Aileron

The problem with waiting 50 years is that every year we waited would mean more casualties as Hussein kept killing off "dissidents". It also would mean 50 more years of Baathist propaganda that we would be in the minds of the people that we would need to counteract. 50 years would mean that democracy would be impossible, because no-one would be alive to remember anything other than a Hussein ruling Iraq. The Baathist party weren't the communists. Communism could be fought under the policy of containment because it was inherently unstable. The Baathist party was not unstable. They had a system of systematically giving all of the power and all of the wealth in the same place. While there were people discontent with Hussein's rule, they had no power. While there was a ruling class capable of ousting Hussein, they each had the wealth of five people and had no interest in revolt. The Baathist rule had a terrible eligance in its simplicity and stability. Containment may have worked on Communism but it wouldn't have worked here. Hussein was going to rule Iraq for his whole life, and when he died, his son easily would have taken over, and his grandson after him. You say only 50 years. The Baathist system had everything it needed to set up what was effectively a monarchy and last 500. Also, you say negotiation. How could we have negotiated? What we needed was that Hussein be taken down so that democracy could rule. For someone who has killed millions like Hussein has, being seperated from power is a death sentence. We were effectively asking what terms it would take for Hussein to take his sidearm and shoot himself in the head. For him to weaken his rule would have been equally suicidal. Or maybe we could have waited until he got old and negotiated for him to not let his son take over? That's not possible either. Blood is thicker than bread and water. Suffice to say that he would not have betrayed his son for anything we could have offered.

You are right Worthless. But, I can't find anything worthwhile in that cartoon either. Free speech doesn't magically prevent ideas from offending people. I mean, !@#$%^&*uming he has a right to publish that cartoon, for what goal was it published? This idea is not creative or productive. It doesn't offer any idea that's really worth publishing. Granted the riots and attacks were an overblown response, but was this cartoon worth it given that it caused this response? I do find it ironic that Muslims are responding in violence when that was the offense, kinda proves him right. Still, the problem here is that journalists either don't realise or don't care that their opinions can have consequences, or maybe they even want the consequences so they can sell more. If even a fraction of this outcry could have been predicted, this cartoon should have not made it past the editor's board. Free speech gave him the technical right to publish this cartoon, but it was still really stupid for him to do so.

