WIP

But how do we succeed at fixing the environment without developing new technologies that provide clean energy and cleaner manufacturing? Remember, if it wasn't for the original space program, we wouldn't have solar panels for one thing! They were originally developed for satellites and the first space station. And one of the key points about the Biosphere 2 experiment in the early 90's is that ecosystems were found to be much more complicated than originally imagined! The greatest danger of the present situation regarding pollution and greenhouse gases, is that no one has any idea how the Earth's ecosystem is reacting to the changes we're already making. A complete theory of biospherics, originally built for the purpose of providing life-sustaining ecosystems in space colonies, may have a secondary benefit of giving us a better idea of how largescale ecosystems like the Earth's will react to future changes. It could answer questions such as whether there is a point where rising CO2 levels will lead to a runaway greenhouse effect. Right now, there is so much that is not understood about ecosystems that it's a lot of guesswork. All we know right now is that CO2 levels can't keep rising indefinitely without leading to a catastrophic extinction as happened 250 million years ago. http://geology.about.com/od/extinction/a/aa_permotrias.htm

Hold on a second! You're mixing apples and oranges here! I was talking about sexual orientation (or preferences). That's different than sexual behaviour as evident in the rampant homosexuality that goes on in prisons. Most of the men who are incarcerated would not be interested in screwing guys if they were on the outside; but there are plenty of jailbirds who will take whatever's available. The same situation occurs in the sexually segregated cultures in the MiddleEast. Even though it's a crime punishable by death, large numbers of young, unmarried men engage in sodomy, and inspite of the religious taboos, homosexual themes have been a popular subject in the literature of the Islamic World for centuries! http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/center...s/Shalakany.pdf Wouldn't homosexual desires define identity? Regardless of whether or not the person has even had sex, their sexual desires for members of their own sex are going to be a crucial factor in how they view themselves in society. There wouldn't be gay sub-cultures otherwise. No, because you seem to be implying that people don't have a right to define their sexual orientation by their feelings and desires, and instead seem to be insisting that its all about sexual behaviour. It's pretty clear that rejection and hostility to gays was the major reason why so many have felt that they had to move to gay ghettos, like the Church and Wellesley neighbourhood in Toronto. Since there seems to be a greater level of acceptance these days by mainstream society, alot of that polarization should ease a bit.

You know, ignorance can be dispelled with a quick google wordsearch! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15750604/ Homosexual behaviour has been studied by zoologists for ages, and observed among many animal species even outside of the mammal group. If you think there were no homosexuals before the 19th century, you can do your own search of Ancient Greece and a few other civilizations that were among the few to tolerate homosexuals in public life. Just because religious ignorance led the masses to hate and kill homosexuals for centuries doesn't mean they had any logical basis for their fears. I am lefthanded, and being lefthanded was as dangerous as being a witch in the dark ages since the majority of people were righthanded! Face the fact that some people are different, and there is no reason for you to try to persecute them just because they don't have the same sexual turnons that the majority have. Until you can come up with something beyond superstition to justify the time-honoured policy of harassement, then let them live their lives in the way that brings them happiness!

