ScottSA

Indeed, or having to breath it. I don't think religion or culture or any other sort of special pleading should be used as an excuse to impose negative externalities on others. Note, though, if I understand correctly the court decision referenced here is only a threshold question and a full hearing to decide the issue will follow. Traditional Hindu funerals at the burning ghats along the Jumuna River in Delhi involve huge amounts of wood, great blazing infernos and large stinky palls of smoke. Then, after the first born son smashes the skull of the dearly departed to let the soul travel freely, the remains are dumped into the sacred Jumuna. As Morris points out, most folks can only afford a bit of fuel, which cuts back on emmissions makes the crocodiles happy and gives the washerwomen something to watch as half-consumed corpses adorned with marigold garlands wash along. Mind you, it's not quite as exciting as before the British showed up to persecute the Hindus, when the entire harem got to burn alive with the departed. The post-colonial revisionists have yet to show us how that is a custom worth reviving, but I'm sure multiculturalism has a ways to go yet.

So increasing the concentration without understanding what the effects are is fine? Its one thing to say that temperature and CO2 concentration are not related. Quite another to say, no matter what concentration of CO2 is in the atmosphere, there will be no detrimental effects. Is making huge detrimental economic decisions a good idea without understanding whether they are needed or will have any effect whatsoever? Don't be daft. Oh, and btw, as someone else has mentioned, correlation between CO2 and extinctions does not equal causation, even if there had been mass extinctions at the same time as the last high concentration of CO2. Given the 800 year lag, it's highly doubtful that Co2 could have caused the warming that took place 800 years earlier, eh wot?

I am quite bit more competent than you are at structural engineering and physics ScottsA, having taken university level courses in both. With this background I can say with certainty that almost all of Riverwinds scientific statements are dead wrong. Systems behave according to the laws of thermodynamics always but in order to get to specific numbers you must establish a boundary of the system. One can easily say that the only source of energy according to the official version was the potential energy of the standing building. The fact that the buildings collapsed at freefall speed leaves no energy available to eject the masses upward and outward or break the concrete into dust. Draw your boundaries as you wish, but stick to topics you understand. See, here you go again. I don't care if you've taken university level courses in physics...I took first year biology during my arts undergrad, but I certainly don't hold myself as an expert in the mating habits of the snowy owl, which is what in effect you're doing vis a vis building collapse. Sorry, but your level of education in this just doesn't cut it, s don't bother appealing to your expertise. You're simply saying Riverwind is wrong and then trying to snow everyone with bafflegab. There is no possible way to draw reasonable boundaries around the event of the collapse given the variables...you're trying to appeal to a law that cannot be invoked precisely because you can't draw said boundaries. You can't close the system. Furthermore, the burdon of proof DOES lie with you. Every one of your alleged arguments that the collapse was "impossible" has been refuted, not only by riverwind but by the experts he has cited, and all you have offered is the repetition that he is wrong.

Furthermore, if someone wants to claim that something else happened, the burden of proof lies with the positive claimant. That means that there is no need for Riverwind to prove precisely how everything happened, because the vast bulk of probability lies with the events that 6 billion people saw in real time and numerous people filmed. But there is a requirement that the truthies show exactly how everything happened, and furthermore to produce at least ONE confession from the hundreds of people who must have been involved in this great big plot. Neither of those conditions has been met, and instead we've been treated to stories of nuclear weapons and ray guns and a whack of earnestly defended nonsense.

Fortunately for us you have no idea about science or what any of us are talking about. Riverwinds statements on science are completely wrong and can be seen as ridiculous by anyone with an elementary understanding of basic principles. Its not that the statements made are stateed incorrectly and that I am being picky - they are just about as wrong as you can be. Well Polly, you keep saying that his conclusions are wrong, but you don't actually back it up with anything other than a repetition that anyone with a high school understanding of "science" will know he's wrong. That's not evidence. I'm certainly not a scientist or physicist or structural engineer any more than you are, but even I know, for instance, that the "Laws" you're citing hold true only in a closed system. So that would make you completely as wrong as can be, wouldn't it? And riverwind's statements ARE backed up with evidence by doctorates in the specific field...one of them from MIT. Your only rebuttal? That he's a "gatekeeper" and completely wrong. That's not quite highschool level debate...that's just silliness.