The rule they are using is actually the Second Commandment. While it is never used when the image is respectful, the real statement they are making is "Westergaard isn't showing the muslim community proper respect." They are correct in that !@#$%^&*essment. Warning: Very long post. It is ironic that I am the only one defending Palestine here. God must have a strange sense of humor. I absolutely hate the Palestinian cause, and now that the people have elected Hamas, clearly making the statement that they support such bloodshed, I can say that if Palestine were blown off the map tomorrow I would not shed a tear. As for my defending the the Muslim faith, I am a Christian, and by definition that means that I think that the Muslim beliefs are incorrect. However, I am compelled to take their side at this time on this issue because this is the one case where they are right. This is more than just a simple cartoon. This is a blatent statement of disrespect for an entire religion. Remember what purpose Free Speech serves. It is a tool for the people against tyranny. It is given to the many that do not have power to use against the one that does have power. It is a tool to freely express ideas, and to promote mutual respect between people with different beliefs. While it may not always cause peace, it is a tool that always promotes true harmony. It has been twisted to serve the opposite purpose here. Instead of the many, it is given to the one that has the cushey job at the newspaper company. Instead of mutual respect it is being used to belittle and mock an entire religion. Instead of causing harmony, it is causing discontent and even violence. Remember, there is no lofty cause this cartoon pushes. It is just one man's hatred for Muslims, nothing more. In the words of my own mother "Opinions are like !@#$%^&*holes. Everybody has one." To that end, just because one person has an opinion doesn't mean it should be published in a newspaper. Even more than that, this "cartoon" probably will extend the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a year. Westergaard's idiot opinion is simply not worth the result of it being published. The muslim reaction is justifiable, or at very least should have been expected. While it is the calls for "jihad" and "fatwe" that are making the news, I'm pretty sure that those are only the extreme fringe and that most are calling "boycott" or "put them out of business". This is probably a case of the media attempting to defend their fellow journalist by portraying the mob he offended as violent thugs. That isn't to say that there aren't violent thugs in the bunch. If Westergaard portrayed Islamic terrorists in this manner, he would be correct. However, he attacked ALL of Islam by mocking Mohammed. Islamic terrorism is to the Muslim faith as the KKK is to Christianity. Both are heretical groups that do not understand their own faith. Truly, "infidel" is a word that describes Hamas and Al Queda, for Mohammed spoke of peace and harmony while they only speak of war. It is only by their evil that they dare to use the name of God to do the opposite of God's work. Trust me when I say that for this terrorists will have a spot in !@#$%^&* that's far hotter than the spot that common murderers will be placed. However, this isn't about terrorists, this issue is about the mainstream Muslim faith. If you think the Palestinian reaction is overboard, what would have happened if this was published in the United States or in Europe? There would be groups calling for a boycott of the company and a crowd of protesters outside the building. The only difference between the scenario and what's going on in muslim countries is that in a first world country those offended would be more carefull about breaking the law. Most likely this small difference has more to do with police presense that any savagery on the population's part. If you insult a major religion in a first world country you get protesters outside your door, and if you do so in a second world country you get rioters. It isn't overreaction, its just the simple fact that the Palestinian riot police aren't as good as European riot police. Do you even realise what Mohammed is to Muslims? He is at very least their hero. Muslims use him and his teachings as a measure for themselves. Many have devoted their entire lives to his teachings. They use his example to define who they are. To mock Mohammed is to attack the very soul of the Muslim community. It is in their nature to defend his name. The old native american story "the fox and the scorpion" explains how no being can deny their own nature. You ask, "Why does the Muslim community riot over a simple cartoon?" I say it is because it would go against everything they are to NOT riot over this. Warning: Yep, this goes on even longer. You can stop reading now if you feel like it. Old people often ask "Why does the modern world have no heros?". This is both whimsical and depressing, but there is a bit of truth that it points out. I think it was accurately answered not by anyone wise, but by people who make comic books for children. In the Marvel Comics series "Spiderman", every time Spiderman saves the day, often at the expense of his personal life and goals, the media comes out the next day printing libelous stories in attempts to portray him as a villain. I think this may be what goes on in real life, except that real-life heroes aren't pure archtypes, and thus the media has a much easier time pointing out their flaws and villifying them. Now the world has no heroes. Our leaders are hated. Our medical personelle are not trusted. Our soldiers are not respected, for the causes they fight and die for are portrayed as unjustified. Our entruprenours, people who's efforts in theorey bring employment and opportunity, are portrayed as greedy. Those who do good things are ignored. Those who are famous are ignored unless they do something criminal. Not only do they destroy our heroes, they also wish to subs!@#$%^&*ute themselves as heroes. Under the phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword", they have attempted to take over. They portray themselves as the voice "checking and balancing" our leadership...their hatred for Bush should be obvious enough to all. The fact that a journalist isn't qualified to run a country should also be obvious. They portray themselves as the voice truly speaking out for patients, as evidenced in the Terry Shiavo case a few years back. If they cared so much for Shiavo, where were they during the period of ten years before she made the news? The doctors and nursing staff were tending to her then. The media portrayed themselves as soldiers when they embedded journalists beside front line troops. Was that to imply that our soldiers, trained and equipped as they are, needed a piece of living luggage holding a microphone in order to fight? They portray business as greedy when they themselves only care about ratings. They act like there are no rolemodels in sports or entertainment, when this year's Super Bowl winners were the Steelers and no star player on that team has done anything criminal. But, their thirst is not satisfied. Now that they have set themselves up as heroes, they are now attempting to destroy the image of religious figures and portray themselves as gods. This latest case is a blatent example. Mohammed only spoke of peace. That message is clear. They are attempting to destroy his image by his weakness, that some who claim to be his followers don't understand his teachings and that some of these are even violent. And that brings us to the beginning of this post. Why am I, a Christian, compelled to defend Palestine, Islam, and Mohammed? It is because I respect Islam and Mohammed more than I respect the media and Westergaard. I am also not shortsighted enough to think that they will stop here. If they use "Free Speech" to mock Mohammed this week, nothing will stop them from mocking Jesus next week. You can agree with me or not, just understand that the Islamic community has a lot of reason to be upset over this.

I don't think so either, I'm a major nuclear power advocate infact. However, solar's weakness is that it needs large areas of land and no cloud cover. That means that they might be viable in desert environments. I know Iran isn't entirely desert, but while its not the Sahara it certainly is not the Amazon. Really though, Iran might just be doing what the entire rest of the world is doing: Getting off fossil fuels. Even oil-exporting countries have a reason to do this. They less oil they burn at home, the more they can sell overseas. Okay, I don't necessarily believe myself here. All I'm saying is that while it is unlikely, it may very well be possible all Iran wants is electrical power.

Well, first off I could be wrong but I think the term is "Theocrist", not racist. Secondly, I don't pity the newspaper offices. Religion is not a funny subject, it is a very serious one. Putting religion into cartoons is just a recipe for disaster. I mean, even in the states mocking a religious figure is a good way to get your product boycotted. Also, I don't know if Palistine has a "Free Speech" right in their cons!@#$%^&*ution. (Or if they even have a cons!@#$%^&*ution for that matter.) If they don't, then media organizations must keep in mind that they must abide by the rules of the country they are in. If they are in a country that does not believe in free speech, they must understand that they have to watch what they say. They are in Palestine, not Europe. The reaction they got should be expected. I'll admit that Palestine is a violent country, and it seems more and more each day that their entire populace has turned to hatred. Still, the biggest mistake here is that they mocked somebody's faith. The other huge mistake they made was to imply that ALL Muslims are violent terrorists when the religion is overall a peacefull one. "Death to all Europeans" is an overblown response, but not that much of one. Paine, I'm going to have to take down that picture. This isn't to imply that you did anything wrong. Its clear that picture was only up for explanatory purposes. However, while I don't know of any, we may have Muslim posters or guests. If they see that, they will almost certainly be offended.

I think people see Iran more as "dangerous" than "backwards". I dunno, it may be in fact that they do just want a nuclear power plant. It has a lot of advantages, not having to import oil from your insano neighbors being the biggest. In order to become a first world economy, they need electricity, and without rivers their choices are either oil or nuclear. Maybe a good compromise would be they stop working on their nuclear power plant and the UN helps them build a solar power plant. (Given their environment solar might be a viable option here.)