No, Biosphere 2 was designed to operate as a closed system. The two full-scale trial runs that were made in the early 90's both failed for different reasons. The first, as previously mentioned, was because the CO2 levels kept increasing as oxygen levels dropped. Attempts to correct the system failed, so the biosphere had to be opened and the experiment stopped prematurely. The 2nd attempt ended before the physical tests could be studied because of a personnel problem. A dispute between crew members grew ugly and ended with two members deliberately sabotaging the experiment by opening doors and compromising the containment. This was an unforeseen problem that could also arise in future long duration space missions. The Biosphere 2 facility is still used for ecological and engineering studies, but there haven't been any attempts since 1994 to try another sealed containment experiment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 Looking at the big picture, I am in full agreement with you that it should be a top priority to get things in motion so that the human race can start to move off of this rock and venture out into space. But while you're putting together your theory, I would like you to consider that the anti-science and technology movement comes from two opposing sides of the political spectrum. In one corner, you mentioned the green movement; but it's only a radical core of the environmental movement that is hostile to the modern world, and wants us all to grab our spears and bow and arrows and move back into the forest to live at one with nature! Left wing utopianism grew out of post-modernist philosophy that takes the view that there is no absolute or even reasonably veriable truth. Postmodernism moves away from any kind of objectivity and considers all viewpoints equal. So the scientific method is no more reliable for finding water in the desert than hiring a water dowser with a magic stick! The postmodernists generally reject the value of everything that modern science, technology and culture have given us. Needless to say, this viewpoint is popular with utopians who see everything modern as corrupt and want to destroy civilization. But, an even greater threat to civilzation has come up from the opposite side. In Christianity and Islam, you have hardline fundamentalist strains that became alarmed when scientific discovery started challenging their theological interpretation of the world a few centuries ago. First, Galileo and Copernicus destroyed the concept of a flat or circular earth that had a foundation, with stars suspended from a vaulted ceiling that had heaven, or in the case of Islam - seven heavens - above, and primordial waters under the earth. And not only wasn't the Earth flat, it wasn't even at the center of the Universe, so to keep us as the central focus of God's creation required lots of theological reinterpretations of scriptures. Then, two hundred years ago, the science of geology began and the first geologists were determining that the Earth had to be much older than the Christian story of 6000 years. And shortly after, came another hit that still hasn't been resolved - Evolution. Over the years, the mainline churches have accomodated evolution by natural selection with their theology, but conservative fundamentalists still refuse to give in and keep raising an endless stream of objections. The overall effect has been a hostility to science, scientists, and teachers who use their material. Many creationist groups like Answersingenesis highlight polling results that show the upper echelons of the scientific community (N.A.S. members) where only 7% believe in God and 8% believe in personal immortality, as evidence for the evil atheist scientific conspiracy to destroy their religion. http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html And that theme is picked up in books written by cretins like Ann Coulter (Godless) and Ben Stein's attempt at a Michael Moore impression (Expelled). The hostility towards science from Islamic fundamentalism is a big part of the reason why the Muslim World is mired in poverty inspite of billions of dollars in oil revenues; and there are advance warning signs that the fundamentalist Christian assault on science education in the U.S. is leading children from fundamentalist families to ignore the sciences, and go for law degrees instead. Needless to say, a public that is hostile to science is not all that enthused about space colonization either! When I was on a U.S. forum, many of these people considered it a waste since the 2nd Coming and the Rapture was imminent! N.A.S.A. has had its overall budget cut by the Bush Administration, and what's left is being earmarked for prestige programs like manned flights to Mars; which they are depending on the generosity of a future administration to provide enough funding to make the mission a reality! Under the present situation, the world will have to wait for Europe, China or someone else to step up and get space exploration going again!

In a first-past-the-post election system, they are being denied the opportunity to have at least one or two members in parliament to have an opportunity to question governing members. Not that they'll get any answers! Question period is 99% grandstanding by the opposition vs. diversion, blame-shifting and just plain refusal to address the questions asked.............but at least it gives the reporters something to write about. And under the present system, any party like the Greens, which has a significant voter base, and an opportunity to displace one of the major parties (NDP), is relegated to the same status as the other fringe parties with virtually no support. In the last Ontario election, the Green Party took more than 8% of the popular vote, next was the Family Coalition Party with 0.8% and Libertarian with 0.2%. In a proportional system, the Greens probably would have been the only ones to have enough votes to win seats in the provincial parliament. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_gener...esults_by_party

I'm still a little bewildered about what kind of meditation you were doing! I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but the basic mindfulness and concentrative meditation techniques that are taught to beginners don't create any kind of hallucinatory experiences. You might experience a sense of euphoria or a feeling of oneness if you practise every day, but what you're describing is something more akin to Buddhist monks who spend hours each day for years at a time in meditation. Most of us have busy lives and don't have time to devote even if we wanted to. Meditation is a practise of mind-control, not losing control! To me, the "speaking in tongues" practise that many Pentacostals do is more of a risk of losing control since the person deliberately throws themself into a trance-like state.

