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walrusman

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Posts posted by walrusman

  1. really? i might be extremely bad at spelling, but, because of this, i've made an extra effort to learn how to punctuate properly (bad punctuation on top of bad spelling would, imo, be unforgivable, espescially as there's nothing stopping me from punctuating properly).

     

    I may not be absolutely uber-great at punctuation, but i at least include full-stops, excepting at the end of a paragraph, where they are redundant, thus making determining where one sentance ends and another begins easy

     

    Other than that, for what it's worth, i do appologise to everyone if my posts are hard to read.

     

    (do i miss words out? i know i do that when speaking, but wasn't aware that i did it when typing)

     

    I honestly had no idea. I would never say that to someone with that knowledge. I apologize, whole-heartedly.

     

    With that in mind, you're doing quite well actually. Now, I'm impressed.

     

    Again, I am sorry.

  2. now imagine the child living with gay parents, what chance would they stand at school when these kids have a "Legitimate" reason to pick on them? a lot of the parents of these kids will seeing it as acceptable also or telling their children to keep away.

    what about if you ant to have friends home after school? how many do you think would Risk being your friend or being seen with you?

     

    I think it`s naive and shortsighted to think this would Not be the case.

     

    And the same thing happened when white kids starting befriending black kids decades ago. Everytime we push the envelope of equality there will be the backlash until it becomes accepted. It's this backlash and controversy that gets people talking about it and minds get changed - mostly for the better.

     

    I realize these kids didn't make the "choice" to be in this position, but whatever society happens to believe should not deter what is right. Somewhere, sometime, somebody is going to have to be the object of this controversy until the bigots become outnumbered and society changes its proverbial mind.

  3. it's not my fault i'm linguistically retarded :P

     

    one example i forgot: british english. we (at least those who 'write the rules') seem to have something against americanisms. which is kinda stoopid when you consider how mongalated the english language is.

     

    Bit harsh too. it's like rasism' date=' for words.

     

    @pangloss:

     

    the flip-side is that maybe it's unreasonable, but seems OK when non-dictatorial countries do it?

     

    I can't actually see the point in artificially suppressing a languages development.

     

    eg, is the british's attempt to resist americanisms and the iraqis attempt to resist all 'foreign' :P words ok, but it seems bad when the iraqis do it 'cos they're iraqis... or is it bad, but seems ok when the brits do it 'cos they're brits?[/quote']

     

    Maybe I'm a minority on this, but I can't hardly understand your posts. It is your fault being linguistically retarded ;) . I have to read your posts two or three times over just to figure out where the sentences begin and end and then try to make sense of the missing words and misspellings.

     

    You have some interesting opinions on things. I wish you would take more time to write coherently so I could correctly interpret them.

  4. Dak - I always get that response. You automatically assume I didn't do any critical thinking and jumped to the first obvious conclusion. I'm not a sheep, Dak.

     

    I know that the vast majority of muslims are peaceful. But, their religion isn't. It's oppressive and imperical in its nature. Islam is the only religion nuttier than Christianity.

     

    Originally Posted by Dak

    Many people interpret the torah to say that a phisical struggle of arms is the lowest 'jihad' that one can engage in, and one that should be avoided: learning, spreading the word of allah, and controlling your own less-than-desireable traits are all far more worthy endeavours. also, there's the whole 'you shouldn't kill people' teaching that a significant amount of muslims prescribe to.

     

    I think you meant Koran. The Torah is Judaism. And that has been in there from the beginning and all of this fighting has been going on for centuries, so what good is that doing anybody? And "you shouldn't kill people" is a children's message. I have yet to hear a muslim tell me any of these suicide bombers will go to hell for what they did. That religion is wrong. What kind of thinking (brainwashing) doesn't punish someone who kills innocent people? Targeting women and children.

     

    Religions and gods are man made fairy tales, and this particular tale was fabricated by oppressive, misogynistic spinsters.

  5. We've even seen on this board where there is a reluctance to even use the term Islamofascism. We had several posts lambasting the Christian Right but when similiar characterizations are used against Islamofascists, there is a backlash.

     

    I agree Jim. Time to call a spade a spade. Christianity had it's slaughter-fest in our history and now it's Islam. It's not a religion of peace, just read a little of the Koran yourself and you'll see what I mean.

