Aileron

Look, the Soviets flat out admitted they did things that nobody else would even consider. Its not a baseless conspiracy theory, the base of it is that its the Soviet Union, which has a reputation for lying. If I'm wrong its a case of the "boy who cried wolf". People were impressed with the Soviets honesty because this case they were speaking half-truths when they previously flat out lied. When it comes to scientific opinion, it became clear that looking into Soviet lies was a waste of time because they knew how to cover their tracks. I trust first world power plant operators because they don't do the things the Soviets admitted, and certainly not whatever the Soviets didn't admit. You don't disengage safety systems while the reactor is running. That's rule one in any power plant operational guidebook. Rule two is to tell the controll room what you are doing, so there was ample opportunity for it to click in big cheese's head: wait, that's the fifth safety system we disabled in X hours, isn't this kinda dangerous? Even if you believe the Soviets they are STILL grade AA morons who did something that happens nowhere else in the world. You watch too much of "the Simpsons". In real life, Mr. Burns would be in jail, Lenny and Carl MIGHT be qualified to wash the toilets, and Homer Simpson would be ground up into parking lot cement. The REAL nuclear industry is smarter than NASA and has much fewer accidents, and most "nuclear accidents" are really zero casualty misses that got too close for comfort. These people are only human in appearance and that they occasionally require food and sleep. Other than that, they are workaholic robots that piss off their families constantly. Trust me, I know. This is the only time I will say this so you probably will want to quote it and take a picture: France is doing the intelligent thing in this issue. Compaired to inneffective solar and wind power and pollution making fossil fuels (coal plants emit more radiation than nuclear plants do btw) trusting extremely nerdy workaholics to keep something inside 10 meter thick dome of reinforced concrete that can make a 747 bounce off of it isn't that much of a risk. I am an American praising France on a particular issue. That almost is a sign of the apocalypse, and I'm pretty sure the temperature in !@#$%^&* just dropped a few degrees. If a bunch of Frenchies managed to get my support on an issue, they have to be right.

Delic isn't going to care that no one listens to him. This whole thing is amusing him. He thinks he's going down the path of righteousness because the rest of us don't listen to him. That last unedited post of his proves that he is going down the opposite path. Those who follow God have the ability to speak in foreign tongues. It is righteous to break down comminication barriers between people, and it is evil to to create new ones. And Delic's english has gotten progressively worse over his posts, putting barriers up so that few here even have a clear idea what he is saying. Hating him isn't a good idea and will only accelerate him. Delic, tread carefully. This path you are on may seem to be making you stronger, but it is really weakening you.

Actually, I'm pretty sure mankind is done with doing !@#$%^&*anine things with nuclear technology, we will have to wait until we invent something else so we can do !@#$%^&*anine things with THAT technology. (I can name examples, but that would be just asking to take us off topic.) Besides, that's a completely seperate animal that nuclear power plants. Do you think that if there are no power plants that it would prevent seed irradiators from being built? If the technology is going to be used in an !@#$%^&*anine fashion, oppose it when its being used in an !@#$%^&*anine fashion, not when its being put to proven and practical use. I guess you are right...I don't believe the story that the Soviets gave. I guess if not believing what the Soviet Union said when they were beginning to look bad makes one a conspiracy theorist, then I am a conspiracy theorist. Any worker who so much as thinks of disabling a safety system in any First-world power plant would be fired on the spot. These workers were likely ordered to do these things, otherwise they wouldn't have considered it. Notice how all the people they blamed were dead. It wasn't the archaic equipment or the people calling the shots, it was the dead workers. You are very strange Monte...on one hand you don't trust the decent, intellectual, and hard-working engineers who run all the quality power plants in the world, yet on the the other hand you take the stuff the Soviet government was saying as gospel. Besides, do you know why solar panels aren't used? Chiefly because they are expensive. Then why are they so expensive? They are expensive because they take a lot of heat and energy to produce, to the point that anything large enough to meet largescale needs would probably require more energy to construct than the product would give over its expected lifetime.

............................................................ ............................... letse...nations more conservative than the US....hmmm....all of Latin America possibly minus Cuba, Venezuela, and Brasil, all of Africa, the entire Middle East, and a few nations in southeastern Europe. I know that's more of a list of regions than a list of nations, but political opinion usually is more regional than border bounded anyways.