Those 3rd, 4th, and 5th tier parties may raise issues that the major parties choose to ignore. The environment is a case in point! Before global warming and high oil and gas prices became a frontburner issue with the public, the three majors were able to do a little green talk at campaign rallies and offer nothing of substance. The Liberals signed the Kyoto Protocol and offered up no strategy to meet the targets. At least if you have a few of those 3rd, 4th, and 5th tier parties in parliament, there will be a chance to raise issues that aren't convenient for the Libs, Tories and NDP to deal with.

Okay! I'm a big fan of the space program, but this is definitely irrational exuberance! Until high tech concepts like the space elevator become feasible, there is not going to be space colonization. You have to separate what's technically feasible with what's economically viable - when I was young, magazines like Popular Science had continuous stories about how we would all have flying cars by now! The technology made it practical, but cost and crowded air space made it impractical. The big problem with permanent space bases and colonies in L5 orbit, is that ground-based simulations of artificial environments have been a disaster! Back about 15 years ago, there was a multimillion dollar enclosed environment built in the Arizona desert named Biosphere 2. The attempts to keep it running as a sealed environment were failures; the scientists were unable to maintain steady oxygen and CO2 levels, insects and plants started dying, and environmental scientists started realizing that creating a self-sustaining biosphere would be more complicated than just throwing water, air and a few plants and animals together! Until they figure out what went wrong, they will never be able to build colonies on the Moon, Mars or Earth orbit. And it has implications in the present debate about pollution and greenhouse gases - our Earth is a biosphere on a much larger scale. There are now more than 6.5 billion people living on Earth, and there is no denying, even by the coal and oil crowd, that we are terraforming the planet. CO2 levels are increasing, the Arctic ice cap is melting, species are becoming extinct, tropical forests are being burned out in the Amazon, Central Africa and Indonesia; now, especially adding in the rapid industrialization of China and India, I'd like to know how much our Biosphere will take before we become the next endangered species. How much environmental impact can the human race get away with?

I don't like the amount I have to pay in income tax every year! How about if you pay my share of income tax since you are so much in favour of keeping the present system!

Layton trots out socialist ideology that hasn't been updated since the Great Depression! Socialists always think there is free money available through taxing rich people and corporations, and then - as happened with Bob Rae's government, they are dismayed to find the costs being passed down in job cuts and plant closures. So now it's the same thing with the carbon tax! He either doesn't understand or is afraid to tell his people that the only viable way in a free society to cut carbon emissions, is to shift taxation in that direction and tax the causes of pollution. I don't know if it's ignorance or willful ignorance, but either way, socialists are never able to figure out how to create policies that would get the results they wish for.

Of course they're not bogus concerns to the Liberals and Conservatives(and in a few areas NDP) who will fight anything that threatens their ability to act as the political gatekeepers and use the system for their own advantage. But for everyone outside of party politics, the claim that members of Parliament at large will be any less accountable than constituency reps is a red herring. How many politicians put the interests of their constituents ahead of orders from the party leader? None who are looking to advance their political careers. Elections Canada has made the process of running for office more complicated and more expensive over the years, and the cost of campaigning keeps increasing, so eventually we will end up with a two party duopoly that they have in the U.S.. Now tell me again how that serves democracy!

I'm not sure what kind of meditation you were doing, but I know I have never seen auras! The purpose of meditation techniques is one of using consentrative attention to discipline the mind and have greater control over our thoughts and experiences. Neuroscientists who've studied all sorts of different practitioners of advanced meditation techniques (from Buddhist monks to Carmelite Nuns) find hightened activity in the pre-frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex - the "executive" part of the brain where our higher thinking is done. The improved attitude and behaviour that many meditators claim to experience could be a result of developing that part which does our higher reasoning and makes us less susceptible to our emotional responses that come from the amygdala. With that said, whether there is a physical benefit to meditation or not, I find it a little sad that religious doctrine forced you to stop your practise. To me, the major proselytizing religions of Islam and Christianity have destroyed indigenous religious cultures and traditions that have beneficial aspects, all in the name of religious purity. Okay! I step back every now and then, but now that I'm down the road I've been travelling on for awhile, it's going to take something really compelling to make me drop it all for something totally different; I've already had to do this too many times in my life.

