vote for you and you do what they say, but the kind where you controll the people and tell them what to do. The people in charge of Iran have such power but have concealed it to make a diplomatic face, so instead they speak through the mouths of some elected puppets.

The name of this forum is "Political Discussion", not "Political Advertising Space". If you want to advertise here, talk to Polix.

The reason why we in our modern society don't tolerate imperialism is because land isn't worth sending people to die for. It is in the nature of the world for the strong to dominate the weak, but with that domination comes strength to the oppressed and corruption to their oppressors, causing the eventual reversal of fates. Were that it did not involve war, there would be nothing wrong with imperialism, for over the long term it brings about equality. To that end Israel wasn't formed by a war. Nobody died in its creation. Therefore the critical fault, that of people dying for land, did not occur. Therefore it could not have been that terrible. If Israel was weak and corrupt, their neighbors would easily be able to get them to leave by peacefull means. However, Israel is more enlightened than most of their neighbors, causing them to be unable to do as such. Islamic radicals cannot accept reality for what it is, so they resort to violence and to dying for land.

Further update: The hanging is to occur on television at Saturday 12/30/06 at 6:00 local time, Friday 12/29/06 10:00 PM EST. In english: They would be friggin hanging him on live TV in two hours and twenty minutes if not for oversensitive people who don't like seeing people hanged on live TV.

No, not every idiot opinion should be debated Sever. Yes, one side will only prove themselves to be idiots, but the world's time and energy is finite. Why waste time denying the holocaust when somebody could actually accomplish something with that much egghead-time? Well, first off they took some of our citizens as hostages, so they shouldn't expect us to like them for it and shouldn't expect our press to be nice to them. However, they are villified because for all intensive purposes they are villians. Their goal is to unite the world under Islamic law, and with that goal comes Jihads and Mihnas. The President of Iran is saying those things for power, because if you hadn't noticed the democratic presidency in Iran takes a back seat to the theocratic leadership. The president is saying those things for a thumbs up from the clerics. That doesn't make Ahmenijad the main evil that needs to be dealt with, but that does mean that the actual, not the official, Iranian government is structured in such a way as to promote war. Bush destablized the Middle East? That's like saying he melted steam or made Antartica cold. He reduced Iraq to tribal violence? It was tribal violence before. The way Saddam "solved" the tribal violence is by being a very powerfull Sunni chief and by giving badges to the Sunni thugs. Thus when a Shi'ite tribe attacked a Sunni tribe Hussein would call it "terrorism" and when a Sunni tribe attacked a Shi'ite tribe it was called a "crackdown." As for why forced democracy would be better than theocracy, your model would only work if Iran were an island that would never develop technology to leave said island. Reality is though that globalization is happening, and regional problems are becoming global problems. The cause of terrorism is simply middle eastern culture. The fact that in our modern world that middle eastern politics is spilling over unto western cities is because of gloablization. Unlike the soviets they have a stable culture, and merely introducing democratic thought to them will not cause them to change their ways. They would declare some kind of Jihad before they would adopt a government that isn't at odds with the world. But really, the reason you can tolerate a Muslim theocracy but stand for the strict removal of anything Christian in our culture is because you hate Christianity, and that the reason you hate Christianity is essentially because you watch too much TV and that our corporate culture tells you to hate Christianity, and they do that because good Christians don't buy in excess and non-religious persons will buy any product that caters to any indulgance their hormones can come up with. For what other reason would we have huge Christmas festivals and marketing while people forbid manger scenes to be shown on public property? Why celebrate a religious holiday on such a wide scale but then ignore and hide the reason said holiday is celebrated? That way consumers have huge impetus to buy lots of expensive gifts but no religious symbol around that might cause them to realize they really don't need that crap they are buying and really should be making an effort to get involved in their community. Muslims were worse than Christians in every time period. The Christians had Crusades which spanned a few decades over a country they eventually gave up on, and by the way they did have many positive side effects which caused a lot of cultural enrichment and scientific advancement, hence why we use arabic numerals today. The Muslims had Jihads in which they continue to this day to attack anyone who isn't of their own faith, a fight which had no positive side effects. The Christians had one Spanish king who made an Inquisition in one relatively small penninsula. The Muslims had a Caliph who ordered a Mihna in effect from Persia to Africa. You say Christians "held back" science, a point I continue to disagree with. Muslims stopped their golden age of science after two generations, and haven't made a single scientific step foward since then. And really, would you rather live under the rule of an all-powerfull Caliph who rules undesputedly in both secular and religious matters, or would you rather live in a flawed democracy, that may not give you your full vote's worth but atleast will partially listen to your opinion? Half a vote is better than no vote, and lopsided balance is better than all power in one man.