Frankly, the US is centered and Europe is left wing. This is because for the greater part of the last century they have been between the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union. They took a position between these two groups, socialism. To them, this position was balanced. Putting the US on the right and Soviets on the left. Their error comes from the fact that they did not take into account that they did not factor fascists, which were eliminated in WWII, or the leftover monarchies throughout the world. When you factor EVERYBODY in, you realise that the US is actually kinda left wing and Europe is REALLY left wing. Canada and Australia placed themselves between the US and Europe.

Look, Ducky, you support the death penalty. It is situational by definition. The debate is should ALL offenders get atmost a life sentence, or should SOME be put to death. Technically speaking their is no moderate position, and anyone who thinks Saddam Hussein should be cooked supports the death penalty.

Oh yeah, reduce energy consumption. Population is rising and you think their needs are going to diminish over time? I mean, people have energy bills at the end of the month. Do you think they are like "wow I only spent $300 for utilities, I should try to get that up to $500 next month"? Everyone wants to reduce consumption but as population and technology is rising its not going to happen. Back to Chernobyl... Take the example of somebody driving 150 mph down the highway, not making a turn and dying in a horrific crash. Would such an example indicate that the highway needs to be redesigned or that the car model needs to recalled? Certainly not. Would it mean that if someone else drove the same car on the same highway, but this time at the posted speed limit it would be "optimistic and foolish" to think that person will probably make the turn? If the safety standards aren't followed, its not the technologies' fault. Its also not an indicator of what will happen if the standards are followed. They weren't testing anything except how fast their reactor would go and how much plutonium they could produce. Almost all Nuclear reactors run at about 2 or 3 cycles per second. This was true for every sustainable nuclear reactor in history except Chernobyl. That reactor ran on the order of some thousand cycles per second. No person can react fast enough to stop the reaction if problem arise at the rate Chernobyl was going. No computer could either. I mean, its like that guy who strapped a rocket engine to his car and accidentally ran into a cliff. Remember, this was the Soviet Union. I know that means nothing to you, but. They never developed nuclear technology. They merely stole it from us. They barely understood the technology, let alone what they were messing with. I mean, the US at the time didn't know what we were messing with, and the Soviets were worse off than we were. They did all sorts of !@#$%^&*anine things with nuclear technology. For example, they built small devices and distributed them to farmers in hopes that irradiated crops produce higher yeilds.

sigh...first off, a properly functioning Nuclear power plant creates no pollution. Also, we need to produce power in mass so solar collectors and windmills simply aren't going to be enough. Maybe with development they could, but maybe with development we can make a nuclear power plant that doesn't melt down....oh wait...we have. Modern nuclear power plants have ridiculous safety features. Unfortunately this requires a bit of trust, because half the features are only known on a need to know basis. However, the general pattern is usually features that are extremely solid. They make concrete walls that are incredibly thick...(they examined the possibility of planes crashing into TMI before 9/11...anything less than a jumbo jet would do nothing, and a 747 MIGHT get through the outer wall of the containment building, but not much farther.) Most of the safety systems, such as controll rods and emergency coolant function off of gravity. For example, controll rods are placed in a cylinder with electromagnets at the bottom. When they want to raise the rod, they increase power to the magnets. If the system malfunctions, the magnet will stop working and the rods will fall down by gravity. When was the last time you threw something in the air and it did not fall down? Does relying on gravity to pull things down sound reliable? Well that's not enough for the NRC, all reactors have atleast 2 (and usually 3 for anything bigger than a volkswagon) seperate systems of controll rods, each capable of stopping the reaction, and each with several redundant systems to ensure that they work properly. The only two significant events in history are TMI and Chernobyl. TMI was a near miss, so it really doesn't count, except that it caused a lot of positive reform to the industry. Chernobyl was the only meltdown in history. But, that was only after the personell threw everything they know about nuclear safety out the window and rebuilt their reactor in such a way as to disable safety systems, basically in an attempt to m!@#$%^&* produce weapons grade plutonium.

As for innocents wrongly convicted, what about the criminals who were caught red-handed and/or those who admit and infact bragg about it? The kind of cases where a trial is just a formality simply because its obvious. I mean, not ALL cases can offer 100% certainty, but some do, and the possibility of innocents suffering does not apply to those cases. As for that "society being more progressive" bull!@#$%^&*, you seem to really have no problem with people dying as long as the responsibility of it does not fall on you. If a criminal wastes 14 people on a street, you sit back and proclaim how wrong his actions were, then change sides and proclaim how wrong society was for creating a environment that wasn't perfect for the criminal growing up. But, if we ask you to take an action, you won't because that exposes you to the possibility that your actions might be judged. The difference between murder and execution is obvious enough to everyone. The only grey case would be if the person in question only shot murderers, like in a gangwar or something, but in such cases the criminal is almost never executed - what jury is going to be harsh on a man who with all honesty did mankind a service?