*gets off ground* *finds a knife* *grabs an attractive woman off the street and holds her hostage* "Alright, Mr. Norris. Stop right now, or she dies!!" "Don't do it, Ailer!" (Chuck Norris hesitates for a few seconds, but notices a broken piece of gl!@#$%^&* on the ground) (Norris pounds a floorboard with his foot, sending the gl!@#$%^&* into the air) (He then does a spin kick and kicks the gl!@#$%^&* 50 feet directly into my forehead, where it imbeds itself and knocks me unconcious.) [The attractive woman gives Chuck a quick kiss, and then runs to safety]

Setting: We are all bad guys in some dirty bar in Texas when Chuck Norris (an NPC) walks in and starts kicking our !@#$%^&*es. Rules: 1) Don't roleplay the actions of someone else. 2) You are to attack Chuck Norris and only Chuck Norris 3) No matter what you do, Chuck Norris must kick your !@#$%^&* by the end of the post. 4) Chuck Norris is indestructible, cannot die, and cannot be made to do something humiliating. Edited rule 5) PG 13 rated content only. Yes, occ!@#$%^&*ionally Chuck Norris has been in R movies, but not often. Failiure to comply with rules will result in your post being edited, and Chuck Norris kicking your !@#$%^&* anyway. First and Example post: (Chuck Norris walks into bar) "You'll never take me alive!!!!" *grabs 2 x 4* *attempts to smack Chuck Norris with 2 x 4* (Chuck Norris breaks 2 x 4 with cool karate chop, then he yanks the wood out of my hands, cramming splinters into my hands.) *screams in agony as splinters are jammed into my hands* (He then grabs me by the arm and throws me out the bay window)

*body strangely still is moving* *right arm punches and impales NPC* *reaches in NPC's stomach and grabs head* *pulls out head and reattaches it* OW! *impales NPC with arm second time...pulls out his heart* *puts heart in blender* *puree's NPC's heart* *double checks blood type to make sure NPC and I have different blood types*

*shoots the other NPC* *reputation drops four more points* *Flaming Fist mercenaries arrive and attack* *shoots Flaming Fist mercs* *reputation drops all the way to 0* *alignment shift: Chaotic Evil* Sweet, I can equip this robe now! (Black Robe of the Archmagi gives +6 AC bonus)

Sure Bush has pacified the area...albeit not completely. Syria pulled out of Lebanon. Afghanistan's and Iraq's situation is atleast an improvement upon what it was. Bush is only failing in Palestine because he tried to push the same type of peace deal his last 3 predecessors did. As for Iran, public opposition to Iraq that is encouraging their behavior. They are betting that since worldwide support for the War in Iraq is low that Bush can't launch a campaign agaist them. To this I can say that I hope liberals WANT Iran to have nukes, because they have given them permission to build them by opposing the ousting of SADDAM HUSSEIN (you know, evil guy with a beard, launched WMDs on his own people, tortered executed millions of political opponants.) as long as they did. No, Vietnam needed the NVA...not to say public support wasn't a more important factor. Without the NVA they wouldn't have been able to occupy South Veitnam after we left. Without the NVA even if no one stood against them they wouldn't have been able to control South Vietnam. In Somalia we never stood and held ground. That time WE were the ones who lacked a real standing army...because some idiot in office decided not to really use it. The internal factions in Iraq can't remove democracy...the Sunnis are only 20% of the population. With Hussein and his army gone, its 4 to 1 odds. The factions can commit terrorist action, but bottom line they have no capacity for occupation. If by some miracle they drove support down enough to generate a pullout, how would they occupy Iraq? You can't occupy a country with suicide bombers and roadside bombs. You need an actual army that can control the ground they are standing on. The insurgents have no occupation force...if they ever built one it would just get blasted into oblivian by even the Iraqi standing army. Without the occupation force, they can fight, but they can't gain control. Thus, they cannot win. Oh goodie...rule of law...we'll just tell Bin Laden its wrong to break the Law and this will all be over... We need to remove terrorist states and international law doesn't mean much to a dictator. Just look at Hussein's trial. Hussein clearly thinks himself above the law...he is claiming that no court can try him - that was his opening statement and he was continuing along that line of arguement even yesterday. So does every other dictator who has ever wielded supreme power. Hitler commited suicide before submitting to rule of law. Napolean wasn't much of a dictator, but close enough to one that when he was sentenced to exile he escaped and tried to take over Europe a second time. Rule of law is irrelevent to terrorists and dictators. Or do you mean WE should obey rule of law. Like, for example, when Baathist Iraq violated rule of law we should have responded as was our legal responsability rather than writing yet another resolution. Besides, there is no such thing as International Law. There is no official world governing body...the closest thing to one is the EU. "International Law" is merely a group of diplomatic understandings...if you do this, we will do that, so don't do this. Thus, it really amounts to rule of war in most ways. Heck "Rule of Law" requires imperialism...it would require one nation to take over all the others in order to enact laws. Clearly "Rule of Law" is not how international relations can be done. Maybe there is an alternative to rule of war...but I don't know if the other forms of persuasion function on the suicidal...maybe if we offered terrorists 73 virgins instead of 72...(personally, I vote kill the terrorist and give me the 72 virgins.) And when was China ever referred to as an "evil empire"? I recall only three nations mentioned in the axis of Evil: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Given at the time we were officially at war with both Iraq and NK (technically we are STILL at war with North Korea...we just have a long-term ceasefire), that isn't really that unfair of a judgement.