Seriously, I'd hate to reveal a secret but some of the Amish people I know use machines to milk their cows.

Well that would be unfair though, Mongolia already had their time of being a superpower from roughly 1200 to 1400. Some of the other nations didn't have their chance yet.

I guess I'm going to split hairs here. We in the west view all Islamic extremists as violent xenophobes. If one studies their culture a little more, it depends on if the extremist is a Sunni or a Shi'ite. The Sunni extremists are xenophobes, and the Shi'ite extremists are violent and oppressive. I'm pointing out that this is as per their official beliefs. Sunnis officially believe in the Quaran and that all other cultures are wrong and indeed rational thought itself should take a back seat to a book. Shi'ites have Jihad as one of their five pillars, and while people more politically correct than myself say that Jihad could mean "personal struggle", generally the way it has been interpreted historically is "engage in war against the base of power, while trying to avoid people who have nothing to do with the base of power and could be converted, of any nation which can threaten Islam." In the west, we view violence and xenophobia as going hand in hand with each other, and there is a lot of validity in that belief. That is how I can best explain Iran. They don't necessarily have to be xenophobic, though they do have a need to force others to hold their mindset. I wouldn't say they are not xenophobic, it just wouldn't violate their beliefs not to be. Their form of tolerance of Jewish persons is not suprising, but Astro is right in that the only reason they are keeping them alive is so they can use social and economic forces to get them to convert later on. Their need to engage on a intellectual field is also not suprising. Shi'ites are indeed capable of rational thought in their own way. Ofcourse, one needs to remember that having intelligence doesn't imply righteousness any more than having power does. The best example of a Sunni group I can think of is the Muslim Brotherhood. Which is a (relatively) non-violent group, but has no tolerance of any non-Quaranic belief and wishes to install Islamic law upon the whole world under some Caliphate. While they do have intellectuals, they don't really think for themselves, but rather with a "What does the Quaran say?" mindset. All these statements are, ofcourse, general and really only describe extremist behavior anyway. They are useless in describing the individuals of these groups, though it does describe the general behavior of the total group as a whole.

Yesterday the President of Iraq attacked the results of the Iraqi Study Group yesterday, calling it an insult. The gist of his complaint is that the Iraqi government is sovereign, and not a colony of the US, and thus Iraq has no obligation to follow any mandates and deadlines set by Washington. You know, he's right. We've let this heated debate over Iraq boil so much that we have forgotten the reason the situation isn't under our controll because it was never supposed to be. Our mission over there was to remove Saddam Hussein and install a legitimate democracy that is not hostile to the free world and that mission has been accomplished. We stayed to help stabilize the country, but at the end of the day we are there because they want us to be there and whether or not they want to stabilize their country is up to them. Its like the old saying "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Our mission was to lead the horse to the water and we have done that. If the horse refuses to drink, that doesn't cons!@#$%^&*ute a mission failure. If one is childish enough to blame people, then blame does not rest with the man who lead the horse, it lies with the horse itself. It also doesn't mean that leading the horse to the water was a poor decision, the horse may decide in the future to drink the water, and even if not there was no way of knowing the horse's decision in advance. Our other alternative would've been to not lead the horse to water, in which case there would have been no chance for the horse to get water and he wouldn't be any better off. So if you must blame somebody, stop blaming the US President for what is going on in Iraq, which is a country that is not the US which is the one and only one country the US President has sworn an oath to, and start blaming the Iraqi President who has sworn an oath to the people of Iraq.