It's sort of the flipside to Christians who cite Christian scientists such as Francis Collins and Ken Miller as justification for their beliefs. Any argument from authority is a bad one! People should learn and develop a base of knowledge to decide for themselves what they should believe. Your core existential beliefs should not be determined by what Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking or Ken Miller believe! That is the ultimate in intellectual laziness.

Einstein would be classified as a secular Jew since he supported the principles of Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel. He was even offered the presidency, but turned it down because he did not feel he would make a good political leader. Einstein causes some confusion because he never fully defines his own spiritual beliefs, and it's possible that he waffled a bit, and wasn't certain whether he was a deist or an atheist. He actually wrote letters that criticize both atheists and believers in God. Certainly Einstein wasn't a religious Jew, since his "God", the God of Spinoza is the same one that popular science writers such as Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, have identified as their definition of God. There are many Jews who would also be classified as Secular Jews; they have been born into Jewish families, value the traditions and recognized that their history is one of being part of a persecuted minority that was almost exterminated in Europe. Many years ago, I worked for a Jewish man who was a holocaust survivor and was himself an atheist Jew. He lost most of his family and extended family; there were only a handful of survivors from the Polish village where he grew up, and he was one of the fortunate few who survived. He came away from the experience feeling that there was no God to answer prayers, and his people had to save themselves from any future disaster. But, he also viewed holding onto his Jewish identity and religion as an act of defiance, and believed that even unbelieving Jews who came out of the Holocaust had to keep their religion or they would be acquiescing to the wishes of those who tried to exterminate them.

The "Christian Nation" folks who've taken over the Republican Party in the U.S. can't seem to figure out that the more involved their ministers are with party politics, the more opportunities for corruption and collusion. The influence can go in both directions, and this is why the Founding Fathers of the U.S. Constitution wanted church and state kept separate from each other. They were aware of how corrupt the official state churches were in Europe, and they also wanted to the new states from adopting official churches since the abuses of the theocratic governments of the Puritan colonies was still fresh in their minds. If people feel oppressed by their government, and the state church acts as an adjunct of that government, many people begin to reject both. An old friend of mine who came from Spain told me that there was a common expression over there that roughly translates as "half of the people follow the priest with a candle, the other half chase him with a torch." The leading evangelists in the U.S. are probably getting a little antsy right now about how their parishoners see them now that the Bush Administration and the Republican Party are being rejected by more and more Americans, and fear that they are being seen in the same light as the Catholic Church in Franco's Spain.

The major parties are going to do everything in their power to kneecap any proportional representation system. The last Ontario Election was a case in point. About half the electorate hadn't even heard of the MMA proposal, and those that did, had little or no understanding of the issues at stake. Elections Canada was supposed to inform the public; I think I received one flyer in the mail about it, but anyone who wanted to know what it was about had to go online to find out more. The common objections raised were the cost of having 30 extra MPP's. Most people I talked to weren't even aware that the old parliament before Harris cut the number to match the federal ridings, had more (133) than we would have had under the proportional system. There was also a bogus concern about the new Reps not being answerable to constituents. Does anybody have an MP or MPP that takes their constituents side over the Prime Minister or Premier? I've never seen one during my lifetime! They don't call his enforcer the Party 'Whip' for nothing!