I assume the left will find itself strained over whether to applaude "tolerance" or condemn CO2 emmissions...

If I were Polly or Kuzzad, I'd be shamed into withdrawal. I think Riverwind ought to be renamed with the title "Hammer of the TrVthies". What a slaughter...

From "The Spoof"? Do you read your links?

You probably shouldn't take her so seriously. I don't. You do. Claiming that the right is represented by her is like claiming the left is represented by Howard Stern or Abby Hoffman. Nice try. I must say though that any movement toward plain speaking is welcome in my books. PC euphemisms and a refusal to speak about "sensitive" issues galls me no end.

Well Rosie is thrice blessed by Political Correctness. Limbaugh is just a healthy white male, while Rosie is fat, female and fag. Until such time as she sits down to a heaping helping of African baby stew, she couldn't do anything wrong if she tried...

Sorry, no imperialist bloodshed...just a lot of happy Iraqis...

But that's just not true. You just made it up. I'm all for technological progress; it's just that I realize that technological progress isn't going to come along by shutting done industry and wearing hemp sandals. Can you point to one instance of me claiming I'm against technological progress? Here or on any other BB? Just one instance? If not, it would behoove you to stfu and go back to arguing that there are more american and british nazis than german nazis. No, I made up nothing. Fools who can't see the future are not the ones who will prosper from cleaning up the environment but that's their loss. But that's not what you said. You said I and everyone like me is against technological innovation. That's not true Woody. It's slander. Watch out for Figleaf. Technology is not some kind of Lukacsian dream, wherein you simply imagine it and it will become reality at a speed determined by how much money you throw at it, it is something that progresses slowly and builds upon itself. To simply announce that we're going to pull the plug on oil and build lots of windmills is not "pro-technology"; it's stupid and it's Luddite.

That's the best pro-Liberal apologia you can come up with? It's moved from "troops in the streets" to "they're just as bad as us"? That's certainly novel. Actually, it seems to me that on top of keeping more campaign promises in a year than the Liberals did in 13, Harper also broke through the decade long logjam over softwood and the decades long Japanese reparations. We've seen the Liberal supporters on here trying to come up with suitable outrages by the Evil Conservatives, but there just isn't much fodder and it ends up looking pretty silly.

You don't think the environment has become a big priority for the Conservatives all of a sudden? It wasn't as big of a political issue during the last campaign, but now that it has become a huge issue, it has become a priority for the Conservatives all of a sudden. How's that for conviction? Well, I haven't seen any signs of it becoming the centerpiece of the Conservative campaign, and that's not really the point anyway. Harper didn't become PM by promising zero emmissions from every pot, to borrow a paraphrase from Huey Long, but Dion became the Liberal nominee by doing just that, so one would think that the inspections are a tad belated, don't you think? I mean Mother Theresa didn't grandly announce that she was going to live in poverty and save the children, and then commission studies on how to become poor and change diapers, did she?

The lynchpin of this thesis is that US and Canadian immigration and visa monitoring would have to be identical. You cannot simply announce an identical result without engineering an identical endeavor. You would be wise to understand that what you are asking the Americans to understand is that they have to run Canada's security system for it, since Canada seems unwilling to do it. And that brings up the "s" word the canadian left is so concerned about whenever the topic of the giant to the south comes up for discussion. In any event, the US is not going to throw open its Canadian border anymore than it's going to throw open its Mexican border, until it feels comfortable with Canadian immigration and visitor procedures.

Woody, have you ever had your IQ tested, or does it just not register at a high enough level to test?

Probably it's the scandalous, false, slanderous, stupid, hateful, scurillous, things, rather than the 'provocative' ones. Goodness, we seem to have driven ourselves into a lather over her. Perhaps even a tizzy!

