WIP

Yes, and if a philosophical case can be made that 'taxation is theft' then an equally compelling case can be made that private property is also theft! Where does the owner get the right to lay claim to a certain piece of land? And how does he plan to enforce that restriction that limits use of the property to himself and others of his choosing? He might threaten trespassers with his shotgun, but the only realistic way to secure his property is if the threat to trespassers is backed by state authority. And here we find that taxation is part of a social contract. Essentially, tax is payment in exchange for services from government. In this case, it is payment in exchange for legal protection, as well as police protection if a marauding gang rolls in on their motorcycles and wants to set up grow-ops on the property. I think I've reached a major breakthrough here! Motorcycle gangs are the real source of libertarianism, who will reap the rewards of no taxes, no police, no government services...just might makes right!

With all of Alberta's big dreams of selling tar sands byproducts for big cash rewards, I'd like to know when they are going to address this problem I heard about two weeks ago, but never got around to posting until now: Canada NewsWire EDMONTON, May 4 EDMONTON, May 4 /CNW/ - Little Buffalo community members, including school children, continue to experience nausea, burning eyes and headaches after one of the largest pipeline spills in Alberta history last Friday by Plains All American leaked nearly 30,000 barrels of oil into Lubicon traditional territory in the Peace Region of Northern Alberta. Instead of attending an in-person community meeting, the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) faxed a one-page fact sheet to Little Buffalo School. The fact sheet indicates that tens of thousands of barrels of crude oil, or 4,500 cubic metres, has spread into nearby stands of "stagnant water." The spill, April 29 at 7:30 a.m., occurred only 300 metres from local waterways. The ERCB said the spill has been contained, but community members report that the oil is still leaking into the surrounding forest and bog. The ERCB also said to the community that there is "no threat to public safety as a result of the leak." Yet people are still getting sick, the local school has been shut down and children ordered to stay at home. An investigation into the incident is underway. Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/298028#ixzz1MOqFEIYx Some people are going to get rich off this crap, but as usual, many people living in the areas where oil, tar sands, coal, and natural gas fracking are actually done, get stuck with the externalized negative costs of these ventures, and have their land ruined, their health ruined, and will likely be stuck for years waiting for little or no compensation. And any compensation that does come, mostly comes out taxes paid to government, not from the billions of dollars worth of profits of these damned oil companies!

First you can inform me as to where you pulled that partial quote from, and does it have anything to do with mammoths?

It seems to me that libertarians generally want to eliminate the government services that they don't use. Now, that it seems we are entering an age when natural disasters are getting worse, I expect that even the people living out in the boonies will realize that they can't do it all on their own any more than city dwellers can.

Exactly! If I just wanted to hear reverberations of my own beliefs, I would be on the Rabble forums! There is already a huge problem with the internet allowing people to descend into political and religious silos where everyone more or less believes the same things and reinforce each others' beliefs and prejudices.

I haven't been watching the Japanese nuclear disaster as diligently as I was a few weeks ago, largely because the Japanese Government and TEPCO were following a pattern of deliberate withholding of information. But, just as a lot of nuclear critics figured, they wouldn't be able to keep the lid on forever if high radiation levels were found outside the exclusion zone, and an examination of the damaged reactors was finally done. So, now we know that REactor One has suffered a core meltdown -- something independent observers suspected early on, but Japanese officials tried to obfuscate with other minimizing alternatives. And REactor One was not considered the greatest risk - the 2nd Reactor is generally considered the greatest threat. And here's another potential disaster that is not being discussed in mainstream corporate media: On Russia Today, they have an interview with Robert Jacobs of the Hiroshima Peace Institute, where he points out around 2 minutes in that there is evidence that the building housing Reactor 4 - which was empty but houses a full spent fuel pond of spent fuel rods that have started melting, and that the building is leaning, and in danger of collapse...which would dump radioactive spent fuel rods out in the open, making it impossible for anyone to continue work at the other troubled reactors.

Also true! That ancient Hebrew cosmology comes from the ancient Sumerian's beliefs about the Universe.

