WIP

Even if he's not, he should be able to come right out and state his opinions on his philosophy of science, since applying for the job in charge of the government's scientific policy-making. His claim that no one has the right to ask about his religious beliefs is garbage. Anyone who's in public office should be required to explain all of their beliefs since so many people use their religious traditions to inform their opinions about science and social issues. That is the most disturbing part of this story since chiropractic draws its notions of healing from vitalism, and manipulating the spine is supposed to manipulate our lifeforce energy. Many chiropractors also oppose vaccination and water fluoridation policies. Has Goodyear been asked where he stands on these issues?

People are free to put together whatever they feel like believing in, but one place where I would draw the line is that you can't call yourself a fundamentalist Christian, who believes the Bible is inerrant and also believe in the theory of evolution for a number of reasons....let's see: according to the sciences of geology and paleontology, the history of life on earth has been a gradual unfolding of naturalistic processes. Animals evolve through a combination of random genetic mutation and the forces of natural selection. There are periods where animal and plant life seems to flourish and diversify, followed by periods of mass extinction where many species are wiped out, without any signs of divine intervention. Evolution is a slow, wasteful process that doesn't seem in keeping with some sort of deliberate design or purpose. Why would a creator create entire ecosystems, to only let them be destroyed by natural forces of volcanism and asteroid impacts? if the Genesis creation story is allegory instead of literal, the whole doctrine of Sin and death entering the world because of the Fall of Man goes right off the rails because the human race being part of a continuum of life that differentiated because of forces of natural selection, also means that the human race is not a unique creation that began with two people - Adam and Eve. They have to be the literal forebears of the entire human race before the Fall could be understood as a literal event in human history, and the reason for evil and death entering the world. An acceptance of evolution also means that some other stories, such as a literal global flood, have to be abandoned for the same reason, since there is no geological evidence for a global deluge or a divergence of present day humans and animals from ancestors who lived 4000 years ago, and went on a boat ride for 40 days and 40 nights while the earth was flooded. Religious people can combine evolution -- but it cannot be combined with biblical literalism, and that's why Stephen Harper and his fellow fundies are going to drag it out to the bitter end!

It is not the root cause of mental illness, although it can exacerbate symptoms since poor people are more likely to work in low status menial jobs or be unemployed. Some recent studies of stress-related illness have shown that contrary to expectations, the executives and managers may have stress from responsibilities of running a company or department, but that sort of stress is less damaging physically (less likely to raise cortisol levels) than stress related to feelings of lack of control on the job, or feeling trapped in dangerous public housing.

Everybody has their own experiences, but that's beside the point! Being on the outside gives me the perspective to see: the Religious Right's hostility towards science, attacks on abortion clinics, and continued support for a war promoted by deliberate lies, as evidence that it is a movement verging on fascism. So what! So do a lot of Christian fundamentalists who demand teaching creationism instead of evolution, and threaten to kill doctors and staff at abortion clinics. You build a case that Muslims are implacable enemies that cannot be dealt with by any peaceful means, so what are you offering as an alternative? You make a bogus charge that I'm denying there is a problem with Islam (have you read any of the comments I've posted right in this very thread?) because you know the alternative to negotiation is war, and it seems you are too gutless to come right out and say that you are advocating war, both within our countries against Islam and internationally against Muslim nations.

The Clash of Civilizations motif assumes that all world cultural groups are homogeneous and unchanging. The Muslim World is divided along ethnic and nationalistic lines even where they belong to the same branch of Islam. Similar to the Dark Ages, when European countries still fought wars even though they all were part of the Roman Catholic Church. It's not always just about religion! As for the religion, we wouldn't have the problems today with Islamic fundamentalism if the United States hadn't formed an alliance with Saudi Arabia back in the 1930's. Religion was losing its force in the Muslim World until the oil started flowing. It may have seemed like a good choice at the time, but many Arab and Muslim nations had communist insurgencies. The U.S. supported the Islamists and protected the Saudi and Gulf royal families as allies against Soviet-backed communists. Now it seems like letting the MiddleEast turn red would have been a better option! It has been true up until recent years, but now I find it unsettling that after 9/11, children from Muslim families started disappearing from the public schools - presumably being sent to new Islamic academies. With all the carping that goes on about public schools, the greatest benefit of them is putting kids from different backgrounds together in the same classrooms; so we could end up with the same problem of segregated Muslim enclaves as they have in England and France. Considering the trillions that Dubya sunk into a war effort that has depleted U.S. combat readiness, I would say that Gore couldn't have done any worse! Al Qaeda is still out there, the Taleban is poised to take over Afghanistan and most of Pakistan it seems; and Iran's position has been strengthened since the removal of Saddam.