     

    Also, check out http://www.obsessionthemovie.com. Nice trailer. But it shows a mere snapshot of the rhetoric that's been coming from that part of the world for decades. Death to America. When Islam rules the world. They have twisted an already twisted religion and taken it the next step.

     

    Remember, Hitler mesmerized his people. He won their hearts and minds and deceived them with propaganda. That's the EXACT same thing going on over there, only multiple countries in on the act. They learned from Hitler. Did we?

  6. I think the problem with that is that neither side is going to give up if they lose a single war. Indeed the Arab militants, and their Persian backers, are pretty much resolved to losing the fights as they are being fought now. They know they can't truly be defeated though, as long as they stay motivated. Their motivation is that, with over 200 million Arabs and 14 million Jews, the momentum will one day swing their way.

     

    And that's the impossible delimma.

     

    I can't stand Bush. He's bought and paid for. But all of this middle east fighting is not his fault as people like to say. When I saw these Arabs completely lose their mind and literally kill people over a freaking cartoon, I realized that none of this is his fault, clinton's fault, carter's fault.

     

    You can point to this and that and say so-and-so didn't do this or that right, but in the end there just is not a diplomatic bone in the bodies of these Arabs. And that is the crux of the problem. There is no way they are going to relax and enjoy life with a little tolerance for each other.

     

    It seems the only way to end all of this, is for one side to exterminate the other. Force. Plain old, natural born force. Sad really.

     

    I'm not advocating that. Just seems futile.

  7. It's been my understand that dogs can hear higher frequencies than us, but what about lower ones? How about the bandwidth of our voice?

     

    When I'm training my dog, I use alot of body language with verbal commands and she's right on target with me. But when I stop moving and just give verbal commands she doesn't seem to pick up unless I say the word just right.

     

    Was wondering, to what capacity do dogs hear our words? How do they interpret this apparent "charlie brown" gibberish?

  8. as for it adversely affecting My marriage, WTF are you on about AGAIN!???

     

    You always seem like you're all wound up about stuff. Relax a little.

     

    That was an impathetic question. That's what I usually get from folks against gay marriage. Instead, Severian has some good arguments. Do you?

  9. It is really the next step after gay marriages - why not have people campaigning to have the rights of a 'marriage' without any sexual or romantic requirements? Why shouldn't a brother and sister (or two brothers, or just two best friends) be able to have the same rights? Why shouldn't a man be allowed to have multiple 'wives', or a woman multiple 'husbands'?

     

    I couldn't agree more.

     

    As silly as it sounds, it seems my country is more religiously driven than I ever thought. Any talk of multiple wives or husbands, gay marriage - anything that the bible says is wrong, is viciously lobbied against here. I guess they didn't read the parts where jesus changed the hearts and minds of the people - on their own turf. For some reason, living life in reverence of christ has come to mean legislating their idea of morallity - NOT changing the hearts and minds of anybody but the house and senate.

     

    Gee...this kind of ties in with the other post about social freedoms. Imagine if the religious right were the ones deciding what was "socially damaging" and what wasn't.

  10. Need more specifics on the form these plant based minerals take. Are they present in minute amounts or are these things basically metal crystalline organisms of some kind. If you burn one in a hot enough fire, how much metal would be left behind after any organic components were combusted?

     

    I guess I was thinking it would be the same basic proportion you would see in our vegetation. But that's an interesting direction... Anyway, I don't know anything about this. I have no idea what plant holds more iron than another, or how much for that matter.

     

    Perhaps another and more cogent question would be to ask exactly what proportion of your present day population that are beamed to this world would actually possess any such knowledge? We live in a world of comfort where, in many places, scholars heavily outnumber craftsmen and tradesmen.

     

    Really? I figured it would be opposite. I figured you'd have a nice fair proportion of blue collar and white collar workers, with a few specialists smart enough to figure out this new world and direct them from there.

     

    SkepticLance - great take except I don't want my humans to advance any actually. That's why I was trying to eliminate ores from the equation. But then we need iron to live, so it's going to have to be available in some edible form like plant life. But then that also opens the door for humans to exploit that large scale and advance - bringing me back where I started. I was hoping I was wrong, but I'm afraid we're just too damn persistant.

