WIP

So, let's all get together and do nothing and pave the way for the extinction of future generations! Get real! OUr modification of the environment can't even be compared with beavers and ants. And our modifications, even going back to the beginnings of agriculture are still recent developments in the history of life on Earth. According to zoologists tracking declining numbers of plant and animal species, we are already in a mass extinction cycle, even though most people aren't even aware of it. Climate change denial strategy seems to look more and more creationism: we never can tell exactly what we're arguing against. First deniers claim CO2 isn't increasing, then the increase isn't man-made, then increase CO2 lags temperature increases, now it's sure, CO2 levels are rising and the earth is getting warmer, but that's a good thing! A good thing maybe if you want to see the end of life on Earth, since past melting of the Arctic sea ice and high CO2 levels coincided with the worse mass extinctions in the planet's history. It can be both an ecological problem and a human economic problem; and in the past, ecological disasters have inspired mass migrations of people and wars, such as the barbarian invasions of the Huns and later the Mongols. Which is why the Earth's population needs to decrease instead of increasing......but hopefully in an orderly fashion and not one of those Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse population reduction strategies.

Spare me! To begin with, your 1975 article has nothing to do with the problem I mentioned that half of the CO2 we are producing is being absorbed by the world's oceans and making conditions more acidic and destroying corals and other marine life. And since you're offering an opinion on a scientific topic, have you considered asking yourself whether your old Newsweek article represented the consensus of scientific opinion at the time, or was the research they were citing an outlier even back at that time? Climate myths: They predicted global cooling in the 1970s This scenario was seen as plausible by many other scientists, as at the time the planet had been cooling (see Global temperatures fell between 1940 and 1980). Furthermore, it had also become clear that the interglacial period we are in was lasting an unusually long time (see Record ice core gives fair forecast). However, Schneider soon realised he had overestimated the cooling effect of aerosol pollution and underestimated the effect of CO2, meaning warming was more likely than cooling in the long run. In his review of a 1977 book called The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age, Schneider stated: "We just don't know...at this stage whether we are in for warming or cooling - or when." A 1975 report (pdf format) by the US National Academy of Sciences merely called for more research. The calls for action to prevent further human-induced global warming, by contrast, are based on an enormous body of research by thousands of scientists over more than a century that has been subjected to intense - and sometimes ferocious - scrutiny. According to the latest IPCC report, it is more than 90% certain that the world is already warming as a result of human activity (see Blame for global warming placed firmly on humankind). Update: A survey of the scientific literature has found that between 1965 and 1979, 44 scientific papers predicted warming, 20 were neutral and just 7 predicted cooling. So while predictions of cooling got more media attention, the majority of scientists were predicting warming even then. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11643

Now, doesn't the fact that these European banks (and Wall Steet banks) viewed AIG credit default swaps as a safe means to increase the amount of leveraging in the markets, show you that Greenspan was wrong, and they should have been regulated right from the start? And that makes it okay? No, it's only academic to the people who won't admit that markets are not always self-correcting and that banking deregulation and the refusal to regulate new derivative investments created this monster.

It seems we may have a problem now that the Canadian Islamic Congress is trying to take over as the leading association of Muslims in Canada, but we are still a ways off from the problems in Europe. Keep in mind that much of the problem with European Muslim populations stems from cultural and racial problems, more than religion. Especially in France, where most of the Algerian and other North African Muslim communities that riot every summer are not all that observant, and a lot of the strife can be traced to the creation of suburban ghettos for immigrants, and the fact that they are not considered "real" French by the natives. The strange dichotomy that many Islam critics who work on behalf of Neoconservatives and the religious right is that they never mention that the threat of Islamic fundamentalism is directly proportional to the world price of oil. Oil has financed Saudi Arabia's public and private Islamification program that has built mosques and madrassahs with Wahabbi-trained clerics all over the world. Instead of fighting wars and making deals to get access to MiddleEast oil, a concerted effort to end dependence on oil would have drained the swamp and eliminated the funds that fueled the most aggressive forces within the Muslim World. End Western dependence on oil and you'll end the most aggressive forces within the Muslim World.

