Charles Anthony

Is resistance futile? Will I be assimilated?

Why a new thread? The issue is currently being discussed and the controversy exposed in the following active thread: Orhan Pamuk Strikes Again -- Turkish Nobel Laurate's real face. Granted it belongs in The Rest of the World section but threads can be moved. Multiple threads lead to irreparable clutter.

I give up. The correct one -- it can found in a high school biology text. I am not creating defintions. Either you are not being serious or you are seriously running around. Have I been had??? I feel like just walked into something.

It is not so much a decision but a logical conclusion from first impressions. As The Lone Flea suggests, if diseases commonly manifest themselves with blemishes, a clear face indicates health. Would feelings change after learning a new mate has malaria/herpes/AIDS/leprosy/whatever even though there were no outward physical signs? My attraction would dissipate. We are past the stone-age (politically, some of us may still be stuck...) of understanding relationships between health and beauty. We know that acne is not dangerous nor contagious nor an indication of health at all. However, it is unpleasant to touch. Funny thing is that only in the past one hundred years did obesity become unattractive. [Oddly, I know men and women (born and raised in Canada) who lean towards chubby members of the opposite sex.] Fat was considered not only a sign of health but also a sign of wealth. In some cultures today, it still is. The issue of attractive hair color is unique. Personally, I am attracted to hair and eye color that is opposite of mine. Many women tend to dye their hair blond. I think it is fair to say that blond is considered more attractive. Why? I think the reason might have to do with it being sort-of rare. Blonds tend to darken as they age and very few maintain their blond hair. It is also a recessive trait.

I understand. This is where I would suggest a different strategy in practice. I would suggest that you pick a side (liberal, republican, labor, reform, conservative, democrat, whatever) and fight for less government under one of the parties. Imagine somebody like JFK living to a ripe old age, becoming a libertarian and writing in his auto-biography: "I was a hot-aired fool. If only I had said to the world: Ask not what I must do for my country but what together we can do for the freedom of man and just left it at that. It would sound equally poetic and would have won me votes just the same. However, maybe it would have bred a sense of community solidarity and not national obedience to power." One of my political stepping stones came from reading Barry Goldwater's books. Promoting liberty while working in the system might be possible in a more efficient manner. I will boldly say that in a practical sense, Libertarian parties are just conservative parties. However, you split the conservative vote and lose.

I do not feel like immigrants are imposing anything upon me at all. I do not care how people adapt. Respecting eachothers freedom is good enough for me. As a person born in Canada, I feel no need nor desire to be xenophobic towards people who are not born in Canada. You are seriously bringing that up??? I would say that unfortunately, people like you have no understanding over that issue. Nobody was demanding the Ontario Government adopt Sharia Law. The request was to allow people to mediate civil disputes under the tenets of Sharia Law when both parties of the dispute consent. The Government of Ontario permits this for other religious groups. No, it will not. Do you know anything about civil mediation in your province???? In criminal matters, everybody follows the same criminal law.

My main problem with school is that we are not given a fair choice and that the state monopolizes the market. We are forced to pay taxes to support "their" schools. That is wrong. We are not forced to pay for other people's foot-ware. You can not live in Canada without foot-ware. Why does the state not monopolize the foot-ware market??? [i believe the answer is related to the fact that historically, teachers have evolved to have a major influence in the political process. Most people that I know either is related to or is close friends with a teacher. A politician who does not cater to teachers might not ever get elected -- or stay married.] That is a different argument. Even if every single school was "a good place to learn" for every single student (what are the chances of that???), I would still object because we are not given choice. By the way, some running shoes are clearly better quality than others. Should the state force us all into subsidizing the best running shoes on the market??? to make them available to everybody who wants to jog? because jogging is good for your health? I often by cheap sneakers for $7.98 at a great Canadian retailer. After two months, they fall apart. I throw them out and get a new pair. The prices have not changed in nearly 10 years. I do not jog. Now you are thinking in the right direction. Answer this: Why should the people who do not want to go to YOUR school have to pay for YOUR education? should they pay for your winter boots too? It may not be a revolution but I pray that at least one student in British Columbia will be led to look outside of the box. If one student questions this "unprepared program" and takes it a step further to question the validity of the state compelling them into school (or paying for it) it will be a blessing in disguise.