You know, there are people who record solar activity and weather and climate data, so this doesn't have to be left to musing and wondering, a correlation between global temperatures and sunspot activity can be verified: Over the last 1,000 years most of the variability can probably be explained by cooling due to major volcanic eruptions and changes in solar heating. In the 20th century the situation becomes more complicated. There is some evidence that increases in solar heating may have led to some warming early in the 20th century, but direct satellite measurements show no appreciable change in solar heating over the last three decades. Three major volcanic eruptions in 1963, 1982 and 1991 led to short periods of cooling. Throughout the century, CO2 increased steadily and has been shown to be responsible for most of the warming in the second half of the century. As well as producing CO2, burning fossil fuels also produces small particles called aerosols which cool the climate by reflecting sunlight back into space. These have increased steadily in concentration over the 20th century, which has probably offset some of the warming we have seen. Changes in solar activity do affect global temperatures, but research shows that, over the last 50 years, increased greenhouse gas concentrations have a much greater effect than changes in the Sun's energy. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/4.html Check page 3! I already pointed out one study about increased ocean acidity caused by rising atmospheric CO2 levels.

It would be nice to see these douchebags at AIG get their bonuses lifted, but regardless of who's to blame for guaranteeing their reward for criminal behaviour (Chris Dodd or Tim Geitner) it is diverting attention from the most important issue -- a congressional investigation into how these derivative markets that created Credit Default Swaps, were allowed to flourish unregulated and grow to an estimated 45 trillion dollar market -- bigger than the stock and bond markets, and making AIG too big to fail, since so many banks would fail if they went bankrupt. With all the attention on bonuses, CNN and other news networks aren't giving any attention to the question of what is going to happen with these derivative markets. Are they going to be allowed to continue as a regulated business, or are CDS contracts so prone to abuse that they should be wound down and made illegal. Whatever happens to AIG bonuses, it doesn't answer whether these clandestine bubble markets will be allowed to continue on as they are doing now.

Mental illness is a biologically rooted problem, not an issue over character or how much money someone has. Someone who is bi-polar, schizophrenic, or has some other serious depressive disorder is more likely to be poor, since their illness will make it more difficult for them in interacting with others and even hold down a menial job. The simple fact is that different people with different serotonin transporters will also have more susceptibility to depression, and there is little that environmental factors such as wealth, will have on it -- except for the obvious -- the rich will have access to better treatment and better anti-depressant drugs.

And that's why I present my own observations as anecdotal evidence for the claim that more energy in the Earth's climate cycles, will mean more extremes in weather. It may not seem that way every day or every year, but anecdotal evidence on one side or the other is biased by personal viewpoint which determines how we collect information to store as long term memory. Besides that, weather is local, so someone living in a hotspot will think the whole earth is getting warmer, even if overall data gathered from around the world shows a cooling trend. Speaking of which, climate change deniers are making too much from the leveling or dip in temperatures in the last three years, since we went through several years of annual increase in global average temperatures. The La Nina effect in the Pacific, usually brings a cooling trend, and so does a decrease in sunspot activity, which indicates a decrease in energy from the Sun -- but both trends are cyclical, so what happens when the next El Nino begins and we start going through another active sunspot cycle? Since the levels of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere keep increasing every year, odds are it will mean an increase in the effects associated with global warming. I'm a little disappointed that no one seems to find the studies of increase CO2 absorption by the Earth's oceans and resulting acidification, to be of significant interest. This is what I find especially stupid and reckless about the deniers' position on this issue -- the acidification of oceans is going to have devastating effects on marine life, which will almost certainly impact on what's happening on land, so even if rising CO2 didn't cause global warming, we still have a problem if we can't stop the increase. The deniers' wave of the hand dismissal of these concerns is mindbogglingly stupid, since they don't seem to be willing to consider that changing climate may impact on us in ways that we can't foresee until it's too late to do anything about it.