Um, I'd say you should have done a search before starting a new topic except that the other topic is still current and you wouldn't even need to do that. Post in the other topic!!!! locked.

Well, given its location I'd bet the library of Alexandria was knocked down by the Muslims. Granted Cristianity had a 800 year head-start, but Christianity never really caught on in Egypt until modern times. I mean, Christians had cases of going after individuals, but not really whole structures of learning, where as the people of the Abbasid Caliphate in 1000 AD were fond of destroying whole universities. And, no, people knew the world was round the whole time. It was never covered up. It was never forgotten. It just never had any relevance until Columbus tried to exploit that fact. It was the clergy who started the first work in Biology and medicine. Also, the best cases of what you can come up with are in the field of Astronomy, which to be honest is one of the most useless of the natural sciences especially before the time of aircraft or rockets which are needed to actually build craft capable of reaping the benefits of the field. Oh and there were plenty of physicists between the Romans and Newton. They based their science on the Greeks and Romans, who while being good at math, sucked at physics. Generally the physicists before Newton existed and operated freely, but were wrong. Also, the secular atmosphere was more corrosive to science than anything. The only use for science during that chaotic warfare ridden time period was in architectural needs to build better fortresses and engineering skills to build better ways to take down the better fortresses. Both those fields made advancement and nobody went after them.

Nope, all that electricity will be eventually converted to heat anyway, so solar won't help global warming except by replacing something that gives off emissions. Yes, hydrogen can be found in water, but it takes electrolosis to produce, and it takes more electricity to make hydrogen gas from water than you can possibly generate from burning the gas, and that is regardless of how efficient the technology gets...it would break the laws of thermodynamics otherwise. In order to be a fuel, a material has to be found naturally in a state in which one can make an energy profit by burning. It works for cars, though it is understood we would need to make that energy for the electrolosis in a power plant. Veg, you shouldn't need to be the smartest of the smartest to get a BS. Eliminating more people doesn't necessarily mean the remainder is the smartest anyway. One of the stories I heard (coincidentally it has to do with nuclear power) deals with the reformation after TMI. An educational board was sent in to "re-train" engineers. Their initial goal was to disqualify 75% of the working engineers. The plan was halted in the early stages because the group they were working with were well qualified engineers who had certification and experience, and the power plant needed more engineers to run. Basically, educators have a tendancy to ignore the initial qualifications of the group. The grades for any college class are always shaped like a normal bell curve, regardless of the end abilities of the student. If you lined up all of the Nobel Prize winners for the Natural Sciences and put them in a Physics 100 class, half of those "students" would fail it. The instructor would just make the course material more and more useless and obscure until half the class had no idea what he was talking about.

