JayB

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Having one's religious ideals exempted from criticism or scrutiny is protected under the first amendment? Huh? I would wager that you are confusing the right the fact that it is not legal to deny someone their fundamental rights on account of their religion - such as with regards to employment, etc - but the nowhere does the first ammendment exempt any race, color, creed, etc from being satirized, mocked, offended, outraged, etc, etc, etc - and there's certainly no legal basis for the notion that engaging in any of the above entitles the state to fine or imprison you for doing so.

The construction of the term "Islamophobia" is an attempt to conflate negative attitudes towards or hostility to the ideas contained within Islam with the same set of irrational motivations that characterizes negative attitudes towards a subset of the population that's been mistreated on account of a characteristic that they did not choose for themselves. "Flying while Muslim" is a play on the term "Driving while black," which is an effort to characterize any additional scrutiny that Muslims may feel that they are subjected to on account of their beliefs to those that the term "Driving while Black," suggests that black people are on subject to on the basis of their skin color alone, another trait that's inherited rather than chosen. There it is - the deliberate conflation of two unlike things - hostility towards a group based on traits that they were born with and could not choose vs hostility towards a group on the basis of beliefs and practices which they voluntarily adhere to and engage in. The acceptance of these terms changes the framework within which something like, say - disapproval of the Burqua - from a discussion of choices and ideas to one of birth and ethnic identity. In so doing, it effectively silences debate by casting anyone who dislikes the ideas or practices that characterize the Islamic faith as a racist or a bigot. Here's an example which combines many the elements that I have been touching on in this thread: "Religion edition sends student newspaper editor into hiding "Alexandra Smith Monday February 12, 2007 EducationGuardian.co.uk The editor of a Cambridge University college newspaper is in hiding after his attempt at religious satire backfired. The 19-year-old student and aspiring journalist, who has not been named, is under investigation by the authorities at Clare College who described the satirical issue of the student newspaper Clarefication as "abhorrent". Most inflammatory, the college said, was the reproduction in the newspaper of the infamous cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad first printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten in September 2005, triggering violent protests worldwide. For his own safety, the student has been taken out of his accommodation and put in a secure place. The newspaper had been renamed Crucification for the special edition of religious satire. The front page included the headline: "Ayatollah rethinks stance on misunderstood Rushdie." On page six, there were pictures of Muslims holding placards reading: "Behead those who insult Islam" and "Freedom go to hell." Enraged students have bombarded the college's student union with complaints, and the vice-president of the university's Islamic society has described the edition as "hugely offensive" and "crude, unabashed prejudice." Late last week, senior college officials were locked in urgent talks about how the material came to be published and what action to take against the student. In a statement issued by Clare College, a senior tutor, Patricia Fara, said: "Clare is an open and inclusive college. A student-produced satirical publication has caused widespread distress throughout the Clare community. "The college finds the publication and the views expressed abhorrent. Reflecting the gravity of the situation, the college immediately began an investigation and disciplinary procedures are in train." Calum Davey, the president of the Clare College student union, expressed his "deep regret" over the publication and offered his sincere apologies for causing offence. He told the Cambridge News: "This material does not reflect the views of Clare students." Cambridge News said Clare College fellows had, in a rare move, called a court of discipline, which would sit in judgment on the student responsible for sparking what the university regards as one of the most embarrassing incidents it has suffered in years." Plenty more where this came from.

"Islamophobia," "Flying while Muslim," etc. The point is that a public institution has catered to the wishes of religious people. If there were a conservative Baptist group that wanted a public facility to make a similar accommodation, and there was a public facility that actually did so, I think that the odds that everyone would greet this development with a collective yawn are rather small. The easy answer with regards to swimming pools, is for anyone who wants religious principles to govern their swimming, bathing, whatever - is for them to pool their funds and create a private "Religion X" pool where they can impose their principles on themselves. If they want to use the public pool, then they have to abide by the public's rules, which in this case do not include using public resources to cater to any particular group's religious demands. The other salient point here is that neither gender, nor race, nor sexual orienation is something that people voluntarily adopt. Islam is a set of beliefs, not something that one inherits through birth and has no control over, and it's surprising that so few people have even noted, much less objected to the equation of critiques of a set of beliefs and the behaviors which they inspire to prejudices and discrimination directed at characteristics which people have actually inherited and can not be held responsible for.