A point that needs to be made that doesn't fit in to the subject of "who" or "what" is causing gas prices to spike higher than world oil prices would justify, is that this crap is going to run out eventually, and the sooner the better! Present day North American culture has been built around the concept of everyone owning a car and governments building lots of roads and highways to accommodate them. Well, what if we've reached the end of the automobile age? The trends that were established after WWII of people moving further and further away from where they work, will halt, and more and more people will have to move closer to where they work be able to shop and do things without having to drive to them...just like it was in the old days. I haven't seen the numbers, but I heard a point mentioned on U.S. public radio last week that America's car ownership peaked in 2004 and has been dropping since. This could be due to a number of factors, economic stagnation of middle and working classes, rising gas prices, rising insurance costs etc....the net effect is that our energy use is going to fall over the coming years whether we like the idea or not!

Personally, I don't really care alot about what sort of metaphysical beliefs people have, but when you make scientific claims for your religion, you have to back it up with evidence, not bombast! Sure, the Bible has been scrutinized...for hundreds of years now...but the results of language, textual, and archaelogical evidence are not addressed by the fundamentalist clowns that you are getting all of your information from. A real scientist...or even just a really honest investigator, does not begin with the conclusion and work his way back picking out shards and nuggets to present as evidence for the conclusions that he's already arrived at! These people have a stake in conclusions they've arrived at, whereas those liberal or unchristian bible scholars that you're horrified by, have nothing to gain by chipping away at the evidence for biblical literalism. They are mostly tenured professors, who discuss their research and their ideas among themselves or others in elite intellectual circles, and have not interacted with the public. That's probably why "Misquoting Jesus" by Bart Ehrman created such a hubbub a few years ago when it was released. Ehrman presented what every one of his colleagues who study ancient languages and ancient texts already knew about the Bible we have today: it has been shaped by the many copying errors and deliberate additions and omissions that were made over the centuries before the printing press was invented. The subject of scriptural analysis is usually considered too dry and too esoteric to present to a general audience -- but, it's a subject that both the believers and non-believers should be aware of, since the more we know about the facts and the histories of these books protects us from the flim flams and misuse of present day self-purported authorities who offer bad advice for their followers and try to apply them to everyone else where they have political power to do so!

Well, let's get our history straight first, since politicians depend on the collective ADHD of the public to erase past mistakes. The P.C.'s were in power for more than 40 years straight in Ontario, until David Petersen won in 85. And, although the Provincial Liberals drew most of their support from appeals to Catholic voters, it was near the end of the Conservative Dynasty in Ontario, when Bill Davis extended full funding to the Catholic School boards across Ontario. When I was in high school, we met a lot of Italian and Polish kids who we never seen all our lives even if they lived in our neighbourhoods, because they went to Catholic primary schools, and were streamed in to the public high schools after grade 8. In Niagara Falls, there was only one Catholic high school...for girls, whose parents paid tuition to get them a good Catholic education...and any guys growing up in Niagara Falls in the 60's to the mid 70's would say they were much more fun than the girls in our schools when we got a chance to meet them hanging out on Clifton Hill over the summer holidays....but, wow, I'm really digressing down memory lane now! I think my point was that it was the Conservative Government that turned the Catholic School boards into the present doppleganger of the Public School boards. And most Ontarians would like to abolish the dual public school system that favours Catholics for a true public school system where NO religion has primacy. Where the Conservatives miscalculated again, was when your previous Ontario Conservative leader - John Tory, ran with the idea of further fragmenting public education by making appeals to every other religion to grab a piece of education dollars and create their own private religious schools. This surprised a lot of people, because John Tory was not viewed as someone who would try to play the God card to win votes. Now that the Ontario P.C.'s have a fundamentalist fanatic as leader, we can expect he would do everything in his power to advance the interests of his two religions: Christian fundamentalism and Free Market fundamentalism!

I was going to jump in to the debate over Quebec's place in Canada, but after finishing scanning through the arguments, I'm feeling a little dizzy! Separation, Sovereignty, and what sort of federalism Canada should have have been knocked around since the mid 1960's, and it just looks like one of those issues similar to Aboriginal rights, that will more or less be solved by some sort of less-than-perfect compromise, since the roots of each issue are founded in earlier treaties and agreements that successive Canadian governments have tried to weaken or effectively abolish. In the here and now, Quebec is too intertwined with Canada to become an independent nation...something that almost seems irrelevant in the age of global corporate ownership and globalization anyway...but, Quebec also has historical precedent that set it apart from other provinces, and if that ends up with Quebec having some rights that are not given to other provinces....well, shut the hell up and suck it up so that we can move on to more important issues!