Though life is designed to prevent errors, we aren't talking ducks and quails here. Whatever it was it had to be REALLY frail. Before there was life, there was no machinery to prevent such error in the first life-form. The error correcting portions of the code had to have evolved over time and would have been unavailable to such an early stage. Not only was it constructed out of a series of inorganic molecules, it was constructed without error...not something typically found in random systems. Or, it could have been that the error correction was there from the beginning...but this only decreases the probability of formation even further because this feature adds another million lines of code that have to be in sequence for the first DNA code to work.

Alright, I'll give you a link, but I'm too lazy to search the web for a good one. Some Blog I got this by putting "Crime Rates Europe" in google...this was the second link on the list. This isn't a good link, it is definitely a right-winged site, but some of the links this guy used as his citation are good. Maybe this one is even better than the first: Another Blog I'm not law-enforcement, so I can't cite Interpol's crime statistics directly. So, I am stuck with secondary sources and all secondary sources have an agenda...so I only have a choice between right-winged and left winged cites. But, as the first guy pointed out (though he went off the deep end a little), this may not be just firearms, and probably isn't. It probably has more to do with the entire culture of our countries than any one aspect. Still, the entire point of all topics is to prove that too-much leftwingedness is dangerous and unstable.

Well, once the Mongols left, the Ottomans took over, and it was constant rebellion against them. This lasted until WWI when the Ottoman Empire finally died and the territory fell to European powers. Ofcourse by this time Europe was far to weak to control world-wide Empires any more, so these became independant countries by the end of WWII. Then, Europe formed Israel, and there was fighting against Israel. There wasn't much violence going on between WWI and WWII, but other than that the region is and practically always has been filled with violence and hatred. "Poorly planned" policies as in Europe not being able to see that (constant violence since the 1300s + modern weapons + globalization = that violence is going to spill over into the rest of the world if we don't do something about it) This also brings about respect for what Bush is trying to do. He is trying to end about 700 years of violence. I never expected him to be able to do it in four years, that is impossible. However, it has to be done because technology is advancing too fast for us to let medieval societies advance at their own pace any more. My only comment is that we have to be carefull. Our society is like the Ottomans were in a lot of ways...we need to make sure we don't replace them. Low Public support doesn't move troops from the ground they are standing on...only standing military can do that. Besides, the low public support is only from people who don't realise how big and important this war is. It has to be won or all society will collapse into another dark age (only with guns this time instead of swords). However, it has to take time, and I'll admit that the American public is usually impatient and doesn't like things that aren't quick and easy. Besides, American public support isn't important in Iraq right now. Its the Iraqi public support which is important....and push comes to shove the Iraqi population HAS to support their government because the only alternative is Al Queda rule. The difference between Hamas and Al Queda is that Al Queda has a major weakness in arrogance. Al Queda thought they could take on the whole western world, and lost. They have lost virtually every leader they have except Bin Laden. Hamas thought they could take on Israel if they isolated Israel, and have succeeded in gaining territorial consessions, and they succeeded. Successful terrorist organizations scare me more than mere civilian-killers. Israel is in major trouble with this war. It is a constant cycle of Israel being demanded by the UN to give concession for peace, and Palistine agreeing only to have the terrorists NOT agree and the violence continuing anyways. Just take the latest example...Israel pulls out of the Gaza strip and Palistine ellects Hamas. Even the US isn't supporting Israel the way we need to. I don't know why, but the world somehow thinks that this is a war of social classes rather than a war between a nation and a terrorist state. There are people richer than I am...I don't blow them up though. Israel should be allowed to go on the offensive, or at very least draw the line where it is and leave it there. (That's why I favor the wall they are building...its not that it is a wall...it is a line on the map that cannot be moved. When its up, Israel can't move the border east and Palistine can't move it west. The border will be where the wall is...thus there will be no reason to fight over the border anymore.)

I'm saying life is an example of perfect order because life-forms are machines that function on the molecular level. Essentially, the body of any life-form is a fractal based upon the DNA of that animal. (If you don't believe life is a fractal, look on the cellular level and you will see it.) Like all fractals, the slightest variation in the code screws up the whole picture chaotically. For example, there is only a 1% difference between human and chimpanzee DNA. So, if a person's DNA was only 99% in the right order it would be equally likely whether that person was human or primate. Now for our purposes here, both would be acceptible for what we are looking for. We are looking for organizisms that can reproduce and evolve. However, that 1% error would have a slim chance of leaving such a valid lifeform together. Most likely, a 1% error in DNA would result in infertility. Or, it could result in the subject having the body size of a human but the heart size of a chimpanzee. Or, the 1% error might cover how cells work with each other, and the subject would effectively be one giant cancerous tumor. Or, that 1% might cover intracellular activities and the subject would be a puddle of man juice on the ground. The point is, DNA is something that has to be exactly perfect in order for the life-form to reproduce. An error in but two of the atoms in the sequence would be catstrophic. I mean, cancer occurs when 4 of the atoms in one of the subject's cells switch places. Its not something that can be randomly generated. Of your examples, snowflakes are the only one of concern. The rest are far too simple to take into consideration. Snowflakes are noteworthy because like life they are fractals. However, where they fail is that the code that makes up the snowflake is dependent upon the shape of the microscopic particle of dust the water freezes around. It is a fractal based upon the microscopic, but life is a fractal based upon the molecular. While the first cell could have evolved from simpler chemical reactions, but the first chemical reaction in the chain could only have been so simple. It had to either be DNA or RNA, and had to contain atleast a sequence of 10,000 for a rough educated guess. Still, "evolved out of simpler chemical reactions" is really only another way of saying "built out of inorganic molecules". The difference is only in point of view.