When religion is interwoven with culture, it's very difficult to separate where one begins and one leaves off. The problem with putting all the blame on a cultural tradition that views women as a threat to the social hierarchy, is that these same people will almost certainly tell you that religion is everything in their culture. Every aspect of life in most Muslim-majority nations has to follow the directives of the clerics. So a Muslim society, that is following Sharia Law in varying degrees, should be confronted about the reasons why they either condone honour killings, or do not intervene. For example, how much do the misogynistic Sharia rules about women maintaining their purity and family honour, play in providing the inspiration for honour killings of women who have refused arranged marriages, or have been seen talking to strange men? There certainly are! People that go into a rage easily, when angry, are going to be more likely to be ruled by impulse and less able to hear that little voice saying 'this may not be such a good idea!' The problem is those other factors can be held up for scrutiny -- but religion remains on that top shelf, where a lot of people want it left so that a doctrine that 'religion is a positive force in society, and only causes evil when it is misinterpreted' remains as the common wisdom and no one is allowed to criticize or even analyze the merits of each religion.

I used to be a member of the Progressive Conservatives mainly because they were consistently opposed to the Liberal moves of concentrating more and more power in the hands of the federal government. But today, with the Stephen Harper-led Conservatives following just about everything in the Republican Party playbook, I would have to support any party (even the Liberals) to put the Cons back in the Opposition benches in Parliament.

I'm glad somebody noticed! So far, Stephen Harper has played his evangelical cards pretty close to his vest -- likely because he hasn't forgotten how Stockwell Day was ridiculed by Jean Chretien's hatchet man for saying that he didn't believe in evolution. Actually, I had more regard for Stockpile than for Stephen Harper because he came across as much more honest and sincere about his beliefs. When he was cornered on the evolution/intelligent design question, he did not feel that dodging the question or changing the subject was the right option. Harper may share those beliefs, but I get the feeling that the skillful way he tries to finesse religion means that he is more interested in what religion can do for him politically, than any deeply held metaphysical beliefs. I think his religion talk is a message directed at social conservatives, who form a more enthusiastic, highly motivated, and dependable base for the Party than people that are supporters just for lower taxes and other economic reasons. His careful choice of words indicates that he wants to give "dog whistle" statements, that will be recognized by a small, highly motivated target audience, but will be largely ignored by the less devout or religiously motivated. The problem is that these social conservatives have to be thrown red meat on a regular basis to keep them onside. So, I would expect a Harper government to adopt a U.S. style tough-on-crime approach, that may not actually reduce crime, but will nevertheless fill up the prisons. He'll push as hard as he can against gay rights and abortion rights -- I don't think Canada is fertile territory yet for banning stem cell research, and trying to ban abortion and gay marriage, as the Bush Administration did. But, he will push as far as he can, and he will use that line about how his faith informs him about right and wrong when the next campaign is underway.

Could be! I pick up the show on the Comedy Network, which carries most of Comedy Central's shows. Thanks, I thought that should have been obvious, but bc resorts to his usual hair-splitting to divert a topic when he doesn't have any real points to make and wants to act like he's getting the last word. Leading up to the big showdown, media pundits were asking why Stewart was focusing so much fire on CNBC, implicitly suggesting that his reasons were something other than real outrage -- but when Cramer took the stage, he had nothing to say in his own defense besides some mealy mouthed excuses like "sure, we could of did a better job" over and over again. Cramer could not lie about knowing the game that's played by market manipulators on Wall Street because he's one of them! Stewart played excerpts from Cramer's self-incriminating Street.com interview by Aaron Task that's been circulating on Youtube since October, that received little attention from the public for the simple reason that NOBODY in the media is reporting on the games that hedge fund managers and former managers like Cramer, play to artificially inflate and deflate stock values to suit their own interests. And the reason why Stewart considers management at CNBC to be the main offenders is because they knowingly hired a cheat and a fraud and packaged him as an honest adviser that the viewing public could trust. His assessment that the players have sold the public on a "buy and hold" strategy and leave their money in so these guys and their friends could play games with it. Whether it is a legal fraud or a criminal racket, it is still a game that's just as dishonest as the one that was played in the 1920's, except that the public has more at stake in it today, since their pension fund managers may have unwittingly put some of their money at risk even if they don't invest directly in the market themselves.