A quote from Tom Paine really fits here: "The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed."

And it is another flimsy excuse by fundamentalist bible literalists, since Hebrew has two different words for circle and sphere. If the writer of Psalms wanted to describe a round spheroid Earth, he had the proper word for it, and did not have to use a 2D reference. The truth is that ancient Hebrews, like ancient Mesopotamians, had a three level cosmology as described here. If they believed in a round Earth, they would have said so, and not written supporting literature describing a flat earth that was the center of the universe.

Judging by a comment of yours on the previous page referring to natives as savages, and 17th century Europeans as almost-savages, I am led to believe that you are a racist, who considers such race-mixing to be either a sin, or a crime of some sort. For my part, I don`t see the French who intermarried with the Aboriginals as being immoral compared to those British fur trades you claim were under `tight discipline. The true story is likely something more akin to what went on for decades in the American South, and in Africa...especially South Africa, where whites often raped black women and left a coloured child behind as a legacy, but were never made to account for their actions, or support the child they fathered in any way, shape or form. The French who did form legal marriages with natives, and learned the local culture, were morally superior to British fur traders under tight discipline!

For everyone who doesn't live in Caledonia, there are a lot more issues at stake than what's going on there. Even so, where is the Federal Government, especially the local M.P. - Diane Finley, who couldn't even be reached by local media, and yet there are enough brainless conservatives in Haldimand-Norfolk to re-elect here anyway! And Bob Rae ended up running for leadership of the Liberal Party...so that would explain why he mostly attempted to drop, or at least water down most of the NDP election planks when he became Premier. The greatest failing of the ill-fated NDP Ontario Government was that they won as a fluke, at a time when Ontario voters had bad feelings about both of the major parties, and the NDP had very few members who were qualified to do the jobs they were elected for. If the Party had been gradually gaining strength over a period of years, they would have attracted more qualified people to run as candidates.

Yes, it is complete nonsense to take one verse in the Bible, and base an entire theology...not to mention a series of lousy books and movies on! The Bible contradicts itself regarding when this rapture mentioned in 1 Thessalonians would occur -- would it be before, during or after the Great Tribulation, which is referenced throughout the New Testament as the significant event of the Last Days. My point was that this one verse in Thessalonians was not given much significance before pre-millenialism started making a big comeback with the 18th century Puritans. And the teaching of 'believers being caught up in the air to be with Christ, starts with John Nelson Darby in the 1830's. Mainstream Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, had been interpreting end-time prophecies, such as Revelation as referring to historical events of their time, such as the fall of the Roman Empire, and salvation and resurrection, not as signs that they were living in the last days.

Every time I have Jehovah's Witnesses show up at my door (haven't seen them for awhile for some reason) I like to point out the scriptures where Jesus tells his disciples that he will return before the last of them have died off. These endtime prophecies keep getting re-interpreted with each generation for the last 2000 years. Mainstream Christianity decided some time in the 2nd century that Jesus wasn't coming back any time soon, and they would have to create permanent institutions and re-interpret most of the prophecies on a personal basis of salvation for the individual believer. But, there is always someone coming along telling us the end is nigh. What's especially troubling is that in our present age, we are fast heading towards something that looks like a secular apocalypse, that is already causing mass extinction, and could include our descendents in a few more generations. The problem is that the true believers in bible prophecy make these situations worse, rather than better, since they have a fatalistic attitude about the conditions our Earth is in. Instead of doing something to improve our present situation, they would just as rather make them worse, so that they could look forward to the Rapture coming a little sooner!

Yes, these rightwing ideals like the "level playing field" have to be unmasked for being no more than faith-based assumptions, that have no relation to what goes on in the real world! The level playing field would only work if genetics and environmental pressures played no role in the development of a child. In the real world, no one starts from the same level, even if there was a libertarian paradise of no taxes or government services. This was a constant refrain about socialism or communism, as being unrealistic and out of touch of actual human behaviour, but we sure can see how out of touch libertarian and conservative idealists are now that we have suffered through 30 years of neo-liberal economic policies that have exacerbated the gaps in income and left most of the middle class struggling with increasing debt-loads trying to keep up with their former standards of living.