I think you've just shot down your own argument! Do any of the three major parties in Canada consider the environment more than a side issue that takes a back seat to their bread-and-butter constituencies? Of course not! They go as green as they can before every election to buy the extra votes they need. The Green Party could serve as the incubator to develop environmental policies and sure enough, if they are popular with focus groups, they'll find their way to the Liberals or the Conservatives. But the N.D.P. has become such a calcified fossil that it's possible the Green Party could take their spot as the Party for the Left. Right now, it's hard to gauge the Green Party's support because many people like myself voted Green in the last Ontario election because I'm fed up with the Conservatives and I could not give McGuinty's government a vote of confidence.

What I was trying to get at is that in order to accept evidences like feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit, you have to be completely confident that inner subjective feelings and experiences cannot be misinterpreted. I spent a little time studying Buddhism, which puts most of its emphasis on the mystical path to knowledge. I still find Buddhist meditation practises of value, but I could not accept their way of viewing the outside world as an illusion of the senses and the inner meditative experience as the only thing that is real. It was based on the same mistake of assuming that we can go within and completely understand our inner nature. Modern neuroscience is showing that we can deceive ourselves just as convincingly about what's going on inside our heads as we can about the outside world. In order to accept faith as evidence, it has to be based on an assumption that the subjective experience of having faith cannot be wrong. Otherwise, faith is taking a risk of forming a belief that might be wrong. Some Christian theologians use this as the definition of faith: that there has to be an element of uncertainty. If you had 100% solid evidence, then you wouldn't need faith. And finally, I certainly have kept my eyes more open than most people during my life if the number of times I've changed my mind about all sorts of beliefs counts as evidence. If you believe you have exclusive truth that the rest of the world needs, there's no problem with presenting that view in a tactful manner. But the problem I have with all forms of exclusive truth is that it automatically puts everyone else in a lesser category. Throughout history, this has been one of the key features of wars, persecutions and genocides. The Inquisitors during the Spanish Inquisition did not see themselves as bad men - they believed all non-Catholics were doomed to hell, so all means were permissible to extract confessions and force conversions. The Jehovah's Witnesses that come to my door occasionally are no threat to myself or anyone in the neighbourhood, but the attitude of everyone outside of our church will be cast in the lake of fire, affects how they interact, and more importantly, how their children interact with others outside of the religion. A religion that teaches everyone goes to heaven regardless of what they believe in, would be ideal in the present situation of the world.

I want to go back to this, because I don't have a background in chemistry, and never read about laminin before. I'm watching a video of evangelist Louie Giglio making the claim that because the diagram of this binding molecule is shaped like a cross(the actual picture under an electron microscope shows less resemblance), and quotes the verse Colossians 1:17 “He (Christ) is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” So that means Jesus is a binding molecule in all organic compounds? Or maybe the cross is the binding molecule, because the diagram is not a picture of Jesus, it's the Roman device used to execute him and thousands of others during the days of the Empire. The brief presentation doesn't explain to me why a molecule with a cross-like shape is more than coincidental. Is he saying that it is evidence for a supernatural lifeforce? If so, what is this molecule doing that separates it from all of the other natural processes going on in biochemistry? If it's just a resemblance to a cross, that's not really any more compelling than the appearance of a face on the Moon we can see on any clear night! And this is the key problem I have been reading about "proofs" of intelligent design for the last few years. The proponents of creationism contend that all appearance of design has to come from an outside designing force because that is the natural way our brains are wired to interpret the world around us. The typhoon in Burma will be interpreted by many villagers as a divine judgement, just like the tsunami that hit Indonesia a couple of years ago. And modern, sophisticated people can be led to interpret complexity in nature as intelligent design also. The problem is that as soon as one proof of design gets knocked down, another one rises up in its place! When I was young, and we were in the JW's, their creation books( which plagiarized Henry Moore) claimed that the eye could not have been put together through natural forces. But the scientists were not convinced to give up searching to unlock the mystery. Since eyes formed differently in different animals, natural processes were suspected to be at work. In recent years, the flagella (the motors) that propel bacteria, were claimed to be designed by Michael Behe and others, because the flagella is the only example of a device that rotates on an axle - almost similar to a car's axle. Right off the start there was a problem with using flagella as evidence of divine planning since if it was true that God gave bacteria the flagella motors because of their efficiency, why didn't he give larger animals like us the same means of propulsion? How much faster could we get around if we had wheels, instead of legs? But recently, we haven't heard as much about flagella because two separate teams of researchers have found evidence that it could have evolved as a combination of simpler components that had been used for other purposes..........so now it's on to laminin. The real picture of how nature works and how we ended up with such a diversity of plant and animal life didn't start coming together until Charles Darwin published Origin of the Species. At the time, Darwin had no knowledge of genetics, but by keen observation of how much diversity of life was dependent on geography, he knew that there had to be natural forces at work that were making incremental changes in plant and animal life. The greatest popularizer of evolutionary theory in this day and age is Richard Dawkins, who has written several books for the general audience which explain how a complex feature doesn't have to be made all at once, but can be accomplished in nature with gradual, incremental adaptations. Unlike an intelligent designer, the designer in nature cannot see and is not conscious of what he is working towards. http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Watchmaker-Evi...e/dp/0393315703 http://www.amazon.com/Climbing-Mount-Impro...s/dp/0393316823 The strange irony for me is that many conservative Christians in the U.S. I've discussed this with, have no problem accepting the principle of emergence in economics, defined as the "invisible hand" that controls the markets, but they can't accept that the same process could operate in nature!