Wait a minute. Back the truck up! I can't believe I missed your post the first time! Okay, so its unscientific to impose certainty when we are uncertain about something. Okay, lets look at what YOU are doing. YOU have started with the generic conclusion that the Primordial Soup Theorey is correct. When I try to point out some uncertainty in that theorey, your defence is "My theorey is right. Change your opinion or I flame you." While I am indeed making the claim that the Intelligent Design theorey is right absolutely, my overall goal only requires uncertainty in the Primordial Soup Theorey. I am pushing harder than I have to. If neither theorey is certain, both should be taught in classrooms. Its not idiotic in and of itself that you are making the statement "I'm absolutely right, you are absolutely wrong. End of story". There are times and places where that is correct. The point where you contradict yourself is "I'm absolutely right, you are absolutely wrong, but there is no such thing as absolute and anyone who thinks himself absolutely right is an idiot." I don't have to prove I'm right. I don't even have to prove you are wrong. All I have to do is prove uncertainty. While I am attempting to go farther, I don't have to. YOU have to prove you are RIGHT and that I am WRONG. If you can't do that, then BOTH theories are acceptible and BOTH should be taught. It can go without arguement that ID is consistent with the evidence we have. It could very well be that the first cell on Earth was created, and that cell evolved to create all other life. Since we have no evidence confirming or massively implying that the first cell was NOT created by an intelligent being, ID is consistent.

Trust me, I understand thermodynamics. What I have problems with in the communication of ideas. My statements are too long and too general, leading to miscommunication. You may be right that I am bordering on the religious and philosophical, but just because a theorey may be those things does NOT in and of itself make it unscientific. Just because in the Book of Genesis it says that there was a huge flood that covered the Earth doesn't mean that there wasn't a flood. There are indeed cases of scientific evidence supporting biblical events...they show about a dozen cases each holiday on the History channel. How do I know the first DNA strand could not have evolved? Because I am making the !@#$%^&*umption that it was the first. If it evolved, it had to by the definition of evolve have been generated from a previous DNA strand, contradicting the !@#$%^&*umption that it was the first. We know that there had to be a first life-form, because to state otherwise would contradict all the evidence of our universe before life showed up. The question here is "How does a life-form come to exist from an environment that has no life in it?" I'll call this first life-form "Bob" for shorthand. Now Bob cannot be born or be replicated off a previous cell, because there is no life. Bob had to be put together out of non-living materials. This brings us to Ducky's statement. Now, first off we have no sticks, sticks are pieces of life-forms, and life doesn't exist yet. We only have rocks and fluids. Secondly, Bob can't be just a loosely constructed pile. Remember, Bob has to be able to reproduce so that the rest of us can evolve from it. This means that Bob has to be a functioning machine, with a stable genetic code that all life on Earth would evolve from. But the RELEVENT point is that if the tossing of sticks was truly random over a given area over a long period of time, we won't get a loose pile in the center. Instead, the sticks would cover the area in an even fashion. They would form a carpet, not a pile. This is why and how I am referencing the Law of Entropy, because it implies that gravity would cause the sticks to settle into a carpet. Entropy states that once we have the carpet, we can't get a pile without adding energy. But wait! Energy is added to the Earth's surface all the time. Can't that energy be what is causing Bob to form when we should be getting vegitable soup? Not necessarily. Just adding energy won't automatically give us a pile. If we add energy in a random fashion, by shaking the entire floor up and down evenly, the carpets remains to be a carpet. As a matter of fact, if we somehow already had the pile and applied random energy in this way, it would give us the carpet. If we want a pile, we need to add energy that is NOT random. We would need to push it towards a location. Now, such a action may have a random component. For instance, if we put the sticks in a funnel 10 meters above the ground, we don't know the exact location each stick will land, but we will get a pile. However, the point is that there is no way to get a pile without removing some of the randomness in how we are applying the energy. Now, as I pointed out, Bob can't be just a pile. Bob is a fully fuctional machine that has a big role to fill being the lifeform that all other life will evolve from and all. Bob thus needs to be in a precise order, if but one of the molecules in its genetic code is out of place, Bob won't be able to fill the role that we know it did. If we need to remove randomness to get a pile of sticks, how much randomness do we need to remove in order to get a perfectly in-line genetic code? In order to get the code, the energy events upon the system had to occur in a specific sequence. The application of energy and matter could not have been random. The right energy had to be at the right place at the right time or it would not have worked. Scientists trying to prove the primordial soup theorey have tried to recreate the conditions, but we cannot because our methods are too random to give us the order needed to put that code in sequence. Thus, the application of energy required more order than our intelligence is capabile of providing. Overall, life is clearly an example of perfect order. Either that order was created from another order or that order was created from chaos. The former implies intelligence created life. The latter cannot occur...because if the result is order, is the chaos truly chaos?