Speaking of entertainers, what the hell does Laura Ingram know about anything? How long do you think she would last in a debate with John Stewart? The title "comedian" carries more weight than "actor" or "artist" when it comes to political debate, because if there is one thing and one thing only that comedians have in common, it's the ability to think fast, and that's why most politicians duck shows on like Stewart's, Bill Maher, or the Colbert Report - they fear the unexpected, so some douchebag like Dick Cheney will have an interview with CNN's John King, rather than John Stewart. Now, Ingram is just another cookie-cutter protege of right wing gasbags like Limbaugh and Hannity, who present one-sided, misleading information, and even outright lies, and will say anything to defend the rightwing agenda. Do any of them (besides Michael Medved) ever have guest with opposing viewpoints, or debate the opposition? Limbaugh in particular, is nothing more than a propagandist! There is very little real information content in his "stack of stuff," he only takes a handful of his carefully screened callers per hour, and rarely has guests, even conservatives! He would never have anyone from the opposition, and has ducked every attempt by his political adversaries to debate in public. Contrast Limbaugh with the highest ranking liberal radio talk show host - Thom Hartmann, who doesn't screen callers, has Republicans and guests from right wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, on a daily basis. That's the way radio used to be done by every talk show host before Limbaugh turned it into an exercise in brain-washing!

Look it up sometime! Atheism literally means NO theism, or no belief in God or Gods whatever. Atheism describes what a person doesn't believe, not what they do believe. To find that out, you may ask an atheist what they do believe in. Just don't expect every atheist to give you the same answer.....personally, I'm a secular humanist......so there! That's my belief. So, you think it's vain to want to have reasons for believing in things, rather than just blindly following the family tradition, or plunging into a religion on faith? Someone like you, who believes punishment awaits those who have the wrong beliefs, does not have the luxury to be completely honest about the validity of Christian theology. A belief system that hangs out the threat of hellfire for not buying the evidence, is weak on actual evidence, since it has to resort to blackmail to convince adherents to stay with the faith.

And I've only had sex with three different women in my entire life! And that could be why I don't feel wrapped up in whatever guilt trip makes you prattle on preaching about sinfulness and decadence. Feel free to self-flagellate over your past hedonistic ways, just don't assume it applies to everyone else!

You don't realize it, but you're describing a lot of Christians as well.

France, and most other European nations brought in cheap labour from Africa, Turkey and the MiddleEast and had no interest in integrating them in the first place! In Germany, more than two million Turks were brought in during the 60's and 70's when the German economy was booming and they did not have enough workers. They were given special residency permits, but not citizenship. France took in Algerians and West Africans from their former colonies, and moved them into suburban ghettos -- so Muslim or not, it's a specious argument to blame the immigrants from not becoming woven into the fabric of European nations when the host countries did their best to keep them separate in the first place. Oh! And what are we dealing with here exactly? Samuel Huntington coined that phrase for the book of the same name to describe what he considered would be the future conflicts after the end of the Cold War between groups of nations organized along cultural and religious grounds. And he saw Muslim and Western cultures as intractable enemies that cannot find common ground, therefore conflict and wars between Western and Muslim nations will be neverending.......and how does that differ from your position? Do you have anything to back up that contention that Muslims are moving here because they despise us? First generation immigrants, regardless of where they are from usually feel caught between the new country and the homeland. When their children go to school here, and make lives for themselves here, they are the ones who see themselves as Canadians or Americans, and do not feel at home when visiting the birth country of their parents. Have you actually ever talked to any Muslims? You seem to think that they have all come here as Al Qaeda sleeper cells! Okay, so they want to outbreed us, and commit terrorist attacks, so what do you suggest as a remedy, are you going to banish Muslims from this countriy or ban their religion? You voice your fears on a continuous loop, but I'm waiting to hear what your suggestions are for dealing with the problem. So this is your answer! More of the same! You're blaming Clinton for 9/11, and you have conveniently left out the fact that George Bush was in office for nine months and wasn't exactly doing anything about Al Qaeda or the warnings his administration was receiving about the threat of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil........although he was quick to seize 9/11 as an opportunity to invade Iraq, rather than spend the money improving security at home. If Bin Laden's strategy was to draw out a reactionary response and bleed America dry through excessive military spending, I would say he ended up as the big winner in the War on Terror, and George Bush made his victory possible!