I'm not trying to "make an analogy stick". This is just a touchy subject for me. There was one case with Galileo and people now think that my religion opposed the entire scientific community. Guess what? Galileo wasn't that important. Sure he made some good experiments with gravity, but nothing that powerfull. Keep in mind that his day-job was reading the stars to tell people's future. Also, the "discovery" that the Earth revolves around the Sun is actually just a change in frame of reference. While it would be laughably difficult to do the math otherwise, the point is that it isn't a law of physics. I mean, if the Church really wanted to hold back science, they would have locked up Newton. His work was the foundation for all of classical physics and modern calculus. The conflict between magic and science is simply incomprehensible to a modern person. In the dark ages, people honestly believed magic existed. For scientific discoveries to be made, there needs to be scientists and there needs to be sponsors. In the dark ages, scientists had to compete with those claiming to be magicians for sponsorship. For example, a mayor of a farming community might decide between a scientist who wishes to impliment crop rotation or a magician who wishes to research a magical spell that can make it rain. In our modern eyes, one of those ideas is sound and one is ludicrus. However, to some stupid backwards supersticious dark age mayor, the second would actually seem to yield more results. Back then, there needed to be something in place to controll those charliatons. The closest thing we have to magic as those in the dark age believed in is science fiction, in which there are about a dozen or so ficticious devices that even break currently known laws of physics that the general populace thinks we will develop some time in the future, which can be scary when you think about how much our Air Force might be spending in hopes of developing some sort of "cloaking device" when given our current set of enemies we should be developing small cheap slow infantry support aircraft rather than another superfighter that has greater capacity to take out the MIG-25s that our are already obsolete and yet way beyond our enemies' financial and infrastructural dreams. Obviously, the idea of being invisible is greatly appealling, much more appealing than something flying at 10 mph so as to target enemy infantry and provide a platoon of ground troops with an eye in the sky. The former we don't need, but the latter we need so much that we've kept juryrigging aircraft with other purposes to do the job in every war since Vietnam. In this case, belief in the magic of science fiction is hampering scientific progress. In the dark ages, people were less educated and more supersticious. If they had continued to believe in every hackneyed idea somebody could dream up, true intellectuals such as Newton would never have been able to get the financial support they needed to run their experiments. Any career clergyman knows that science and religion do not compete. Science is the study of nature, religion is the study of the supernatural. They don't intersect. Magic is however a notion that one can make the supernatural natural, and thus competes with both science and religion. For every "scientist" who was locked up, one can find some magical and proposterous claims that he had made in order to achieve profit.

Hydrogen isn't that far off actually. Israel's really working hard at it, and already have m!@#$%^&*-efficient models working. All it will take is to get the cost down and to build the infrastructure. The only problem with hydrogen is that it is not a fuel on Earth. (Fuels are materials that are lying around naturally that can be used to produce energy. Hydrogen isn't lying around anywhere on Earth, so it can't be used for power plants. To be honest we might as well run our cars off an electro-rail system built into the roads.) Solar will never be efficient enough. Life essentially runs on solar energy. Fossil fuels are essentially deposits of millions of years of biomatter condensed into one small package. A gallon of gas is about a hundred years worth of solar energy condensed into a small liquid package.

Well, that's her supervisor's job, and he is on vaction until 2007.

Well, science with the Greeks, Egyptians, and Chinese never really "stuck". They made advances, but generally upon their fall that scientific knowledge fell with them. It is also a historical fact in Islam that there once was an age of huge gains in science during the Abbasid reign, but hardliners stopped and reversed the progress made in that period. I know this contradicts the opinion of most historians, so let me explain. Christianity doesn't outlaw science, but there are numerous references to condemnation of magic and sorcery. Now to a non-Christian, the problem with magic versus science is that science is real and magic is not. Intelligencia offer a pre-industrialised society no short term benefit. Thus, such a community can only support finitely many intellects. If those intellects are scientists, they make progress and to civilization advances. If those intellects are magicians, they make no progress if not false progess and the civilization stagnates. Belief in magic is like breathing helium. Breath a little, and its harmless and makes life more fun. Breath too much, and you get sick. Breath air that is all helium, and you die. Helium isn't poisonous, but it does take up space where oxygen needs to be. Similarly a society needs limited belief in magic if it is to advance. What Christianity did, by design or accident, was remove the magicians so that European society could support enough scientists so that scientific knowledge could survive the collapse of the country that developed it. During the dark ages, there were a lot of hybrids. Astronomers for instance doubled as Astrologers and made their living by providing "predictions". Chemists doubled as Alchemists and made their living by conning investors to support their next turn lead into gold scheme. Sometimes a hybrid who made scientific progress was punished for what he did in his other field. Sometimes a pure scientist was misidentified as a sort of "magician" and was falsely punished. However, in the overall scheme the scientists were spared and the magicians were punished, and the computer screen you are reading this on is proof.

