ParanoiA

I like Newt. He's quite a practical, logical thinker really. I think people dislike him for the same reason people dislike any conservative without actually listening to why he thinks what he thinks. He's been hard on the administration on several issues so I'm not sure how much the party will embrace him. And he's not a people person. I like his almost geek like disposition to government and philosophy. But I've seen my pop culture driven countrymen dismiss great candidates for completely asinine, irrelevant trivia far too many times to believe he'd make it through the primaries.

He didn't wipe the floor with anything other than maybe his own ass. He was asked a question and he got bent out of shape about it because he hasn't had the media exposure or relevance to counter these issues that have come into the limelight recently. I certainly don't blame him and I've always liked him better when he gets in the substance of debate. But come on, he's just as bought and paid for as GWB. They call him slick willy for a reason. My memory is bad, but it isn't that bad.

Neither. He asked the kinds of questions you ask when you get the former president of the united states to do an interview for you. This is what reporters do. This is what we tune in for when watching the news. When a movie like The Path to 9/11 comes out and reminds everyone that Clinton dropped the ball long before anyone could blame GWB for it, and then you get Clinton in a chair in front of you - you'd better ask him just like you do everybody else. This is why I don't like hindsight witch hunts. The current administration and all conservatives have had to field these kinds of questions - and delivered far more personally and vindictively in the process. I didn't see any of them lose control of themselves and get pissed off about it. It's interesting watching how the other side reacts when the tables are turned... But honestly, there are hundreds of people that could have prevented 9/11. Lots of people make mistakes. And if any of those people had any idea this was going to happen, they wouldn't have made those mistakes. If Clinton believed this was going to happen, he would have got him. If GWB thought it was going to happen, he would have killed him before he knew to run. These people we are so intent on burning at the stake aren't the ones that attacked us. No one knew 9/11 was going to happen. I don't care how much they dramatize it on TV or how many conspiracy theory books you read. It just wasn't part of our reality then. It's just that simple. I wish we would just pick up and move on and quit roasting people to make ourselves feel better.

What if I live in a cardboard box downtown? I shouldn't be required to assimilate to a common lifestyle in order to vote.

I'm having a hard time understanding the multiverse theory. I thought I read some time ago, that the universe as we know it is like two plates moving away from each other, or expanding, set in motion by the big bang...and that they eventually come back together, singularity, and then big bang again..and so on. Now when I look up information on it, I see no mention of that part. Just dimensions. I'm wondering if this "expansion" and eventual "collapse" happen at different momentums, creating differences in physics and time. I would think the speed at which the plates move apart and come back together would have an impact on the vacuum within it. Is that true? Does any of that even make sense? Or did I just dream all this...?

Concering the O/P: That's the reason I've always known as number one. It still matters today. Just before the gulf war everybody seemed to have this mentallity that wars were for history books and there was no real threat to the world - my generation anyway. This is exactly how I see people who say it isn't necessary to keep arms in America to protect ourselves from our government. They're letting the status quo fool them into thinking these steps aren't necessary anymore - that we've "evolved" to the point that these kinds of thoughts are childish and not practical. There is a lot of war still left in humanity. It's far from over, and every great civilization, so far, has fallen eventually. There's no reason to think we couldn't be fighting a civil war in our own country sometime in the near future.

This reminds me of a dog chasing its tail... And then you answered my question after all, so apparently you understood quite well what I was asking. I thought that might be your answer. But since morality is a subjective application fabricated by humans for a variety of reasons, you haven't given me a good enough reason to define it by looking through "something else's eyes" rather than my own. What's good for the universe isn't necessarily good for me, and vice versa. So, my ideas of morality are going to differ from someone else's ideas of morality when they're going for an "objective" approach. Thank you for making assumptions about my views. I don't see a moral line with sadists. I'm more of a live and let live kinda guy. I have no interest in judging someone's behavior as long as they're not hurting someone else...that uh, doesn't want to be hurt that is. Most of the things I do for fun are considered immoral by most and drenched in sin. There's nothing arbitrary about drawing the line between the species. It's a quite natural, sensible, meaningful line. I would draw the same line between humans and superior intelligent life as well - and so would that superior lifeform. The universe doesn't revolve around humans, so what makes you think we should extend our goofy ideas beyond ourselves? Morality is made by and for humans.

Yeah he scares the crap out of me too. Because he's just smooth enough to fool idiots and naive peace lovers. I just see death and hatred in his eyes.

I have the same question. All of this sounds so tilted to theology rather than a more even handed Philosophy and Religion title. But, perhaps I've missed something obvious and this is for a good reason.

You seem to come from a moral perspective from that of the universe. Your ideas seem to be externally decided through logical means rather than an internally motivated justification. Your arguments are logical and make relative sense, but there's nothing to suggest we should extend our morality to other species. You define morality from the perspective of the universe, while most of us define it internally - from a self interested perspective. All of the disagreements seem to be the logical ends of these points of view. So, my question is, why do you think you should be an "objective observer" rather than a "subjective participant"?