*gets annoyed by the laughter* *shoots RandomNPC with Trigun crater-creating pistol* *reputation goes down by 4 for killing a random NPC*

While firearm related crime is down in Europe, violent crime rates are going up. It is true that less criminals are using guns, but there are more criminals who just use a weaker weapon. Instead of having one gun-brandishing rapist, they have two knife-brandishing rapists. (Not to imply the rate is 200%)

The middle east has been constant violence since the mongols left in the 1300's. I doubt anything we do will calm them down. Iraq isn't like Vietnam. North Vietnam had the NVA, an actuall standing army. While this army couldn't stand up against the US on its own, it was a necessary part of the overall war effort. They needed the guerellas and terrorists to keep the US forces off balance and drain public support, but they also needed a standing army to turn those things into success for them. The insurgents don't have any standing army at all. Because of this they could attack infrastructure and drain public support all they want, but they still can't rout anything. Well, this thread does have an official winner....l88gerbils. He hit the nail right on the head. Here we are worrying about Al Queda, who have a terrible strategy and are well on their way to total annihilation, and Hamas just took over Palistine. Congradulations to I88gerbils for being the official "Bin Laden calls for truce" thread champion!

That opinion isn't that !@#$%^&*y, the proper caution is in the statement "as long as we consider ourselves at war". Considering ourselves at war includes keeping our guard up and not underestimating our enemy. True, it isn't much more than a mindset, but it does mean keeping an eye out for enemies. The US has gotten this far without a homeland attack because we don't underestimate the terrorist threat, that and one of the reasons we went into Iraq is so Al Queda would attack us there and not at home. Overall though the intent of the statement is that the worst thing we could do is consider ourselves at peace. If we lower our guard then certainly an attack will get through. As long as we keep our guard up we will be fine. I remember reading a statistic one time stateing that 4/5 of the insurgents in Iraq are imported foreigners, not necessarily Al Queda, but generally most of the insurgents are not domestic. I don't overestimate the power of the Kurds though. If the Sunnis with Al Queda support can do this to us, the Kurds with our support can do this to any non-democratic government that ever would get control. Heck, they were doing it to Hussein long before we showed up. Al Queda is running out of support. There have been do!@#$%^&*ented cases of civilians shooting insurgents and the overall muslim community condemning Al Queda. Regardless, even those who believe in Islamic Jihad are turning away from Al Queda because they lost Afghanistan and Iraq to the United States. Their movement may be alive within those countries, but they have no way of routing us out of there because they have no ground holding capabilities. Because of this, it is impossible for them to win the wars they are fighting. This limits their recruitment to exclusively those who believe in dying for a lost cause. There may be as many people as ever who believe fighting a Jihad. There may be many who would give their lives if such a war could be won. However, as time goes on, Al Queda has not made any progress. It is regarded by almost all that one of the requirements for a just war is that the just war has to be won. Otherwise, all that sacrifice has been for nothing. Even if the are as many Jihadists as ever, they are beginning to see that Al Queda's Jihad cannot be won. It is becoming clear that Al Queda and their "martyrs" will go down in history as fools who started a war they could not finish. I agree with l88gerbils here. Hamas is more dangerous. Unlike Al Queda, Hamas has made foward progress. This proves that they have the capacity to win, which in turn means that they could recruit someone who isn't a complete fool.