Tim Hudak won the P.C. nomination thanks to his evangelical backers. He will be using his church base to try to win the Premier's Office, even though he is trying to avoid talking about abortion and all of the hot button religious right issues in the runup to a provincial election. I would take McGimpy again....or anyone other than this clown! All we can hope is that the Liberals and NDP don't do a vote split that allows another conservative to win a majority government with a minority of votes! But, the longer we have a federal Conservative majority in Ottawa, the less likely Ontario voters will want the same thing in Queen's Park! Ontario has a long reputation of voting the opposite party that occupies the Parliament.

I would like to see how popular Rob Ford is a year from now! This fat multimillionaire successfully cast himself as an everyman populist to get the Mayor's Office; now that he's there, it seems like buyer's remorse is setting in with a lot of Torontonians. So, if Harper is our father, does that mean that Hudak is the son of god?

I would say the fact that the French freely intermarried with natives and created Metis populations, tells us that the French did not see themselves as much as culturally superior as the English felt superior to natives...since I'm not aware of any significant intermarriage between English and natives. Many French, such as my wife's family from Northern Ontario, are really Metis, even though most of them are not officially recognized as Metis. A snapshot look at history would say that the problems for the French started when Champlain picked the losing side when he stepped into the middle of a war between the Algonkian and Iroquois tribes. They were never able to recover from having the Iroquois as constant enemies to fight alongside the English.

Maybe, but I'm sure it's not lost on Harper that he won his majority without Quebec...something that Mulroney was unable to do without running a contingent of Quebec nationalists. Being the cold, calculating type of political operator, Harper is likely viewing Quebec as declining in population and economic influence, and less receptive to his kind of conservative social agenda. Time will tell I suppose, but I wouldn't be surprised if his MP's start blaming Quebec for budget woes, and the costs of language policies.

Okay, we've heard this before! Conservatives and libertarians believe in a theoretical "level playing field" which not only doesn't exist, but CANNOT exist in the real world. A child who grows up in poverty is behind the 8-ball before they even leave the womb, thanks to the fact that the mother is less likely to have a balanced diet, and more likely to be releasing stress-related hormones which affect the baby growing inside her womb. Needless to say, that she is also more likely to be a smoker during pregnancy and using drugs and/or alcohol....so...so much for the level playing field! The child's brain development is very unlikely to reach full potential, so there odds of great financial success are limited, and they are many more times as likely to be impulsive and less likely to delay reward for immediate gratification -- another strongly correlating factor with both future success in life and on the flipside, the likelihood of becoming an alcoholic, drug abuser, and being incarcerated. And the only remaining question is what do we do with those who do not have an equal start in life! Do we kick out the struts, like the right wants us to do, and further cement the class divisions in society, or do we take steps to level the playing field...what the right calls "equal outcomes" as if such a thing is ever achieved by any society! The social safety net that our CAPITALIST society started constructing after WWII set goals of leveling the playing field, through progressive taxation, free public education, low cost public health care etc., and needless to say, these are all things that the right is trying to erase, so that they can return us to the days of feudalism. From what's happened to upward mobility stats over the last 20 years, my guess is that they are most of the way there in turning Canada and the United States back into class-based societies of a privileged few, who carry their wealth through the generations and create their own personal dynasties...and everyone else, who has as much chance of cracking through the top and joining the elite rich class, as winning a $10 million dollar lottery ticket. Now what do conservatives propose doing with the a**holes? And, I mean what about the less-gifted students. Well, one thing is for sure -- without a public education system that provides at least the opportunity to get a basic education, there is no way out for the a**holes growing up in poverty. For all the horrors you and others can cite in your testimonials about public education systems, the alternatives are worse! When charter schooling (the privatization of public schools) is adopted in a big way, such as in many jurisdictions in England, the first thing the new charter schools do is to try to rid themselves of the problem students any way they can. They don't want the dullards, the misfits and the kids with ADHD bringing down their overall test scores. Charter schooling in London has also created an unforeseen increase in ethnic tensions, as Muslims, Catholics and Evangelicals have created their own religious schools where they can keep their children in a bubble, and away from children of different religions and races. The same sort of polarization will happen here if we let these fools, like our Ontario P.C. Party carry out their agenda of funding private religious schools with public education tax dollars. For all of its problems and shortfalls, the costs of degrading or dismantling public schooling would be far worse than whatever problems they presently have!