One major difference makes this work for australia and not for the US. I believe it's against australian law not to vote. That's not the case in the US, so voter turn out is very low. What does that mean? Well, if half the voters don't turn out and we don't require picture ID, then people can illegaly cast multiple votes by using the names and addresses in step 2 of the absent voters. I'm all for a paper ballot, counted twice or more for redundancy, with no results until counting is finished - no matter how long it takes.

I think it's pretty obvious from the comments so far, that the politics forum will eventually be moved as well. Or, at least the admins are going to wish it to be. That dividing area between religion versus politics is a bit too gray. They have everything to do with each other in the current climate. I guess we'll see if the new site for P&R will have a Politics forum as well - in that case it will probably work well. But for this site, I don't see how you could really manage the politics forum as an admin and not get worn out partitioning religious threads from political threads and deal with our moaning and groaning about it. I guess the sad reality is, that while I'm interested in science and scientists, I really have no business in here. I like to scan through the threads and something will grab my attention ever now and then, but for the most part I have only posted in the P&R and politics forum.

This describes my teens perfectly... Repeatedly break the law - underage drinking, smoking pot...etc Display reckless or impulsive behavior - trunk surfing, a ton of other things... Exhibit persistent irritability and aggressive behavior - well duh... Repeatedly lie to and manipulate others - another duh... Be unable to sustain long-term relationships - I don't know a teen that should Show consistent irresponsibility, such as failing to pay bills or hold a steady job - never had a job more than a month, ruined a great job my dad got for me on his word, mom paid my bills cuz she felt sorry for me... Abuse alcohol or drugs - ever since 13... Show little or no remorse for their actions - there's a teen that does show remorse for their actions...I sure as hell never did That list describes me and every one of my friends I grew up with. What kind of joke is this? If we're all Antisocial Personality Disordered, then maybe it's not such a bad thing. I've got a great job, hot and sweet wife, two wonderful kids and a frig full of beer. I think the bedwetting, cruelty to animals and pyromania is what stands out. If I were you, I'd take him to a professional, rather than jack around this forum while he continues to terrorize the world around him...

Yeah I'm quite upset about our voting system imperfections. But I'm even more upset at conservatives acting like liberals and demanding we add yet another bureaucracy to the list and start requiring picture ID and issuing "free" ID's to those who don't have a picture ID or DL. We need to fix this problem, which is largely due to incompetence. Hey, I respect the elderly, but they are usually running the polls and they don't do that great of a job. There was a guy here in town that bragged on the radio that he has voted in every presidential election since he got out of prison over 20 years ago - when he LOST his voting rights. They have never been reinstated. He said he first did it to see what would happen.

Geez, I hope it goes better than that. Big oil has held us back. I'd like to see a faster rollout of these alternatives. Ethanol doesn't help matters any either. Politicians are jumping all over that, gearing up for elections already. I'm going to be spending a lot of time shaking my head...

You know, I'm about as anti-censorship as you can be. But I like the Dove approach. Rather than crying to the government to come up with yet more legislation to control our behavior, they're operating within the framework of our system and organizing to make themselves relevant. Quite democratic. I'm not getting the oppressive tone from this website at least. Like this quote: That sounds resonable to me. Promotion of good rather than condeming of what they see bad is a much preferred approach, in my opinion. However, I would be cautious too if they called me with a completely different tone. And I still see a need to promote non-censorship orgs. Dove is great for their cause, so who do we have for ours?

Ok, when you use TRUE, this means that you want the closest answer. If you use FALSE, it will only return the exact answer. Most people will tell you to sort both columns ascending. This is required for TRUE, but not for FALSE. Also, I don't see your return column index value. Try this: VLOOKUP(B1,A:A,1,FALSE) This says, do a vertical lookup on the value in cell B1 in the entire column of A. If a match is found, then return that value, if not, then return #N/A. #N/A is telling you it couldn't find that value, so that would be the same as saying the city name is not in the list, or it's mispelled. I don't know of any way you could design a function to find mispelled city names.

Wow, I'm suddenly feeling so much better about my kids... More information is required. Parents? Mental stability of the mother and father? Who is currently the active caregiver? This child is going to do something irreversible. It's not a question of if, it's a matter of when. He needs a professional immediately before a tragedy dictates it.

It would be more fun watching them make fools of themselves bathing in hypocrisy, I agree.

Well I must have missed all of the good stuff. I was impressed with the part that I watched though. They seemed to be tough on all involved really - at least from the point I started watching it. I also didn't realize the FBI had that kind of information leading up to the attack and had agents actually focused on UBL. I thought they dismissed him and much of the intelligence surrounding him up til 9/11. If that's true, I'm far more disappointed in my countrymen than I was before.