What exactly is your point? Oh, I get it. He deliberately set out to write and risk persecution with the ultimate goal of winning the Nobel Prize. That makes sense. All of the people in the Nobel board must be stupid to have been fooled by his ruse. I think his recognition with the Nobel Prize makes people like you who discredit him appear miserably vindictive.

It is no more "hypocrisy" than a scientist pretending he understands evolution of species when he clearly does not.For some people, aspects of "science" are accepted as fact (and sometimes morphed as a message would during a game of telephone!) with no more logic than somebody believing in the supernatural or religion. It is just easier to take things for granted than to require proof all of the time. It does not come across in your posts. However, your experiment is not an example of species evolution.

Ah... the door is now open. How would they do that, pray tell? They would not use coersion to achieve such results, would they? I am just being a devilish anarchist. I will just give you my arguments and counter-arguments now: by the very nature of participating in the electoral process, they are stepping on people's liberties. Voting for a libertarian (or anybody for that matter) is imposing your will upon your neighbors. Not only are you saying: "This is who I want to win." but you are also saying: "This is who I want to rule over my neighbors regardless of what my neighbors want." Furthermore, if the Libertarian party accepts any tiny level of taxation, they are compromizing thieves --- even if they preach minimal taxation.

The last one strikes me as odd: I would expect a true libertarian to not show up to school as opposed to treating it as an obligation or a duty.

Where is it that you can observe that you have a subsequent generation of organisms that CAN NOT reproduce with the original parent colony? ? ? Answer: nowhere. By the very nature of your choice example (single cell organisms), you can not describe it as evolution. It is just mutation. As a "scientist" you should have caught that one before I did -- actually, before you even said it. Like I said before, you see what you want to see based on taking other science for granted. Your faith is "science" and your holy book is some great big thick text book. Your priests are some researchers who lecture the same old thing year in and year out.

You extrapolated from that observation by incorporating prior knowledge of genetics -- an auxiliary field of study which you take for granted. People comfortably have faith in science and take it for granted -- as you do. They believe certain tenets blindly as some people comfort themselves in religion or some form of supernatural.

I agree. I agree and I believe people also have blind faith in science for the same reason. Just for the sake of argument -- I mean, to start a religious war -- the Habs suck. No. There is a different hypothesis that can explain or recreate your biology soup mix. You choose to identify it as "evolution" because you are prejudiced by having prior knowlege. You see what you want to see. No. I will explain why and the answer lies in your recipe. Here it is: Your "something" could have just put the same organisms in a dormant state. Genetics or reproduction may have had nothing to do with what occurred. That is an other hypothesis. You are actually blind. You can not say that you "witnessed" or "saw" more than one generation of organisms in your soup. You see what you want to see based on prior knowledge. You blindly have faith in the current scientific base. My opinion is: 1) whatever their parents taught them (that is the easiest one to accept) 2) whatever one happens to be attended by similar people (making them feel welcomed or unthreatened) I do not think there is anything profound in the #2) scenario. Some people choose social organizations for the purposes of just blending in to the crowd while other choose social organizations for the purposes of standing out or showing off. The original question could be the same as asking WHICH nightclub people choose to frequent on a regular basis or WHICH shopping mall people prefer or WHICH school people choose to attend or WHICH internet discussion fora they prefer to participate or anything else.

My guess is that you are being sarcastic. However, I am not. I agree: all school should be optional. I am going to start dreaming now. The history books in British Columbia will look at this petition and call it one of the first steps towards liberating students from the absurdity of institutionalized adolescent day-care. Along the way, the "teachers" will protest and go on strike -- proving even further that nobody needs "school" more than teachers need their jobs. A hundred years from now, people will look back and shake their heads in shame as they recall the old-days when kids were forced into school. They will also shake their heads in shame when recalling kids being employed to clean factory chimneys because of their small physical size. Every job is optional. The real world is choice and dealing with the results of choice. When people are forced to work at something (as they are in school), it is not wise to expect them ALL to look forward to the results.

I like your idea of prison ships but I am going to play the devil's advocate here because of the "rabid dog" statement. Are you really ready to execute criminals? I will say that you MUST "care for their welfare" whether you want to or not. It reflects on how we choose to deal with criminals. What if we can not afford to lock all criminals up and throw away the key? What if it would be cheaper to simply increase police presence on the streets? There might me a lot of social workers and rehabilitation workers and correctional service providers out of work. We might also see a lot less crime. I would rather have security guards patrolling every single street in every single neighborhood.