I would have thought it'd be a no-brainer that better weather forecasting would improve the odds for survival for people in the path of a large tornado! That's why they have those air-raid sirens in the tornado alley zones to warn people to take cover. There has been a general agreement that April was that April spawned a record number of tornadoes, along with a record number of large category 4 and 5 tornadoes. The death toll of these record storms would have exceeded the previous records established in 1974 and 1925 if it wasn't for the forecasting and warning systems that have been put in place....and yet Republican congressmen from these southern states want to cut NOAA's budget in half, and reduce forecasting ability. http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1796 The matter of how much resources and services should be held in common, should depend on the needs of a society, and not some arbitrary ideological dogmas. When America had a young population and lots of open land (after they killed and drove off the Indians of course) the pioneers who headed out west had to fend for themselves, so the individualistic ideology of libertarianism may have been appropriate. But, as more and more people moved in, they soon realized they needed effective policing, schools, fire prevention etc.. And then when women finally got the right to vote, they started the movement that played the major role to develop the welfare state that FDR had to adopt. Anyway, I know that is a pretty sweeping, superficial read of history, but the level and degree of government services depends on the needs of the society. Looking back to the record tornadoes, record flooding on the Mississippi, and record droughts in Texas and Oklahoma, I'm wondering if a lot of these libertarians in the South, who are now reaping the results of climate change will start re-thinking their rigid ideology about limiting government. No argument there from anyone besides corn-growers, since ethanol consumes more oil than it produces in energy. But, although ethanol and biofuel production has taken away from food production, most of the decline in recent years is coming from climate instability. Last summer, Russia alone, went from being the no.4 world grain producer to being almost totally wiped out by fires, extreme heat and drought. Similar droughts and floods have cut Australia's grain production by more than half of what it was 10 years ago. Now that America, the largest grain exporter, is getting hit with record droughts and floods, it's worth considering what a disaster for global food prices it would be if the U.S. grain harvests suffered similar disasters. Recently, a UN report dumped cold water on the rosy scenarios that world population would gradually stabilize on its own: The United Nations again raised its world population projections within 90 years to reach 10.1 billion human beings on this already ecologically devastated planet. Humans add 10,000 babies net gain per hour, 240,000 per day and 80 million annually. Our species adds another 1.1 billion every 13 years. All the while, we wreak havoc with all the other creatures on this planet as we destroy or encroach upon their habitat. Humans drive the “6th Extinction Session” at an astounding rate of 80 to 100 species every 24 hours. (Source: Norman Meyers, Oxford University, UK) Every environmental calamity facing humanity in the 21st century stems from human overpopulation. A litany includes species extinction, polluted biosphere, toxified oceans, climate destabilization, melting polar caps, melting glaciers, dead zones, Great Pacific Garbage Patch, oil spills, 80,000 chemicals injected into the land, water and air 24/7, relentless litter, tree-cutting, advancing desertification, 18 million human starvation deaths annually and quality of life swirling the drain. On the political front, wars for water, oil and resources escalate. Yet, not one world leader speaks about it. Not one U.S. leader stands up. Not one U.S. paper will address it. No one will mention the last taboo of the 21st century: human overpopulation. http://www.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=45695 And, it would be nice if we could keep it that way, but the key factor is not average standard of living, but how many people are achieving the minimum standard. Even in the United States, the growing economic inequality is causing many in the poorest demographic to fall off the wagon into 3rd world living standards...and guess what -- U.S. birth rates are the highest among OECD countries! The biggest problem with birth rates in 3rd world countries is the fact that women have little if any control over how many children they will have thanks to prohibitions on birth control. With one exception - Iran, most of the Islamic-dominated societies and the new Christian theocracies in Africa are doing nothing to control population growth -- to their own detriment, as they can no longer provide enough food or clean water for their growing populations. No, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett make note of the necessity to provide a level of comfort for a society. The issue which they challenge the conventional wisdom of both liberals and conservatives is that there accumulated data gathered from around the world, shows there are limits to what can be accomplished through economic growth and prosperity. Once a society is beyond a basic living standard, the key issue becomes the relative equality and inequality within the society. Explaining the reasons for the results is more of a challenge, but Wilkinson believes that it must come from basic human nature which was formed during the times of hunter/gatherer societies, when hierarchies of luxury and power were impossible to create. Feudalism, Patriarchy, and class distinctions, including slavery, have only been with us since the Agricultural Revolution began, and in modern times, progressive movements have been trying to reduce and eliminate the harmful effects of all of these ugly traditions, while conservatives and religious fundamentalists want to bring them back with even more force!