The solution to making the world a utopia is easy to say and hard to do: destroy evil.

two words - Nuclear Power

Do you people honestly think life in prison is worse than death?

I generally support the death penalty because of whackos like this. I see the rest of you feel this should be an exception to the norm....it isn't. I mean, when some gangster shoots 12 other gangsters, he should really get a medal instead of an execution, but when innocent civilians are the victims...

I don't know if the chemical processes that incur with plants have CO2 as the limiting reagent or if its ground minerals. If C02 is, then our plantlife will naturally grow faster and handle the extra C02 naturally. This requires that ONE species of plant in the world has a surplus of minerals and a shortage of C02. Generally the ecosystem sustains its own balance. If one force grows a counterforce grows and balances it out. Mother nature is tougher than you think.

Sigh...sorry guys, I've been on 56k for the past week and didn't bother to look up this topic for a while... Nothing productive is coming out of this topic, so I'm locking it. If you want to actually talk about Irani weapons start a new topic without the flames please.

See, that's dissmissive right there, compairing multiple homicides required to get the death penalty with a dog biting its owner. !@#$%^&*uming they did in fact do their crimes, your typical death row inmate is more a monster than a human. A human being is capable of love and usually incomplete if the being does not love another. Those who are to be executed not only are incapable of love, but incapable of human respect, otherwise there would be very few cases where they bring themselves to kill an innocent human being. I mean take the case of a man who kills his wife for life insurance. Human beings love their spouses and push come to shove would themselves be willing to die for the sake of the other. The man who kills his wife clearly can't love her, because if he did she would be more precious to him than any amount of money. Not only that, but he doesn't even respect her status as another sentient. If he did, he would realise that some money is not worth sacrificing a sentient. He would have to be so egotistical the believe that his petty wants are more important than an entire other person. And that remind you is not even enough to get you on death row in 49 states (hats off to Texas for still having some sense in these matters). In most states, the criminal needs multiple counts in order to get the death sentence. In such cases we have multiple angles to prove that these people have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Sorry, I really can't pity these people - I spent all my pity on their victims. I don't have any left for those who neither feel love or even basic human respect.

pfft...countries like Iran don't think of nukes in a defensive way. If they had nukes and Israel did not have any and didn't have any allies who had any, they would nuke Israel as soon as the wind was blowing the right way. I'm positive of this. I'm moderately right-wing and I can think like that - How would a fundimentalist theocracy compaire to me? We should by no means allow Iran to build nukes. I honestly do believe in this case that Iran might be after power and not after weapons - though we can't take chances with this. I just hope the Russian bueracacy is up to this. btw, Iran had to ask the US to build nukes because the UN isn't doing their job at the moment.

Vile, which people did Bush appoint to which positions who supported which kind of torture? If you are going to throw wild statements around you need to be more specific than that. No, being Republican does not automatically make you support torture. No, capital punishment is not considered torture. That is very dangerous thinking there. If criminals are not considered human, then it can easily become acceptable to mistreat them in such ways that would otherwise be abhorrent. Final solution anyone? All justice is dangerous, but decisions must be made. Actually, knowing which criminals are human and which ones aren't is a very easy judgement to make. Usually, a normal person cannot even comprehend their motives and are filled with a little bit of anger when they comprehend what the offende has done. It must be done by a case by case basis. You have to work in some kind of civil service job to understand. When I worked in a hospital, there would be women who were raped and people beaten close to death, and seeing these people suffering made me want to track down whoever did this to them and beat the crap out of that person myself. The criminals sicken me too if they tried to run from police. When a criminal runs, the police have to eventually tackle them, and every time a police officer makes physical contact with a criminal the criminal screams police brutality. There's never as much as a bruise on these guys, but every time they claim police brutality. Not only that, but if the criminal is a minority they always whine racism. The officer is never brutal or racist, and as a matter of fact might even be the same race. Its just what the criminal does in a sick attempt to get off and to get people to pity him. I've never seen 15 murder victims at the same time, but I can imagine why the guy who did it deserves to die. As for innocents being convicted by mistake, maybe we should be trying to fix the justice system instead of messing around with it.