Actually it was on Thursday nigth, but I was working and had to watch the Friday afternoon rebroadcast. You do realize that these shows are available in Canada I hope! I was waiting for someone else to post it, and when there were no takers here, I put it up myself.

Yes, ignorance is bliss! I suppose your planning on being dead before the shit really hits the fan, but our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren are going to pay the price for the greed, gluttony, and wanton destruction of the natural environment, all in the name of profit and wealth. Climate is a complex, poorly understood subject, and yet you and other conservatives who put greed before the common good, are willing to take the word of a few oil company-funded deniers as the last word on the subject. The truth is that the worse effects may not even be what's going on in the atmosphere, but instead what's happening to the world's oceans which absorb about half of that CO2 that's pumped into the atmosphere every year: ScienceDaily (Feb. 23, 2009) — A dramatic increase in carbon dioxide levels is making the world's ocean more acidic, which may adversely affect the survival of marine life and organisms that depend on them, such as humans. The article "Off Balance Ocean" is scheduled for the Feb. 23 issue of Chemical & Engineering News. In the article, C&EN Associate Editor Rachel Petkewich notes that the increased use of fossil fuels has caused levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to nearly double since the Industrial Revolution. The ocean absorbs large amounts of carbon dioxide — about 22 million tons a day — causing the water's pH to decrease or acidify. The pH scale measures how acidic or alkaline substances are. The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14. A pH of 7 is neutral. A pH less than 7 is acidic. A pH greater than 7 is alkaline. The ocean's pH is currently about 8.1, down from 8.2 in the 18th century, the article notes. Scientists project that the ocean's pH will fall by about 0.3 more units in the next 50 to 100 years. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/...90223091752.htm

Go to hell! My actual country has just as much skin in this game as yours. Recently in my town, one of steel mills is shutting down operations indefinitely, auto plants are closing -- all thanks to the idiots you proudly wear as a nametag, and have been an apologist for these idiots who left the fox in charge of the henhouse. Yes, let's hear it for "let the market decide." They turned your banking system into a ponzi scheme that has wreacked havoc not only inside the United States, but all around the world.

I watched the highly anticipated confrontation between Jim Cramer and John Stewart on a rebroadcast of Thursday night's Daily Show, and I sure wasn't disappointed. Although I was surprised that Stewart went for the jugular as aggressively as he did; he showed videos of Cramer bragging about using lies and deception to increase his profits while working as a hedge fund manager, cheerleading over-valued stocks until the wheels finally fell off the wagon........then he and Rick Santelli were quick to try to misdirect attention by blaming the Obama Administration for the collapse! Watching Cramer's pathetic excuse of an apology, I was left wondering to myself why we don't see this kind of hard-hitting journalism on the shows that are supposed to be informing the viewer! For several years now, I've listened to pundits carp about how young people are getting their news from a comedy show, as if this will make them a less informed segment of the population. In truth, viewers will learn more about politics and business from the Daily Show than they will from CNBC, CNN, MSNBC and worst of all - FoxNews. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090314/ap_on_...ncial_reporters http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1YXLM3YBZg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRb0Kh64FhE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRSodN--Gao

Where have you been the last six months?

They're as guilty as fraud as Bernie Madoff! There has already been one AIG executive convicted of fraud , there will be more! They can enjoy using their bonus money to buy protection for themselves in a prison general population!