Bin Laden called for a truce yesterday. In our culture, a truce is sign that one doesn't wish bloodshed. In Bin Laden's though, its a sign that he knows he's losing this fight and needs a little mercy/stupidity from our part in order to win. The fact that Al Queda primarily uses suicide attacks proves that they care nothing for their own lives. One has to atleast care about their own lives before being capable of caring for the lives of others, because caring for someone else's life involves putting yourself in their shoes and imagining how you would feel if someone killed you. Basically, the golden rule "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you". If you don't care if others kills you, it is mentally impossible for you to truly comprehend that others may not want to die. Bin Laden, a mere conductor of suicide attacks and not a suicide attacker himself, may infact value his life, but not if he is at all worthy of the !@#$%^&*le of leader of Al Queda. Given Al Queda's past behavior, they are calling for truce to advance or preserve their political goals. Also, Bin Laden said Al Queda would cause more attacks if we did not agree to this truce, yet he said himself that the only reason that Al Queda hasn't hit the US after 9/11 is that they couldn't get past our intelligence network. Are they threatening to get themselves killed by our spies? This isn't the first time he said that either. The only way Al Queda can pull off an attack on us or any other first-world country is when we are off-guard and in peacetime. As long as we consider ourselves "at-war", they can't touch us. He probably wants us to let down our guard so he can attack us in peacetime again. He also cited the "mounting opposition" to this war. The opposition was mounting months ago, but currently it has kinda been waning. The left knows now that no matter how much they whine, the Republican party has the reins and have no interest in listening to them. Still, popular or not Bush has three years left, and though the left may oppose the War in Iraq, they are a far cry from helping Bin Laden with the War on Terror. I'd almost say we should pull out of Iraq just to show Bin Laden the extent of Al Queda's failure if this wasn't so serious. The Kurds have been fighting for freedom for over a millenium. Now that they have it, they will not give it up. Because of this, no matter how strong insurgents get they will never control Iraq again, for if they gained an acre of ground to stand on a Kurdish insurgency would show up to prevent them from using it. We could probably pull out of Iraq right now, and it still would form a democracy because the Kurds and to a lesser extent the Shi'ites will never allow any other government to form again. Still, that would cause a lot more casualties than if we just crushed the Al Queda insurgents here and now. Remember, as tough as this War in Iraq has been for us, it has been tougher for Al Queda. We have been facing off-and-on guerella resistence, wheras they have been devoting every resource they have to this war, and have lost all of their fixed infrastructure. They are out of weapons and soldiers, and their political support has not only erroded, but has begun to turn back at them. Overall though, the time to call for Al Queda to call for peace was Sept 12, 2001. Its too late now. They are a few months away from beaten and we know it. But the best reason of all why this offer is a pathetic ploy is that it was large and one-sided. Bin Laden asked us to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, but promised nothing hard in return. Negotiations occur when people stand face to face and both put something on the table. If this is negotiation, where is the Al Queda amb!@#$%^&*ador? Besides, even if we could trust Bin Laden on this, could we trust that every member of Al Queda would honor this? Most likely, many of them would split off and form another terrorist group that would attack us despite the "treaty". However, if we crush Al Queda's political dreams now, we could guarentee no attacks ever again. The overall message we can take home from this is that Bin Laden is afraid. We just hit a lot of Al Queda leaders last week, and its only a matter of time until we find him. He's finally starting to realise that while Al Queda could successfully attack and withdraw, they never had the capacity to hold ground or push foward. They lost this war when they started it.

To Monte: Life is slowing entropy down though. If plantlife didn't collect light, that energy would both heat up the Earth faster and would be reflected and conducted into space faster. It is possible to build any machine and still add entropy, as a matter of fact its impossible not to. However, building a machine always does not add the most possible entropy with the given matter and energy. With the energy it takes to build an automobile, one could easily blow the lump of steel into a million peices and spread it all over a mile radius. Not only does nature always add entropy, but a series of random events usually tends to be closer to the maximum amount of entropy possible. Its not that life doesn't add entropy, its just that it adds entropy at much slower rate than a planet without life on it. For example, a sculptur requires carfully cut strokes in a sequence. If instead of a careful series of actions, the stone was cut with a series of random strokes, it would most likely end up as a pile of gravel. The Primordial Soup theorey makes the claim that a series of random events created a machine, whatever was the first life-form. This machine had to do certain functions in order for the rest of life to evolve from it. The fact that this machine was constructed successfully implies that the events were not random but were carefully planned strokes. Maybe the machine was built in a physical factory, or maybe nature itself is not random, but has an intelligence of its own. Maybe I'll take a shortcut and make a different arguement. DNA is a code with a language. Language implies intelligence. Sure, the DNA we know and love today may have been a byproduct of evolution, but the first DNA strand could not have been evolved. Since current life evolved from that strand, it must itself have been coded in the same language. That strand had to have been designed. To SeVeR: Einstein didn't prove Newton wrong. First off, it was the scientists who came before Einstein that found the gaps in classical physics - Einstein created the theories that filled in the gaps. Secondly, Newtonian physics is right in the classical scale. The opinion of physicists is that both theories are correct, but they apply to two different types of systems. Einstein himself described the situation "The arguement between classical and modern physics is like a battle between a shark and a tiger, each dominant within its own environment but helpless within the other." Science may not always impose certainty. Infact the Uncertainty Principle in modern physics is one case where it does not. On the other hand, if I did give a high school level projectile motion problem, there is only one certain right answer to where the particle is going to land. There is a bit of error due to the fact that we can't calculate every inperfection in the projectile and every wind current traveling in the area...if we could we could make the calculations with zero error. The point is once something becomes a Law, it is certain. Speaking of high school, the implication that I can't handle college physics is kind of a bit of bigotry. (FYI, I've taken 400 level physics courses for my physics minor, though nothing in thermodynamics as of yet. My marks weren't great, but I know what I'm talking about.) I also don't go to any of those websites, and to my knowledge the Vatican has no opinion on Intelligent Design other than that it is a scientific theorey and none of their concern. I know I wrote something really callast in that religious topic how many months back, and I know it came off as insensitive. There are many people online who act a certain way just to give a certain appearance, such as those who intentionally set themselves up on freq 666. They don't really beieve that stuff, they just want to scare people away. It was a case of mistaken iden!@#$%^&*y. I mean, take Delic for example, who claims to be in a secret society devoted to attacking members of the supposed Illuminati. I for one would assume that claim to be merely a sarcastic one...I could think of much better things to do with my time than chase after why there is a pyramid on the back of the $1 bill. (oh wait...that's Freemasons, my bad) Would it be possible for you to make the wrong guess here? Since tone of voice doesn't carry over into text conversation, it is impossible to tell if someone is being sarcastic over the internet, so we are left with best guess. I for one thought that anyone claiming to be more Satanist than Ducky would be sarcastic, for he has made many more offensive comments over the years than you ever will. The topic was a religious topic, and all religious topics end in altercations. I myself proposed a rule banning pure religious topics here for that reason when I was elected mod. I hate those topics, and Ducky's criticism of my religion had set me off just like my subsequent criticism of yours set you off. We disagree, and it is to a point that we cannot even agree to disagree. However, there is no point in letting that disagreement spill over into other topics. Please just let the !@#$%^&* thing go.