Harper didn't run his entire campaign with the "environment" as it's centerpiece like Dion did. One would think that a leader who is so concerned with the environment might have chosen to invite the inspectors in sometime before the Liberal Leadership convention was called, but then I suppose the Liberal ethos is a bit more pragmatic than other people's.

The object of war is to win, not to arrive at the end of it with the best claim to having not fought it. I understand that you don't want the US to win, so the best way to avoid that outcome is to insist that it fight against a streetfighter with one hand tied behind its back and the other confined by the Marquis of Queensbury rules. Geez...what a twisted way of looking at the world you have...

Is there really a significant rise of Anti-Semitism, is there more act ? are those act worst than before ? The reasonable accommodation is such a complex debate, at first when it started i didn't fully understand why we had to debate it, at first i thought it would only make trouble, but more and more i understand. When we are talking about tolerance, its not a one way thing, we can tolerate for believes and religions as long as it make sens and as it doesn't affect the principle of democracy and equality. People are afraid not to accomodate because they don't want to be called racist.They don't always agree or understand the accomodation but they are ignorant and afraid not to accept it. For sample, if a native french or english quebecker would ask not to be served by a woman policeman or doctor or banker, then we would fight vigorously against him for his discrimination against the women, but if it is an immigrant then we are afraid and we are more encline to accept. If the catholic or protestant church or a sect would ask evry women to wear the burka, then we would have riot all over the country, people would never accept this. But since its not the catholic or protestant church, since its a religion we are ignorant of, since we don't know how to deal with it, since it's come from an immigrant, we are afraid to ask them to remove the burka one or two second to be identified when they vote for an election... There is a limit we have to find, we must promote democracy, if we start to tolerate people that are not willing to tolerate democracy and equality then we are in some serious trouble. We must not confuse individual liberty and discrimination. People should not have the right to discriminate... we have the right to criticize, we have te right to think differently but we do not have the right to discriminate. We must not be afraid to be called racist, if we believe we are doing the right thing, that we are defending the democracy then we shouldn't be afraid... When Don Machperson say the rise of the ADQ is a victory for the anti-semit, I totally disagree with him, i think it is a victory against anti-semitism... Because for once it mean If you are white, french, english, jewish, muslim or anything it doesn't matter, as long as you understand what is democracy and you accept that we live in a country where the man and the woman are equal... Excellent post, shame about the name... The ADQ is socially right leaning, so it's incumbent upon the left leaning guardians of "Canadian" political culture to dis it in any way possible. It starts with CBC's intonation that "it's a protest vote" (anything to the right of the Liberal Party is a protest vote according to the CBC, including last federal election), and then degenerates into various talking heads anticipating the trucks rolling in the night...

Ask them how they fared in the Northwest Indian War, the Creek War, the Cayuse War, the Rogue River Wars, the Fraser Canyon War and about 25 other wars. Yeah yeah, I know...Little Big Horn too...

But that's just not true. You just made it up. I'm all for technological progress; it's just that I realize that technological progress isn't going to come along by shutting done industry and wearing hemp sandals. Can you point to one instance of me claiming I'm against technological progress? Here or on any other BB? Just one instance? If not, it would behoove you to stfu and go back to arguing that there are more american and british nazis than german nazis.

Then please educate me woody. Tell me where you think the term came from. Who were the Luddites and what did they do? I'm all ears. No, your mostly ars**ole. Luddites are fools, like you, who attempt to stop technological progress for fear it will hurt them. Well, that's kind of true in an historical sort of way, but I don't see anyone trying to stop technological progress except the folks whop want to shut down factories in favor of hemp sandals and communal living. I don't see me or anyone else on this side of the debate saying we should halt technological progress, do you? Oh, and be careful or figleaf will report you for pottymouth.

Lets see if qc1765 believes that you are an engineer.Why do you believe he/she is an engineering student? Now we're hinging the argument on what a student thinks?

Because you can't make hemp sandals with canola? And besides, hemp is like cool, because you can grow dope plants in the same field and pretend to be dumb when the RCMP notices great big resonous buds on some...