You know, actuallly what infuriates me most about the financial meltdown isn't the greed and fraud committed by the CEO's, it's the fact that they never would have had the opportunity to create the bubble that went bust if two things hadn't been allowed: 1. Being allowed to grow to the point where AIG and the major banks became companies that are "too big to fail." and 2. Alan Greenspan, refusing to allow newly invented derivatives like these credit default swaps, to be traded on an unregulated market that most of us who do not have firsthand knowledge of finance and investments did not even know existed until they started bringing down investment banks and insurance companies. Here's Greespan a few years back when he was too big to fail - or was considered so golden that no Democratic or Republican politician would dare challenge him, shooting down the idea of regulating derivatives before a Senate committee: For more than a decade, the former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has fiercely objected whenever derivatives have come under scrutiny in Congress or on Wall Street. “What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn’t be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so,” Mr. Greenspan told the Senate Banking Committee in 2003. “We think it would be a mistake” to more deeply regulate the contracts, he added.

This just in: AIG, the insurance company that ran a side business underwriting high risk investments for high profits, and ended up as the largest single recipient of federal bailout money (170 billion), is rewarding its top executives with 165 million in bonuses! Isn't it time for federal marshalls to slap the cuffs on them and haul them off to jail? Maybe they can spend some time getting to know Bernie Madoff!

By any chance, did you have much to say regarding the stumbling and staggering of the Bush Administration that started two wars on a credit card, gutted and ruined the effectiveness of most government departments, by appointing loyal, know-nothing imbeciles to run them? "you're doing a hell of a job, Brownie!"

Speaking of people who aren't interested in discussion.....I am nevertheless going to hold your feet to the fire when you present one-sided information. This is from the hospital factsheet referenced in your quote from the Wikipedia article: Amillia was breathing without assistance at birth and even made several attempts to cry. Due to this level of fetal development, doctors believed that she was closer to 23 weeks in gestational age when she was born. Because Amillia was conceived by in vitro fertilization, it was possible to pinpoint her exact gestational age. It was only after reviewing the mother's in vitro fertilization records, that doctors learned that Amillia was in fact a "miracle baby." • A full-term pregnancy is 37-40 weeks. The American Association of Pediatrics indicates that babies born at less than 23 weeks of age and 400 grams in weight are not considered viable. The mortality rate for infants born at 23 weeks is 70 percent, according to the National Institutes of Health. There is no known baby born at less than 23 weeks in gestational age that has ever survived. About 500,000 infants are born prematurely each year. • "It may be that we need to reconsider our standard for viability in light of Amillia's case. Over the years, the technology that we have available to save these premature babies has improved dramatically. Today, we can save babies that would have never survived 10 years ago," said William Smalling, M.D., neonatologist at Baptist Children's Hospital. That first point, that doctors at the hospital estimated that her "gestational" age as at 23 weeks highlights a point that is rarely mentioned on this topic: fetal development takes place at different rates of development; so a 21 week old fetus may be equivalent in development to an average 23 week old fetus. And it's possible that a 25 or 26 week old fetus may still not be viable outside the womb. And that's why you can't set fixed cutoff lines. And this is beside the point anyway, since a fetus at this stage is already into the 3rd trimester of development, making abortion much more difficult legally and more risky physically to obtain. This issue of whether a fetus can survive outside the womb has no bearing on the abortion debate regarding the majority of abortions that are performed at clinics, and occur at much earlier periods of gestation. So, this whole point here is a red herring! Also noted in the article, are the high odds against survival of a fetus that is this premature; as noted above, less than 30% will survive, and it's almost a given that there will be complications and/or defects do deal with. It's not exactly like everything is going to be okay afterward.

Nice! I was struggling yesterday to get that point across.