I didn't mean to imply that Bush was the catalyst in this case. He is merely the first president in this catagory to see the reality that fossil sux and solar is a pipe dream. I expect subsequent presidents from both parties to support Nuclear and Hydrogen technology. That deal with Russia isn't that sweet however. I don't think we are getting Uranium fuel, but rather spent nuclear waste. We have essentially agreed to dump their nuclear garbage on our turf because they have shown repeated failures to deal with it and letting them keep it would be a worldwide security threat.

BTW, I meant to include "smarter than the hackers" as part of what makes a "reliable" vote. I know a lot of ppl don't vote...I knew I was making an error when I wrote that. I just didn't care because it doesn't mean anything to the overall arguement. The point is our leaders are elected by vote from a large number of people, not cabal. I know you didn't mention Saudi Arabia, but it is such a good example. Turkey is similar. If we dropped them, that would only give that much more power to the nuts. I just know more about Saudi Arabia. The Kurds are different than the Shi'ites and Sunnis, and that's not just naiveity. I'm currently studying a lot about the Arab world, and in many ways its part of the Shi'ites and Sunnis' doctrine to kill each other. I haven't learned anything extra about the Kurds, but they wouldn't "kill Shi'ites and Sunnis if they had the chance", because currently they do have that chance, and they aren't participating the violence! All they want is a chunk of territory where they could live as full citizens and stay the !@#$%^&* out of middle eastern politics. To be rude and blunt, Sunnis are xenophobic traditionalists who believe in the Quar'an as written in the most literal fashion and Shi'ites are by tenent obligated to use violence to force others to convert to their beliefs. If the purpose of us being there wasn't to explicitly promote cultural change the violence in Iraq wouldn't matter to us. To them killing each other is like football is to the US or soccer is to Brazil. If technology wasn't increasing and globalization wasn't happening going in there and trying to stop violence would indeed be stupid. However, globalization is happening and sooner or later these nuts will get access to high-tech weapons. Basically, our choice is this: A: Stay the course for God knows how long as we make progress inch by inch with people who don't even value their own lives let alone each others or B: Let their problem continue to festor for a long time until one or both sides get really big guns that start to destroy the world. Neither choice is good and there is no "C". And no, Bush didn't cause this problem, nor did Saddam "use tyranny to keep it under control". This problem started a thousand years ago with Al Ma'mun's death and Saddam was just Sunni, similar to the normal tribal chiefs only more important, and his use of Chemical Weapons explicitly shows what will happen centuries from now if we don't grin and bear the suffering now. We don't like this, because A sucks and B sucks, so we like to blame the guy in charge for not providing a nice happy C. To this I say there are three groups: Those who chose A, supported this war from the beginning and continue to support it, those who chose B and opposed the war from the beginning, and those who claim to be searching for the imaginary "C", who are hypocrites. I say "A" because the result of "B" will happen in which after a few million deaths our descendants will need to do "A" anyway, though I understand those who chose "B" as a type realist and non-hypocritical. There are a few issues where its not hypocritical to take a side, but it is to be in the middle. The War in Iraq is one. Abortion is another. Either a fetus is a human and deserves the full rights of a human or the fetues is not and doesn't. Any opinion in the middle believes in letting a part-human suffer and is thus hypocritical. Other varieties of hypocrites a "civil rights" people who promote weakness in their chosen minorities. For example, "pro-hispanic" people who want to spread the use of the spanish languge. Like it or not, if one needs a high paying job in the United States, one needs to learn English. In fact, English is fast becoming the international language of choice. That's not fair, that's just reality. Spreading Spanish only stunts the development of spanish-speaking families, and politicians who do this aren't helping hispanics, but spoiling them. Affirmative action is another such hypocrisy. By lowering the requirements for some group, one lowers the average performance of members of that group who made the cut. The average abilities of a doctor who got in by affirmative action will be less than the average abilities of a doctor who didn't. A wise patient would then refuse treatment from the affirmative action doctor if possible. Thus, affirmative action makes racism what it has never been before: logical, making the support of affirmative action a high hypocrisy. As for the so-called "Christian agenda". Keep in mind that the First Amendment states that the government shall not impose any religion. Also keep in mind that there is no part of the Cons!@#$%^&*ution that states that "Church and State shall be seperate". Seperation between Church and State is only an interpretation of the First Amendment. Also Also keep in mind that Atheism is a religion too, and is just as illogical and has just as much potiential to damage the state if given too much power. There are many historical cases where government imposition of atheism caused a state sponsored inquisition against those of faith, except historians never have been truthfull enough to name such governments "atheist" and their practices as "inquisitions". This happened in most of the former Soviet Union members. The matters that these arguements arise from need to be handled carefully. For there to be some place in which Church and State touch does not violate the cons!@#$%^&*ution, but it would violate the Cons!@#$%^&*ution for the state to impose Atheism on people. People have a right to practice their faith in public where it may offend people, because if you deny that right then you force everyone to practice their faith in secret. I don't need to mention all the problems that would cause. Thus it is actually un-cons!@#$%^&*utional to ban religious symbols on public property. Those of us with a "Christian agenda" just happen to know what the Bill of Rights gives us and are interpreting it in the correct fashion rather than in the incorrect way the ACLU does.