Are you black? Do you live in a crime-ridden innercity neighbourhood? No! And neither do I. But I'm not arrogant enough to tell African-Americans how they should they should run their neighbourhoods! And Barach Obama had enough sense to know that having dark skin wasn't enough for him to understand what life was like for the people when he took that first job as a community organizer. You still can't figure it out? Wright's refusal to leave quietly and instead to appear everywhere he could get an audience and refer to Obama as "just a politician," convinced a lot of people that he had reasons to try to ruin Obama's campaign. ---- You obviously haven't read anything about Liberation Theology, or you would have realized that if Barach Obama believed this way of thinking, he wouldn't have run for president in the first place! And leftwing / rightwing is becoming meaningless in desperate times. A lot of the indepedent voters are saying they just want their country out of Iraq and out of debt. Thanks to George Bush, a failing economy, skyrocketing oil prices and an unwinable war, that "narrow window" has gotten a lot bigger! John McCain has to wear the Bush Legacy around his neck because he re-positioned himself as a Republican insider and Bush's heir to the throne when he started his 2008 campaign. In Congress, Republican incumbents are reading the writing on the wall and announcing their retirements. The GOP is going to get burned to the ground by an electorate which blames them for the mess their in! If John McCain did win, he would face a House and Senate with big Democrat majorities.

I had a feeling this was where you were going, but I figured I'd wait till you spelled it out. By "letter", can I assume you're referring to the Treaty of Tripoli, where Jefferson explained to the Muslim rulers of the Barbary States that his government was a secular state: "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion" I seen all sides of this "separation of church and state" debate when I used to participate in an American conservative forum. The "Christian Nation" advocates copy that line about separation not being in the Constitution - the 700 Club viewers could watch Pat Robertson repeat it every day, just in case they forgot! Ofcourse Robertson and other Christian leaders fail to point out that God is not mentioned in the Constitution either! The Declaration of Independence mentions "Creator", but that doesn't necessarily refer to the God of the Bible either! Many students of early American history believe that the majority of the founding fathers would qualify as Deists - believers in a creator that set the world in motion but doesn't directly interact with us or the creation since the beginning. This was a popular belief among humanist intellectuals all over Europe. And deistic principles were advocated by many of the Founding Fathers, such as Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine. To me, the best argument against the Christian nation claim is the fact that several attempts were made to add a Christian amendment to the U.S. Constitution. There would have been no need for it unless the religious leaders feared that the Constitution was secular or godless! The national watchdog organization [CCLA] yesterday released a brief arguing the Progressive Conservatives' plan to extend $400-million in public funding to Jewish, Muslim and other faith-based schools will ultimately make Ontario "a much less tolerant place." However, the group is equally critical of the province's current situation, saying it is "inequitable and unjust" to fund Catholic schools but not those of other religions. - 2007 Yeah, tell me about it! Catholic education funding was extended to grade 12 many years back to buy Catholic votes. Now, the other religions want a share of education tax dollars to fund their religious schools, which was the setting for the quote above. The Tories ran a major campaign promise to fund religious schools in the last provincial election. It backfired in a big way! The bible belt in Ontario isn't big enough to win elections through this kind of pandering!