And what a pile of bullshit this steaming heap was! I guess Harper is getting a few more Republican consultants now that they've crashed and burned in their homeland; there was an article a few weeks ago that noted that Bush appointees are struggling to find new jobs! Maybe they would have better luck if they took it off their resumes! What bothers me most about Harper, is not his hypocrisy -- trying to wear a fiscal conservative mantle, while building up a 95 billion dollar deficit -- no, what I find the most ominous are the implications that he is going to play the religion card and use "faith" to secure a base that will work for him even if he's a total disaster like George W: Harper told the group that his version of conservatism is summed up "in three Fs:freedom, family and faith." I suppose he'll promise the 3 F's and then give us the 4 F's once he's got a majority government! He said individual freedom is vital but it must be tempered by family and faith. In Mr. Harper's mind, faith has less to do with a particular religion and more to do with morals, he said. "Faith in all its forms teaches . . . that there is a right and wrong beyond mere opinion or desire. Most importantly, it teaches us that freedom is not an end in itself, that how freedom is exercised matters as much as freedom itself." A little red light should go off every time a politician makes an appeal to faith. Faith means believing in things that are unseen and have no evidence. Yeah, that's what a politician needs.....a populace that will take his word on faith! I hope it's just a tiny minority of Westerners that are dumb enough to swallow this one. That part about "Faith in all its forms teaches . . . that there is a right and wrong beyond mere opinion or desire" is a dangerous philosophical position in the hands of any politician! Most modern nations have been trying to move their judicial philosophies away from deontological systems that focus upon adherence to independent moral rules or duties, usually taken from traditional religion-based codes that claimed to have perfect laws that transcend the human condition. Teleological systems are results oriented, and if rules work, then they're good whether or not they are in accordance with preconceived notions about right and wrong. For example, what Stephen Harper is saying when he announced another, tougher drug enforcement scheme a little while back, is that he is willing to escalate the War on Drugs even though the policy of the last few decades has made the problem worse. He'll keep pouring more money into more police, more prisons, to fight the war on drugs because he is fighting sin, and disregards the costs, which include: more drugs, more addicts, more drug crimes, more drug dealers.....the higher cause is too important to fight to be swayed by actual events on the ground......and that's why I want Harper, Conservatives and the religious right followers they are trying to appeal to put the curb like the Americans did with their conservative crackpots in the last election.

Fine by me! But once we get a woman pregnant, all we have to do is wait for it to come out of the oven! You don't have to go through morning sickness, waddle around watching your belly getting bigger and bigger as the due date approaches....it can be trying for a man who's wife is going through a difficult pregnancy, and worrying about what is going to happen in the delivery room....is she going to be okay....is the baby going to be allright......but the most a man can do is to provide support and encouragement, and try to make it easier for his wife.....the actual trials of pregnancy and birth are not something that a man experiences, so if I was a woman, I would consider it an insult if any man claimed his role was just as important, and he should have a say over whether she has an abortion or has to deliver his baby! Get yourself pregnant, deliver a baby, and then you can claim equal rights! I can imagine that if you were really looking forward to having a child, you could not accept that your wife would have an abortion instead and that would likely be enough to end a marriage; nevertheless if it happened to me, I might have felt like ending my marriage if I felt my wife was having an abortion out of spite, but I still would not support a policy of forcing a woman to have the baby because the husband (and soon to be ex-husband) wanted a baby. This argument has been tested in court and lost because of that simple fact of whose body is hosting a developing baby......contributing sperm is not enough to override the desires of the woman unless we go back to the old ways when women had few, if any rights.

But, as previously noted by Argus, Achmed Hussein has the problem of having lots of company with him in his honour-killing assignment; it cannot be written off as an anomaly, like a Jew going on a rampage at a Red Lobster would be. In the case of the TV station owner who beheaded his wife, he is a professional, well educated, lived in the United States for over twenty years, and made it his special mission in life to show Americans that Muslims can fit in to the fabric of American life -- and what does he do when he's served with divorce papers? He pulls a scimitar off the wall and chops his wife's head off! And, according to police who were first on the scene, he did not attempt to flee or demonstrate any remorse for his action, but instead appeared proud of himself and claimed that he had to do it to defend his honour. Am I wrong to see religious and cultural significance behind this act? If he had shot her or stabbed her, it might not have grabbed national attention, but a beheading.....where did he get that idea from? Of your hypothetical group, Achmed is the most likely to beat up his daughter, because he belongs to a religion that considers women to be of less worth than men, and stresses the shame brought on the family if she is accused of fraternizing with non-Muslim boys. An atheist does not have any predetermined ethical positions because atheism is an absence of belief in gods and supernatural forces that cannot be seen or proven to exist. An atheist has an obligation to do some study of his own in order to make consistent ethical judgments. An atheist could be a humanist, a Marxist, or a selfish libertarian like Ayn Rand disciple - Alan Greenspan. Atheists are defined by what they don't believe in, not what they believe in. And Rastafarians...........what do they believe in......besides smoking pot?