Yeah, you have to take into account people who are simply just pure evil b@$7@Rds. Such people exist. I don't pity what happens to the serial killer who tortures 15 innocents to death. As a matter of fact, I HOPE they suffer, and wish there was some way to legally torture them without exposing the rest of us. I mean, no human being should be treated like that, but some crimnals aren't human.

I just deleted Nokia's post and is closing the topic. He was ranting on how he thought the government was going to put remote detonated bombs in all modes of transportation. If it was actually on anybodies' platform, it would be an acceptable topic. As it stands, this is on no-one's platform nor is it even an extension of anybodies' current platform. But as it stands, he was making up some !@#$%^&*anine policy and saying that somebody supports it. That is libel Libel is outlawed by every major government in the world and is illegal here. Topic locked.

At least he's not one of those noobs who likes to revive long-dead topics. Look, follow the oil-for-food scandal. THOSE were the people who wanted oil. It never was Bush, it was the international media with oil vouchers in their pockets. They stirred up outcry over Iraq because Hussein told them to. And Bush hardly started the war in Afghanistan. And it was Congress that gave us the Patriot act moron...if you want to hate your government, learn how it works.

That's another gay sex arguement that does not justify gay marriage.

Changing wedding traditions doesn't change the definition of marriage, a wedding is a ceremony, a marriage is a lifelong commitment...and yes, gays are trying to change the definition of marriage. Marriage is by definition between a man and a woman, and the only way gays can marry is if they change the definition. I'm POSITIVE marriage has been around for longer than racial oppression, because marriage started in the Paleolithic era. At that time, people would be ecstatic just to run into somebody else. If by miracle the person they run into was a different race they would care, if one spent the last 6 months without talking to anybody but their small hunting group, they wouldn't waste any opportunities to meet new people. Yes, society CAN collapse overnight, because the family is the foundation of society. Messing with the foundation, unless done very carefully, can drop whole building on your head. Yes, heterosexual marriage IS under attack. Gays are trying to take the privilege they earned by being the dominant means of reproduction in our society. And, yes, any PERMANENT installment of gay marriage will require people to be shot. Marriage affects common people on a day to day level. By comparison government can affect people, but not every day. If one of Australia's generals went crazy, turned traitor, and pulled a coup de tat making himsef Emperor of Australia, there would be a lot of people who would fight to reinstall democracy. Government affects people enough that they would be willing to die for it, and marriage and family affects people more than government. Logic would assume that people would be even more prone to fight for family than for government.

Sorry for the massive editing of posts, but this topic was beginning to look like a flamewar. Bad grammer aside, Dav kinda has a point. The environmental issue is filled with a lot of radicals. On one side you got heavy industrialists who don't give a crap about their employees let alone the environment, and on the other you got environmental radicals who oppose all progress, even to the point that the environment might suffer in the end. Example: the replacement of fur with polyester...fur is a renewable resource the collection of which can actually benefit the species in a small way, making the critters evolve smarter. Polyester on the other hand comes from oil, a non-renewable resource the collection of which destroys environments. Strangely enough, its the politicians who are in the middle, though if you asked an industrialist or an environmentalist they would say otherwise.

Zeke, that's a very good arguement why gay sex shouldn't be illegal. As for gay marriage, regular marriage has been around for ages. It is a tradition that lasted millions of years. The family is the foundation of every society. If we wish to redefine marriage, we had better have a !@#$%^&* good reason. I mean compared to the black civil rights movement, marriage has been around longer than both slavery and racial oppression. And to get rid of those evils required a BIG movement with really big arguements, not to mention quite a few wars around the world. But marriage as it stands has been around even longer and is much more fundimental to our society. If we screw up marriage, our society can potentially collapse overnight. Also, heterosexual marriage is not evil in and of itself like racial oppressers were. A heterosexual marriage really doesn't cause pain and suffering for other individuals. (Not to the extent like the KKK can cause suffering in a black community.) Gay marriage also has not been attempted before. Some long-dead societies had gay sex, but never gay marriage. Gay marriage is a bigger change than civil rights. Considering the age and importance of marriage as it stands, such a movement would require a degree equal to the shift from fuedalism to democracy, possibly bigger. Considering racial rights and shifts in government both required wars to change, and that heterosexual marriage has been around longer, isn't inherently evil, and is more fundimental than both those issues, it is logical to assume that enacting gay marriage would require a really big movement and/or a war. Overall, gay marriage won't fly until people are willing to shoot each other over this issue, and no one is willing to shoot each other over this issue, it is simply not worth it. It certainly is way too big to ride the coattails of another movement as its attempting today.