Wait! How do you know there were future teabaggers who voted Democrat in 2006 and 2008? But, if they are so bent out of shape by the growing Federal deficit, where were they when Bush turned the surplus into a deficit, and kept adding to it year by year, until he doubled the national debt? It seems to me that until Obama got the keys to the Whitehouse, most conservatives on radio and TV were saying that deficit-spending wasn't a problem...because the financiers of the U.S. National Debt had to keep buying Treasury Bills with the dollars they earned from all the crap they sell to U.S. consumers. It's not that Americans don't want a national health care plan, like Medicare-For-All; it's that the insurance corporations, pharmaceutical companies, and private hospital corporations don't want it! And, they have lots of money, and lots of lobbyists that are at the doors of every member of Congress. The biggest farce was the so-called "Blue Dog" Democrats that posed as moderates, and went unchallenged by the MSM. Without exception, every one of those blue dogs that kept pushing Obama's people to water down the plan by moves that were without any justification, like removing the Public Option, and rules preventing the proposed Obamacare co-ops from bargaining collectively for cheaper pharmaceutical drugs, were taken off the table because so many Democrats were on the take from the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. From the polls I read, a majority of Americans wanted a real healthcare reform plan, and not what's left of Obamacare...which does more to reward insurance companies than have any chance to bring down health care costs for the average consumer. As for deficits -- don't forget how much of that spending in the first year and half was already in place from the final budgets of the Bush Administration. Obama hasn't created the U.S. debt crisis, as conservatives, libertarians, and teabaggers would like everyone to believe; the problem is that he has added to debt with increased military spending, extending the Bush Tax Cuts, and that timid stimulus package that included more unnecessary tax cuts than actual spending on infrastructure improvements. It's worth noting that all of the Republican governors quietly took the stimulus dollars that they claimed they would refuse....except for Mark Sanford of South Carolina -- the Governor who went AWOL to visit his Argentinian mistress was the only one who didn't take any stimulus money....which makes it his 2nd brilliant move! For my part, I was skeptical that even a big stimulus program of over a trillion dollars that Paul Krugman was lobbying for, would have ended the recession and reduced unemployment. FDR's stimulus programs occurred at a time when the U.S. had a much younger population and was still rich in natural resources...like oil. Today, the U.S. is an aging empire, with an aging population; so I don't think even the Krugman Plan would have fixed the economy. There aren't that many financiers anywhere left of center, except for George Soros and Warren Buffet. And those two are good examples of why the real political left in America refused their money to join Move ON.org and Center For American Progress etc. Soros is just trying to harness the left for his own purposes, just as all the rightwing billionaires only support pro-business libertarians and conservatives. There is not a lot of money to be made by making a principled stand on the left. Most of the money is offered to those who provide ideological support for increasing the concentration of wealth at the top of the pyramid. And, when it comes to unions -- get real! Organized labour is dying in America. Anti-union, so called "right to work" laws have been put in place in many states to bust collective bargaining, and make it impossible for unions to organize non-union workshops. And, in states from Wisconsin to Michigan and Indiana, one Republican governor after another, is trying to destroy the public service unions, since they are the last bastions of organized labour in many states. If this is true, I don't agree with punishing smokers, since addiction researchers tell us that nicotine is almost as addictive as heroin. The biggest problem we have is deciding how much money should be spent on new and more expensive medical treatments and procedures...and on an aging population no less, that is going to require more medical attention. I don't see an easy way out of this dilemma, and it doesn't really have anything to do with how doctors and hospitals are funded. A lot could be accomplished if it was possible to motivate more people to adopt healthier lifestyles. Some medical researchers believe that 70 to 80% of all disease is ultimately self-inflicted through mental stress, poor diet, lack of exercise, lack of sleep etc.. But, since so many people these days are working longer and longer hours, and taking on 2nd jobs, it's harder for a lot of people to find the time to exercise, get a good night's sleep, and cook from scratch, rather than fast food and pre-packaged high fat, low nutrition frozen dinners from the supermarket.