Yeah, I wonder when that shoe will drop on us too, because if you talk to some people who come from countries like Guatemala and El Salvador, where the Catholic Church is in bed with the government and has been granted extensive authority over education and the judicial process as well, it sounds a lot like Saudi Arabia with crosses.

Okay, I'm a little confused here! If she had an abortion, how do you know the hair colour of the child? Nevertheless, assuming that she had an abortion, that would be her choice to make, not yours, since the developing fetus is inside her body, not yours. I don't know what stage she had the abortion, but as a general rule, the new life that you helped make, is dependent on her body, not yours, so her rights should take precedence over whatever rights you feel you had as an expectant father to be. You'll run into a lot of opposition from Catholic theologians and other conservative Christians over that point, but yes there are many Christian scholars who studied that early period of Christianity, and as best they can determine, the early churches gave women a much higher position than they would receive in the later Catholic and Orthodox churches. Some later biblical manuscripts even had references to female church officials removed or changed their names to make it appear that the references were to men, since the later church did not want women to have any leadership roles. What's there to know, except that those of us who can't have babies should not be telling the ones who can what conditions they are allowed to terminate the pregnancy. Like it or lump it, men do not have the power to bring new life into the world, so we are never going to be equal to women on this issue, and we can either accept that fact, or we can do what men have tried to do throughout history: control all aspects of a woman's fertility and force her to have as many babies as the man wants. A lot of guys want to turn back the clock so we can still live in that world; I'd rather move on, because if the women are happier, then life is better for us as well. I never fail to be amazed at how many misogynistic woman-hating types who want to domineer the women in their lives are always complaining about women making their lives miserable! Who likes being a prisoner? I don't know the actual events of your unfortunate bad marriage, and I've only been married once and have never had to go through divorce, custody battles and all those other headaches, so I might not be able to fully relate to all of the divorced dads out there. I do know that for every horror story I hear from the guy paying alimony and child support, I hear at least as many stories from women who were beaten, abused and cheated on by their ex-husbands; so I can't accept a general scenario that women and specifically the feminist movement is to blame for societies' ills today -- things actually seemed to be worse back in the good old days when the women had to put up and shut up about abuse and the philandering of their husbands who went out drinking on the weekend and left them at home with the kids.

I'm trying to get caught up on topics that I've missed, and scanning through the pages of this thread, I'm not seeing anything that has anything to say about the actual subject of the thread. By any chance has anyone actually commented about the U.N. resolution sponsored by Muslim advocates that want to try to shut down criticism of their religion. Now, there are people on this forum who want to try to stop criticism of Christianity, but as of now, they don't have the hubris to try something like this attempt to permanently entrench the grip of Islam. In many Muslim nations, the religion runs the government, the courts, the banks, the media....every facet of life has to conform to the dictates of this religion! But just in case there are cracks in theocratic tyranny, such as the off chance that some beleaguered Muslims might read something on the internet produced by infidels who challenge the validity of the Quran, and the merits of being totally burdened by religious tyranny, along comes this U.N. resolution to try to make it an in an international crime to shine a little light on the subject. This couldn't come at a worse time, since it would be nice to have an international body that can be trusted, because of real problems that affect every nation like climate change, genocides, food crises, destruction of tropical rainforests etc. Any thoughts? I'm not interested in reading about whatever the hell is going on in China!