  11. I like the idea, but I wonder if you might run into problems with the axiom such that to correct a bad side effect of it would require too big of a deviation to live with. Especially if the problem is close to the foundation of the logic behind it.

     

    But I'm not sure I really understand it anyway.

  12. Let me guess.... you like to poke your nose into people's bedrooms?

     

    I'm surprised you're asking me that. I thought my position was a little more transparent than that. I don't think it's anybody's business who wants to marry who or what they're doing in their bedroom. Don't get me wrong, I love a good porn flick, as long as it's hetero-style.

     

    And it's just as silly to be against gay marriage because somebody else will benefit from it and you won't. Sounds a little introverted and spiteful. Why not hold the "statement of judgement from the state" thing with more value and deny the government the right to tell us how to live our lives?

     

    You seem pretty smart, I can't imagine you don't see the sense in that.

  13. Great replies. Agriculture never dawned on me really. That's why I come here to ask these questions. And I like SkepticLance's theory on the advancement of metals.

     

    In short, you all are basically agreeing that a relative mastery of agriculture would allow a division of labor, thus leading to scholars and etc which would lead us to discovery of these metals and other things.

     

    So allow me to append the question a little then...

     

    If humans had the "knowledge" of metals already - say thousands of present day humans from all different walks of life suddenly zapped to another planet or something (not my storyline, but works for this parallel) where these minerals were only found in typical plant life but no "ores" to speak of - could we still advance like we have? Electrical networks, machines, and etc.

     

    I'm wondering how inventive and pioneering we can really be. Seems futile to try and figure out how to extract these minerals from vegetaion to forge metals, but then I wouldn't be all that surprised if we could do it.

     

    What do you all think?

  14. I find it odd that Israel is held to a different standard than Hezbollah and other terror groups. Same with America. Israel and America actually target the bad guys and accidentally kill innocent people - sometimes because of the "atrocity strategy" used by these groups and sometimes because we made a mistake and missed or didn't know they were there.

     

    These terror groups or freedom fighters, depending where you stand, purposely target innocent people over and over again and never even so much as say they're sorry.

     

    But the media harps on Israel and America about the civilian casualties. I don't think I've seen a single bit of coverage, except on fox news, that implicates these other groups for anything at all. They're portrayed as a bunch of poor people just "doing the best they can" to fight a rich, advanced warmongering army.

     

    Too bad we only care about poor people killed for god. Not the "rich" ones. But I guess that's right in line with the liberal ideology of hating the rich.

  15. Are you saying that the shots we see of dead and/or horribly wonded Lebanese children on the TV are made up?

     

    How can a question be a strawman? I was asking you to clarify your statement. You said: "all you see is Israel tanks confronting Palestinian children. yYou don't see the truth".

     

    How many people really think that was a genuine question of clarity? I think it was a rhetorical question so you could turn around and deny having an opinion when challenged about it...just like you're doing now.

     

    Oh come on. Do you truely expect anyone to believe that? Get real.

     

    Millions of people believe it. And millions of people believe otherwise. You're welcomed to your own beliefs, at least here in America anyway.

  16. Wourm, are you saying you would abolish the FDA? (A lot of libertarians would, and I think that's completely ridiculous.) Or is it just that people should be allowed to eat whatever they want, as long as its sold as what it is and they know what they're getting? If the latter, I agree, but that's a much more moderate position than many of the crazies at the LP. Their position is essentially that the free market will take care of any conceivable problem all by itself, putting bloody-minded idealogy over reality. It's an article of faith for them.

     

    I'm not sure I saw Wourm make a post on here, but judging your post I'm assuming you meant me.

     

    Yeah I'm not sure about the FDA thing either, but I do know that the market place is much more responsive than the government is about things.

     

    Look at the whole Carb diet fad. Wendy's, McDonalds, Burger King and all the rest of them had "Carb Friendly" meals on menus practically overnight. Competition drives them to give people what they want. If you want crap, they'll sell it to you. If you want good stuff, they'll sell it to you. They don't care either way.

     

    Government is sloooooowwwwww and sloppy. No one in government cares about being efficient or giving people what they want, they aren't competing with anybody. Well I guess you could say they're competing with the rest of the governments of the world, but as long as half the world is war torn and decades in the past there's no real competition.