No. The mechanisms are most relevant because it is the mechanisms which demonstrate the "faith" that comes into your acceptance of science. My response is that they are NOT "difficult to explain" but rather, I just read the science books, listen to the science lectures and blindly accept the mechanisms. It is just not worth doubting them and I have no particular interest. Maybe not DNA per se but you have to understand that genetic information is transferred. Forgive me but that is a very incomplete understanding of evolution. Evolution in a nutshell: - mutations happen and are transfered to offspring - therefore, offspring DO NOT have to be exact matches of parents - new mutations can be maintained and repeated in 2nd, 3rd, etc. generation offspring - enough mutations can make future offspring NOT ABLE to reproduce with original non-mutated lineage - therefore, new "species" can develop Now, understanding genetics and how information is mixed/transferred to offspring allows us to understand how different (better/worse/neutral) physical traits are maintained in a population. That is all. Old-fashioned evolution theory talks about survival but that describes only a fraction of the practical application of evolution. You need to understand gene transfer to describe population genetics completely or in a useful manner. That is the 5-second newspaper headline version. The success of your science experiment depended on the fact that organisms contain genetic information. Quite the contrary. You need faith to be able to "see" what you think you are seeing. If nobody told you anything about the mechanisms of evolution or heredity, you would not see any of them. Everything is context. If we lived a thousand years ago, it would make sense to believe the Earth was flat. That is a bizarre statement. "why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?"I would bet my life that Africa exists even though I have never been there either. If it was proven to me (how, I do not know!) that Africa did not exist, I doubt that I would be able to cope psychologically -- I would feel horrifyingly mentally ill or possessed by an evil spirit beyond my control. [i know, I know, I can hear it already... nobody has to say it.... ] Technically, that is correct. Practically, it also makes sense.

I will cut to the chase. All of that stuff, I "know" too but I never did the original research to rediscover it all from scratch. I take most of it for granted because it simply makes sense or it is just easier to do so. By the way, I have never seen DNA. Have you? Also, I have never seen tectonic plates, either. In fact, I have never even seen the other side of the Earth but I believe it is there. When you say "confirm" you are hiding your faith in science. You are actually accepting bodies of common scientific knowledge on a faith basis too. You must.

Actually, it is. The forum is not a public service. As members, we each have the privilege of participating but we do not have the right. Condescending? Lighten up. We take shots at each other over issues that are much more important than avatars. Forget about these avatars and this thread. Hopefully, we will all be able to laugh at it and maybe tease you about it in the future. In my bold opinion, whenever you feel seriously offended, the most important thing is to have a sense of humor even if it seems like nobody else on the forum does.

Yes. If people do NOT disable the check-out aisle magazine format, it would still be more demanding on the server. The bandwidth costs money. Transmitting text is exceedingly fast compared to images.

NO!!!!! I do not want to scroll around in a "comic book" or "grocery flyer" forum. Thank you! On a practical note, images require more bandwidth and they slow things down for people who have dial-up or slow computers. Just the facts, madam. Just the facts.

To summarize... ? Do you study everything in the universe yourself or do you take some "science & logic" for granted by trusting what the "scientists & logicians" have to say?

People who are afraid of death or who want immortality. There are more humble ways of creating one's immortality but for those who do not believe in religion or life-after-death or the supernatural, the closest one can get to immortality on Earth is through some form of fame.

Correct. If YOU can figure it that out, so can Mr.NuKem in North Korea. Therefore, it makes no sense for anybody in North Korea to strike first. To deter your enemy. That is not a waste. Also, who cares what "conservatives" want to do? We will have MORE hope to live because of the deterrent effect of everybody owning nuclear weapons. I have no idea and I do not care about people's nationality. Ample time?? Are you trying to prevent one of Kim's feeble missiles from hitting anybody or are you trying to prevent Kim from selling nukes to non-state organizations?

Indeed. I asked a client of mine to explain it to me and she said the same thing. When this lady is in my office, she wears her hijab -- her face is not covered, only her head is covered. However, when I am in her office, she wears nothing on her head.