Again, you are focusing solely on religion and disregarding the creation of ethnic ghettos in European cities, which is why we don't have the same Muslim riots here and in the United States. The reason you don't get it is because you don't see the similarities you share in your approach to the world with the religious Muslims. Now, unlike a lot of people here who always fall between two opposing camps on this issue, I don't carry an attitude of having everything figured out, and I recognize that this issue of trying to figure out the forces within the Muslim Community, and what approach to take towards the Muslim religion and its followers is going to be very difficult, because acquiescing to aggressive demands of Muslim Community activists on issues like education and Sharia Law, strengthens the fundamentalists and undercuts the position of moderates who want a more secular approach that will reduce the iron grip that Muslim clerics have in Muslim nations and even in some Muslim communities in the West. But, on the other hand, the approach you are advocating for - the "Clash of Civilizations" viewpoint that sees Islam as an intractable foe that can only be fought on the battlefield and should be outlawed in the West -- is like throwing gasoline on the fire, since the most hardline Muslims want to deal with a hostile community of Kuffars -- their greatest fear is that their young people are being seduced by Western culture and Western values( which they are!), and will be more moderate and neglectful in practicing their religion. The moderates are also marginalized by the crusading approach, since they are left appearing as apologists for the enemies of Islam. Many moderate Muslim spokespeople have commented during recent years that the War in Iraq was the worse thing that could have happened to the Islamic reform movements, since the clerics can always point their finger at the infidel crusaders invading Muslim lands. They have felt stuck biding their time until George Bush was out of office, and have been hoping that the new administration ends the war and the appearance that the U.S. government is trying to colonize the MiddleEast in the interests of oil development. The best approach is to take the same one towards Christian extremists as with Muslim extremists.

It brings into focus again the question of 'what is the best guide for making rules,' -- the deontological approach used by religious and every early ethical systems that categorize actions as either good or evil -- or the teleological approach, which maintains that good rules should lead to good consequences, that began when John Stuart Mill created a moral philosophy he called Utilitarianism. Most modern, pragmatic-thinking people prefer the consequence-based method in everyday life and even in on issues like condom distribution, the same person may not like sex outside of marriage, but will agree with condom distribution if it demonstrates a successful record of reducing AIDS and HIV infection rates....and it does, since one of the few African nations to take a modern approach to the AIDS crisis - Uganda - is one of the few success stories. Why should we be surprised that the Pope doesn't care how many people die of AIDS? He has a vested interest in upholding a system that focuses on actions, and he and his followers can always justify the deaths caused by their disregard of the consequences, by maintaining that these people have violated their divine rules and are condemned to hell anyway, so who gives a rats ass if they die of AIDS? I'm not so much bothered that the Pope thinks this way - that can be expected; what bothers me is that we now have a Prime Minister who is voicing this same claptrap about how his faith informs him about right and wrong to fundamentalist conservative supporters, indicating that he will take a Pope/George Bush approach to social policy issues here in Canada.

The sky must be falling, Oleg, you finally posted a comment I can relate to! I'm a little older than you, and I've had the feeling for the last few years that the weather is becoming more bizarre and extreme also. Though it seems that the summer heat waves don't last as long, just as in the winter, the temperature zigs and zags from mild to extreme cold from day to day. Instead of rain, we're getting deluged by cloudbursts that often cause flooding because the storm sewers can't accomodate the amount of precipitation. These sorts of extreme weather conditions always occur from time to time, but for many years I have been starting my workday with a three mile jog to work, and try to dress as lightly as possible, and I find myself adding layers one day, removing them the next, adding more the day after etc. -- and according tracking of severe weather and extreme temperatures by the NOAA, it's not just my imagination that the weather seems to have gotten worse over the last 20 years.

It's not just about the money! How much thought did you put into this argument about people in Third World countries having lots of children for retirement security when you unraveled it yourself by noting low life expectancy. Think about it - there is no such thing as retirement in these places where average life expectancy is less than 50 years. Unless they are gravely ill, they keep working until they drop dead, regardless of how many children they have! Their children are busy trying to earn enough to feed their own children. The single biggest factor in reducing the incentive for high birth rates is declining rates of infant mortality. When mothers are confident that most of their children will survive, they will have fewer children if they have access to birth control and birth control information.......and that's where religion steps in! In India, the MiddleEast, and Sub-Sahara Africa, birth rates were declining until the clerical establishments started working to remove U.N. and other agencies that were first set up in the 1960's to offer birth control information for women. As a result, the U.N. has had to revise their population estimates upward again, after three decades of decline in the rate of population growth. The population is not going to top out at any level unless a predicted implosion in global food production actually occurs. The Earth cannot sustain a population of 9 billion, especially 9 billion people trying to exploit more energy and natural resources to enjoy a Western standard of living. You probably won't accept this because of the source, but a research study made for the World Wildlife Fund last year estimated that it would take four more earths to supply the natural resources for the present population of 6.7 billion, if everyone was consuming on the level of the U.S. standard of living.....toss in two more earths for that 9 billion population if they were able to enjoy an American standard of living! Natural resources are not in-exhaustible, and the reliance on fossil fuels for energy is making large-scale changes in the global climate system. The natural environment is not separate from economic processes, and wastes and pollutants from these processes are already at levels that threaten the environment. There are limits to global economic growth because of the limits to what the planet's biosphere can sustain, and the assumption that market systems can just keep on expanding and consume more scarce and nonrenewable natural resources is absurd.