I don't think most people really change that much as they get older. I think most of the people I know who were screwing around in their younger days are trainwrecks in middle age. They get married, but they just can't pass up the opportunity to step out and look for a new adventure. When I was young, the guys who scored the most when we went out drinking, were liars without conscience. Whenever I had a girlfriend, if I struck up a conversation with a girl in a bar, I just could not look her in the eyes and make up some bullshit line to try to get some action! I got plenty of coaching on how to spin these lies, but I just could not do this hardluck routine to try to win sympathy and lead the girl to drop her defences...........I just hated this crap, that alot of guys consider as just a game. When they try to settle down later on, many times they start missing the good old days and are anxious to get out there and resume practising the 4 F's all over again. Eventually, the wife finds out and they're on their way to divorce court. A few years down the road, they're remarried and repeating the same cycle all over again......that is until they are just to old to get out there and get anything! I guess I didn't like this scene as much as a lot of other guys do, and that's probably a big reason why married life has worked out well for me. I'm not bored and looking backwards, longing for the good old days.

You're sure about that? Sure enough to bet your life on it? According to the health experts who study and monitor these diseases, you can get AIDS through any form of sexual activity where there is an exchange of bodily fluids. Just because anal sex is the riskiest manner to spread the disease, doesn't mean you can't get it by screwing around with prostitutes or one-night stands. http://www.stdservices.on.net/std/hiv-aids...ails.htm#spread

You don't really believe this do you? "During my days as an entertainer, part of the job description was to have sex with all the females in the crowd " This one crosses the fantasy line right into the land of delusion!

It depends how that separation is interpreted. The Supreme Court has refused to hear challenges to the Bush Administration's "faith based initaitives" policies, which put government funds in the hands of church-run charities. And having bi-weekly teleconference calls with a closed circle of powerful evangelical leaders may not be illegal, but it does illustrate how powerful religious leaders seeking access to political power - and political leaders desperate for their support, have led to a situation with churches and church lobby groups are being divided along the lines of political affiliation. It's not hard to envision a scenario where a favoured church or group of churches gain something even closer to state sponsorship than currently received through faith-based initiatives. And how many Americans have realized that they were suckered into supporting a disastruous war because of the appeal to faith and patriotism? Not unless the atheists organize together in the same manner as the religious. The non-believer category is at least 10% of the U.S. adult population( it's much higher in Canada). About 4% of the U.S. population now identify themselves as atheists or agnostics, but another 6.3% checked the box for "secular unaffiliated," as opposed to religious unaffiliated. There seems to be a lot of confusion about how to define non-religious belief. Further study will likely indicate that most of the secular unaffiliated are afraid to say atheist or agnostic because it has been turned into a pejorative by religious leaders anxious to maintain the control and influence they have over their flocks. Taken as a group, the unbelievers in the U.S. are larger than many religions with powerful lobbies and political influence such as Jews and Mormons. Most of us have never talked openly about our unbelief, so the mainstream population is unaware of us....almost like gays 20 or 30 years ago. If all of the people who opted out of religion come out of the closet and start qualifying politicians for their support in the same way the churches do, then there just might come a day when you'll have an atheist president! http://religions.pewforum.org/reports Take a good look at that Pewforum survey and see how many Americans are losing their religion. The days of winning elections through Godtalk may be coming to an end! Politicians may have to produce real results in office to get re-elected.