My father is a Nuclear Engineer. The reason no one wants to be a nuclear engineer is because since TMI it has been a dying industry. Every time some corporation wanted to build a nuke plant, a bunch of environmentalists would swoop in and stop them. No new nuke plant has been constructed in the US for almost 50 years. It was so bad for a while that my father, a licensed professional who had almost 20 years of experience a while ago decided to go back to college in order to get some business degrees. Only now is is starting to turn around, due to President Bush no less, because Bush has no love for environmentalists and knows this country needs to get away from oil. Don't get me wrong, its not so mcuh Bush as changing at!@#$%^&*udes in the country. I believe Westinghouse is planning on building a new reactor soon. People like the Doctor job because it is very stable. Humanity has always needed doctors and will always need doctors. If one has a medical degree, one is practically guarenteed employment. As for "people being lazy", its only smart to do what is going to give the most money for the least amount of work. The people who are going into business and psycology are in a certain way smarter than engineers. We need to fix our capitalist system so as to stop rewarding them. We shouldn't be paying those fields that much, because as you said, those industries are overpaid. Though I've seen firsthand the value of psycology. A basic knowledge of psycology should be incorporated into the medical profession, and Psychiatrists should still continue to be MDs, and probably should be stationed at hospitals. A lot of hypochondriacs, drug addicts, and morbidly obese come in. That being said, the "industry" shoudln't exist. It should be a section of medical training, maybe with few people specializing in it in the same way we have Optomitrists, Orthopedics, Dermatologists, etc. I also firmly believe that colleges should make it easier. As you said, out of the tens of thousands of students, only 24 are actually enrolling. Making the program difficult enough that 21 ppl drop out of it is only making the problem worse. Those 24 didn't get in the door by being dummies. By that time they have already proven that they are intelligent and willing to work. The college has already effectively filtered that population, and shouldn't filter it out more. High schools should promote the sciences more, but if students listened to high schools we wouldn't have drug use and underage pregnancy. The problem is a lot of our whole culture. The cost of success is that the society itself becomes weak. A rising society believes in promoting technology and new ideas. At its peak however, society starts to promote things people can indulge in. In our case, we promote singers, athletes, and actors. Our expensive items are not built better in utility but rather in entertainment value. Now this could be a result of either entire societal decay or merely the result of a large baby boomer population who locally has already reached the peak and started to decline. I'm an optimist, so I'm hoping that its just them and that when the younger generations who still hold ambition take over that these problems will solve themselves. A final word in the off-topic arguement: Most of the Catholics I know do observe lent. Its far from meaningless either...it essentially teaches discipline at that is why it has lasted. As for my remarks about Hinduism, I have known a few Hindus, but I also know their basic teachings, and a notion of balance is a big part of it. However, generally everything I've learned about culture taught me that people behave the same way despite their culture. In this case, people will only break traditions if there is a need to break it and there are no alternatives, !@#$%^&*uming they believe in those traditions in the first place. In this case, there are alternatives, and I would guess that most Hindus are active because most nations are relgiously active and our inactivity is the worldwide anamoly. I understand your point of view and agree that the "problem" I mentioned was overstated and that their traditions will not stand in the way of them solving it.