And we can tell your 300 million where to go......any questions?

He is the go-to guy by default apparently, since he's the only one exposing the fact that business reporting claims to be informing the public, and does the exact opposite - deliberately tries to mislead the average investor. He's the only broadcaster who confronted Cramer about his self-incriminating interview for Street.com that has been on Youtube for three months, and was ignored by everyone else in major media. Depends which market players you're referring to! The game is rigged by people with access to inside information, so they're not naive. It's the average investor who's bought into this buy-and-hold bullshit who is naive -- since they are putting up the money for the financial market strategists to make bets with!

No, those people are in your camp, not ours! Bible believers expect Jesus to come down and either destroy the Earth and take them to a new heaven and a new earth in the coming rapture, or he'll come down and fix everything after destroying all of the wicked non-Christians (including Christians from the wrong sects). The Gaia believers believe that Mother Earth is alive and more powerful than us, so we can't destroy the Earth. I'm more of a believer in what paleontologist Peter Ward has dubbed "the Medea Hypothesis" named after the Greek goddess who keeps eating her young, since the history of life on Earth shows that the planet is a hostile environment, and every so often, natural earth processes cause mass extinctions. Aside from earth processes, many extinctions occur when one species invades an isolated island where it has no natural predators, becomes too successful, increases its numbers to too large a size that it causes extinctions of other life forms and ends up dying out from destruction of its own habitat. Normally, this cycle only occurs in nature on small, isolated islands; but we have been so successful at molding the planet to suit our needs that we can consider the planet earth to be our island, and we may have become too successful for our own good.

Yes. I would say three children at most....and in Canada or the U.S., many people are having only one or two children because economic factors in the West are a high disincentive for large families. Mandatory population reduction strategies like China has used, would not be necessary if it wasn't for the "be fruitful and mulitiply" directives coming from religion that encourage people to have too many children. Many religions won't allow any forms of birth control, some teach that sex should only be for procreation, and many countries make abortion illegal, often in those very same countries that limit access to birth control; so take away archaic, antiquated traditions that encourage excessive population growth, and the world's population would be reducing on its own. So, do you have some plan for increasing the size of the planet, to accomodate the inevitability of neverending population growth? Find some way to make the Earth grow bigger, along with growing new supplies of natural resources that our civilized world depends on, and then we can have endless population growth without suffering any consequences......if not, the population is going to be reduced either by the easy way of gradual reduction, or the hard way of apocalyptic famine and plagues.

Now, wouldn't that help reduce drug gang profits?

Tough on crime has been an empty slogan for my entire adult life. If it wasn't for the fact that the general population is aging, crime rates would be higher than ever. Fighting crime should be about using ALL strategies that reduce crime, not just the ones that make good bumper sticker slogans for election time. And let's take a look at the reasons why gang violence is getting worse. A good start would be an increasingly profitable illegal drug business. And why is it so profitable? Because believers in the absolute God-given values that Stephen Harper spoke about in his latest pre-campaign speech will not accept decriminalizing or legalizing drugs that are being used by more and more people every year. It's a simple matter of supply and demand - just like in the days of Prohibition, if there is a demand for an illegal product, somebody is going to go into the business of supplying the market. "Tough on crime" policies of increasing charges for possession and destroying drugs during drug raids, increases the price for the addicts.....and how does that reduce gang violence again?

The part these conspiracy theorists are missing out on is that life in the West is a corrupting influence on this kind of fundamentalist religion, and will dilute fundamentalist zeal, just as it does with the fundamentalist Christians who are constantly complaining about hedonistic culture corrupting their young people.