     

    The free market does solve alot of problems on its own. But big business and corporations are evil. I think there would always need to be some kind of watch dog over this size of business, especially when they are dealing with other countries and their governments potentially causing problems that we the people have to go fight over - like oil.

     

    I'm far more focused on eliminating the current tax structure, inviting other countries to build their businesses here in the US, providing jobs and keeping the manufacturing industry here instead of turning into a obese consumer society that has to have everything made in other countries to be the least bit affordable.

     

    Another major appeal, to me anyway, to libertarian style governing, is the elimination of victimless crime. I don't like the idea of people rotting in prison because they grew a plant some people don't like. Or the idea, the nerve, that we can tell two grown adults that they can't have sex in trade for money. This is all nosey, ammoral crap that both liberals and conservatives are guilty of.

  17. Your indignant squeal of "strawman" is a misuse of the term.

     

    That was a blatant strawman, by definition. He did not say there are no palestinian children being killed, rather that their killers are misrepresented. He's making the point that Hezbollah uses innocent people by putting them in the line of fire one way or another and then playing the atrocity card with the perfect snapshot to support it.

  18. Maybe at first glance and in overarching principles, but I think most people are also too pragmatic to be libertarians.

     

    But that's just it. Libertarianism is pragmatic. Instead of trying to legislate and mold the people into some goofy politically correct expectation with law books that take a forest to publish, you put the responsibility back where it belongs - on the public. People see government as the great "legitimator" ( yes that's a word ) and safety net, regulator of all right and wrong in the country.

     

    I was listening to a talk show on my way home tonight and they were talking about America's overweight problem. This lady called in and blamed the government for our food containing high fructose corn syrup and etc. I couldn't believe it. She went on to say the government should do something about cheap "poor folks" food not being good for you, to make more "affordable" healthy food. This is nuts. Do you see how ridiculous the expectation of our government has become?

     

    But I also understand that that's an ideal and not always practical in the real world. For example, I'm glad private citizens aren't allowed to own anti-aircraft missles, even if they promise not to use them...

     

    Not bad. I hadn't thought of anti-aircraft missles. But I believe, even under a libertarian based government, there would still be limits.

     

    I also don't like the idea of a privatized police force. And I don't care much for their take on national security. They have some other funky ideas too that I don't agree with, but I have more in common with the libertarian label than any of the others...

  19. don't know how much faith i'd put into it, but believe a smidgeon of truth. where soldiers were grabbed to trade for militants. and normally in the past kinda holds true. you take my guys, i take yours, we lob artillery and rockets at each other - swear we will never deal if each other. and finally broker a secret deal to swap prisoners.

     

    I absolutely believe it. It's like playing "house" to these idiots. This is how they play. This is what they do. It's right in line with how all of these weirdos say Israel's response is out of proportion. They think they're trading punches - not fighting a war.

     

    That's like me coming over to someone's house and punching the first person that opens the door right in the face. Then cry about how unfair it is that they beat the living hell out of me on the front lawn.

  20. How is a separate sperm and egg not a potential human? And so definitively one once they do what they're trying desperately to do? "Period?"

     

    Because neither will become a human on it's own, so that means they are not a potential human. When they come together, they will become a human - you actually have to step in to stop that from happening. That's why they freeze them.

     

    Once again...I'm just stating the obvious while others try to rationalize their way around it.

  21. Did you just make that stuff up, or what? You posted it; cough up a source or retract it.

     

    As for your wild flight of fancy about inheritance...

     

    And hey, look at me, I got a source!

     

    Ummm...is that part of "trying to cultivate an atmosphere of egalitarian debate" ?

     

    Sorry, but I've noticed a trend here where moderators don't practice what they preach. If you look at the quotes above and the quotes below, there's no difference in tone. It's all typical smart aleck behaviour that ALL of us are guilty of from time to time. Any worse and I would understand, but I don't think he said anything that wasn't consistent with the tone he got from you.

     

    Pangloss, I don't want to get on your bad side, I really don't, but it's hard for me not to say something in this case. I haven't really noticed it much from you, but other moderators are much worse.

     

    Pangloss, I didn't think I needed to document the baby boom, but here it is!

    ...

    One the first day of my first statistics class my professor quoted Mark Twain:

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