Um, the reason why neither ever denied that "alllegation" is because it was never made, and the reason it was never made was because its ludicrus. The notion of secret societies is just a fantasy created by losers who are trying to create an explaination for their failure. Example: Adam and Bob work the same job at the same company. Adam gets promoted. Bob is jealous. Bob, not willing to admit that Adam just might happen to be more qualified, creates a notion in his head that Adam and the bosses of his company are members of some secret society. Bob meats Charles, who also had a coworker promoted. Bob and Charles then come to the conclusion that said society controlls both their companies. Enough of these people get together, and soon there is a notion that said society runs the country. Truth be told, things aren't alway granted by merit. Sometimes its the case where Adam might have a friend or relative in the high-ups, but that is the result of a normal list of contacts, not some vast national conspiracy. Bush got elected because there are 150 million people in the country who supported him in 2004. Its simple as that. Not everyone else in the world thinks as you do. Astro, I guess that just proves that Reagan and the Bushes are not imperialistic...if they were they would've helped Saddam invade Kuwait. Mostly though the reason why we support Turkey and Saudi Arabia is because it would be far more difficult to do otherwise. If it helps, think of it as trying to change their minds with economics and politics rather than direct attack and military force. For example, if we withdrew our support for Saudi Arabia for all the things they do, the fundimentalists would take over where we withdrew. That would cause the country to go even further fundimentalist and would make the situation worse. Really all that's going on is that we are treating different situations with different tactics, which is adaptability, not contradictory. The political parties also don't contradict themselves. Occasionally the politicians do. Really though, power corrupts, and while our federalist system with balance of power drastically limits to amount of raw political power a politician can acquire, no system will do so completely. There is a solution in the future. I do think there will be a kind of revolution about a century from now. Robotics is beginning to bring about the Second Industrial Revolution, and the Service Revolution is not too far off. Following this there will likely be a political revolution where republics are replaced by actual democracies, where Congresses and Parliaments will be dissolved in favor of overall votes by the entire populace, though executive and judicial branches will still exist. It will likely occur not too soon after the technology to count such a vote quickly and reliably is perfected, and said revolution will likely be quiet, non-violent, and not too glorious. I know I should avoid pretending to have a crystal ball, but it just seems like such a logical next step I can practically see it. I guess that's why I hate communists so much, because their ideas have no part in the true changes that are to take place.

Well, Christianity was founded on the idea of abhorring meaningless traditions. Most of the conflicts between Jesus and the High Priests were caused by such traditions. Christianity today is in the often contradictory status of being a religion founded upon not tolerating meaningless tradtion yet having 2000 years worth of traditions. Its similar to the US really. The US was created by combating a superpower, and in many ways our nation was founded on the idea of fighting the tactics used by superpowers, yet today we are the superpower and don't really know what to do with ourselves. Hinduism doesn't oppose tradition, thinking the universe is a cyclic state of balance, and thus that nothing really changes and that the traditions founded so long ago apply just as well today as well as in the future.

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