France has banned religious symbols in the workplace. England is considering banning burkas. Where's the cultural capitulation, exactly? You've cited one obscure incidence in the United States, and opined that 'the Left' would back it wholeheartedly. One minor data point bolstered by unsupported conjecture. Personally, I'm not going to run for cover any time soon. If your tide of Muslim radicalism (rather that socio economic pushback, which is what is actually occuring in Europe) is such grim reality, why isn't it happening right here in the belly of the 'Great Satan'? Do we not have Muslims here? Have we not invaded two Muslim countries? Guantanamo Bay? And yet...no riots. All quiet on the home front. Hmmmmm. There's actually quite a number of these instances, and the fact that you are not aware of them does not negate their existence. Sorry. I just don't have the time or the inclination to compile them. As for the reason that the US doesn't have the same problems with fanaticism, the primary reasons are that we have a Muslim population that is smaller both in absolute terms and in percentage terms - and more importantly, we have a much more open society and labor market. There's also the fact that the American identity has no fixed ethno-racial standards associated with it, which is not true for most European countries, where ancestry is a vital component of the national identity. Why you even brought this up is interesting because it not only counters a claim that I was not making, it actually supports my argument to the detriment of your own. If the geopolitical factors that most claim are the sole determinant of who's on the receiving end of the jihad, then Euroland should be virtually exempt from such attacks and the US should be suffering from much more violence - homegrown and otherwise. The fact that Europe is also getting its share speaks to the fact that the problem of terrorism is more complex than "American provocation = Islamist Repsonse." The entire argument assumes that Islamists have no positive agenda of their own that they are trying to drive, and are simply reacting to Western provocations in a precisely calibrated manner.

The problem is, that's where the terrorists come from. Without at least some cooperation from these governments and their local populaces how are we going to conduct effective counter terrorism operations? I suppose we could pull out of the region altogether and hope for the best. Actually - a significant number - if not an outright majority of the terrorists involved in the attacks on the West spent a significant amount of time living in the West, in Europe or Britain in particular. These were not destititute Yemeni goatherds whose entire education consisted of memorizing a few bits of the Koran in the local free-lance Madrassa. They were fairly affluent and well educated men who were either living in or educated in the West, and were radicalized while living in Western countries in a way that they hadn't been while living in their native countries. I've already profiled the 'typical terrorist' in previous posts on another thread. Noone here has suggested they are mainly simple, angry villagers. There are not training camps, however, in the West. Those do exist in the Middle East. Furthermore, the big cheeses of Al Qaeda currently operate in obscure, destabilized locations in N Africa and Western Asia, not Europe. You've also oversimplified the European muslim issue. In France, for example, the riots there were not primarily religious in nature; they were more akin to our own Watts race riots, fomented by a marginalized minority. The terrorists you speak of were radicalized by a community with leadership outside those countries. Taking out the leadership is one effective way to tackle the problem, and that involves operating in those countries where the leadership operates. Again, no on on this forum has suggested any such cultural capitulation. Quite the opposite. I've suggested repeatedly that we marginalize these assholes by giving them less play in the public sphere, treating them as just another international criminal enterprise, not a 'War on Western Civilization', and getting on with our lives. After all, the whole point of terrorism is to disrupt the public psyche and garnish publicity. We've played right into that strategy. This is one of your 'theme' admonitions, but no one here is really sure who you're addressing it to. I didn't describe the French riots as terrorism, but there has been plenty of other violence perpetrated by Islamist fanatics who are either from, living in, or educated in Euroland so excluding the great French Car-B-Que changes nothing. With regards to cultural capitulation, this is a process that's occuring in the real-world, and the opinions expressed here have no bearing on their occurrence whatsoever. The primary means by which this has occurred is via the deliberate conflation of critiques of Muslim ideas or practices with racism or homophobia, although violence and intimidation - witness Theo Van Gogh's Slaying or the death threats issued in the wake of the Danish cartoon episode - is clearly not off of the table either. Most of this is occuring in Europe and England, but there was an episode not too long ago where a public swimming pool in Washington was either arranging or had arranged for female-only swimming times to cater to Muslim sentiments. Some may argue that this is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it crosses the red church-state line that would normally have the the Left screaming.