You can't remember why because it requires a degree in nuclear physics or engineering to understand that. My father might be able to explain it, but I don't live at home so I have no clue how it works either. I know one could build a reactor to increase the rate of aquiring weapons grade plutonium, such as how Chernobyl was designed (only once for obvious reasons). That being said I don't believe that there is a way to have capacity for a nuclear reactor without capacity for a nuclear bomb. I think Plutonium is a by-product of the basic fission reaction, so its as impossible to make a fission reaction that doesn't produce Plutonium as it is to make a fire that doesn't produce heat. If I'm wrong, which since I know very little on the subject I could easily be, I absolutely do know that it is still possible to make an old fashioned Uranium bomb with the same fuel you need to power a reactor. In some ways Uranium bombs are even more dangerous, because they are less powerfull, so you could set one off on the other hemisphere of the planet and it is unlikely anything will come back to hurt you, removing the M.A.D. effect of the nuke. Iran is a far way from building a missile with that kind of range, but our military encounters with them proved that they are creative and suicidal. If they had one they could probably find some way to smuggle it in to whoever they wanted to attack. Also keep in mind that they are suicidal enough to face fallout from attacking Israel, and building a missile of that range wouldn't be that difficult. Overall though, its still probably easier to buy old soviet weapons than make your own. Its probably cheaper and has much lower chance of detection by international monitering agencies. Reality is that Iran probably has about two or three plans to acquire a nuke and drop it on Israel. They probably don't have it on them, but have a plan to get one within a week whenever they decide that they need to bomb something. What is stopping them is the fact that they can't even win a Jihad that way, because if they bombed anybody, everyone else would bomb them, and having the fanatical portions of the muslim community blasted into oblivian would end the Jihad real quickly. Iran probably does just want the electricity, though more than that, they want off the "Axis of Evil" list. They are trying to wedge the divide between the UN and the US to get the UN to trust them more, and then get the US to follow suit.

Actually, many in the scientific community support Intelligent Design. It has a lot of support from a lot of conventional research. What's confusing is that after scientists created it, a bunch of people in the religious community supported it, and these people had a tendancy to make rash and unscientific statements.Have you ever had someone on your side who was on your side for entirely the wrong reasons? Obviously my point. The world holds Hussein and the Baathists accountable, not all of Iraq, for the atrocities. The world holds Hitler and the Nazis accoutable, not all of Germany, for the holocaust. Why then you you hold the entire Church accountable for the actions of a few rogue bishops, who were appointed in the first place because secular authorities interfered with the Church on a regular basis? Science imposes certainty. Take Newton's laws. If you went to any physics convention and made a claim that Newton's Laws were wrong in the macroscopic scale, they would laugh at you. Newton's laws are certain. If somehow this was done in a dark-age unenlightened culture, the scientists would try you for heresey and execute you. Executions of those who did not follow with the mainstream was a SECULAR action in the dark ages. The only reason the Church did that is because the secular state did not seperate itself from the Church. For example, it was typical practice for nobles to give the eldest son a !@#$%^&*le use their influence to get one of the younger siblings appointed as a bishop. Thus, they wouldn't allow people to disagree with the bishop, because the bishop was the baron's brother, and if someone spoke back against one brother he might speak back to the other. Really, throughout history it was the state imposed itself on the church. Examples of this are Henry VIII's rule as well as the case when France kidnapped the pope to convince the Church to adopt a French policy. Ofcourse both these actions were in retalition to the Church making their own policy, so depending on your point of view it may be the opposite. With Henry VIII, did the king impose a religion on England so he could get a divorce, or was the Church imposing a belief against divorce on the king? It seems like a relativist question, but it really is not and comes down to who controlled the military. When Henry VIII got divorced, the church could not forcibly stop him. However, when citizens of England wished to remain Catholic, the king did have the force to change their religion. Wow, that was the exact point I was making. Life does not gravitate towards the simplist arrangement, but everything else in nature does. The Law of Entropy states that systems move from more complex to less complex arrangements. That implies that complexity cannot be reached in positive time without a designer. The scale I'm using is that "simple" is the lowest energy state the system can be at, and "complex" is anything else signficantly above that. But if you don't look at life specifically and broaden into the catagory to just generic masses of biomatter, the entropic arrangements for that due to various laws of fluids is a well evened mixture. It just is strange that a m!@#$%^&* of biomatter came together to make a life-form. I didn't mention God. I mentioned one or more intelligent designers. It could be one divinity. It could be a group of divinities. It could be aliens from another planet. It could be that our universe just has an intelligence of its own. All ID states is that it wasn't mere random action. The level of complexity that would require an intelligent designer would be the first genetic code. Water and amino acids are relatively stable molecules. My apologies to the philosophers...its just that I found economics and philosophy to be easy subjects so I pick on those people every chance I get.