My comment about tolerant and accomodating had to do with the Danes, and I think that the description largely fits for them - although the problems that you cite are certainly present there also. With respect to the rest of your comments, I pretty much completely agree. The Euros have managed to combine a system where the folks who don't share the same ethnocultural background as the natives are subject to a million minor instances of petty bigotry and descrimination, and this is coupled with a labor-market/welfare-system which effectively denies them the opportunity to to participate in the labor market, so instead of integrating through work because that's what they have to do to put food on the table, they wind up warehoused on welfare estates where they're easy prey for an ideology that capitalizes on their marginalization, sanctions violence against the society that excludes them, and provides them with a sense of meaning and purpose - however warped and destructive. This article is only about Sweden, but it pertains to pretty much all of Euroland: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/magazine/05muslims.html?ex=1296795600&en=722dbb00a718b0f9&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

The problem is, that's where the terrorists come from. Without at least some cooperation from these governments and their local populaces how are we going to conduct effective counter terrorism operations? I suppose we could pull out of the region altogether and hope for the best. An analogy here at home. Every couple of years a homeless camp moves on to the lawn of the local church. The assault rate immediately goes up, and goes down when they leave. The solution on one side, I suppose, would be to kill them all. OK. Another solution might be to address the issue of why these people are on the streets in the first place. The worst option is to just ignore the problem, because the problem isn't going to ignore us. Plus, there's that oil dependency thing we still haven't addressed. Actually - a significant number - if not an outright majority of the terrorists involved in the attacks on the West spent a significant amount of time living in the West, in Europe or Britain in particular. These were not destititute Yemeni goatherds whose entire education consisted of memorizing a few bits of the Koran in the local free-lance Madrassa. They were fairly affluent and well educated men who were either living in or educated in the West, and were radicalized while living in Western countries in a way that they hadn't been while living in their native countries. The second and third generation Muslims living in the West are significantly more radical than their parents who, unlike them, may have lived under conditions of actual, rather than adjectival colonialism. This and many other elements of the current situation suggest that anyone who believes that simply pulling up stakes and leaving the Middle East will eliminate terrorism or eradicate the long list of grievances that Islamists have compiled to justify their attacks is mistaken. This list extends well beyond the framework of contemporary geopolitics, and even if the situations in Iraq and Palestine were resolved to their satisfaction, there'd be plenty of other pretexts that would serve equally well in their place. The response to the publication of a few exceedingly mild satirical cartoons, published in a language which they could not comprehend, in a country as tolerant and accommodating as any in the world, should be telling in this regard - as should the fact that neither Canada, nor France, nor Germany has been granted any special exemption from terrorist attacks on account of their vocal opposition to US policy. Whatever the solution involves, it will certainly not include craven opportunism, weakness, or cultural self-loathing of the kind that seems to permeate the Euro-Leftist outlook. "Alright, alright - we'll get rid of the drinking and the carousing and the music and the satire and keep the ladies in Burkas if that's what you want - just stop with the bombing already!"

But what about the Mohammed cartoons? Would posting THOSE be OK? Cause he's just some towel headed heathen right? Did those cartoons upset you Dru? Maybe we need some Canadian style "Hate-speech" laws down here to keep folks in line.

"He was a prominent member of the Republican Party. Although he never held elected office, he was an active participant. His speech nominating James G. Blaine for the 1884 Presidential election, result in Blaine receiving the Republican. His candidacy was unsuccessful, but the speech itself, known as the "Plumed Knight" speech, was considered a model of political oratory. Ingersoll was involved in several prominent trials as an attorney, notably the Star Route trials, a major political scandal in which his clients were acquitted. He also defended a New Jersey man for blasphemy. Although he did not win acquittal, his vigorous defense is considered to have discredited blasphemy laws and few other prosecutions followed. Ingersoll was most noted as an orator, the most popular of the age, when oratory was public entertainment. He spoke on every subject, from Shakespeare to Reconstruction, but his most popular subjects were agnosticism and the sanctity and refuge of the family. He committed his speeches to memory although they were sometimes more than three hours long. His audiences were said never to be restless. His radical views on religion, slavery, woman's suffrage, and other issues of the day effectively prevented him from ever pursuing or holding political offices higher than that of Attorney General. Illinois Republicans tried to pressure him into running for Governor on the condition that Ingersoll conceal his agnosticism during the campaign. He refused the nomination because he thought concealing information from the public was immoral. Many of Ingersoll's speeches advocated freethought and humanism, and often poked fun at religious belief. For this the press often attacked him, but neither his views nor the negative press could stop his rising popularity. At the height of Ingersoll's fame, audiences would pay $1 or more to hear him speak, a giant sum for his day."

... but probably don't. R.G. Ingersoll. (1833-1899) One of the most popular orators of the late nineteenth century, and all but forgotten. I discovered the guy while rummaging through the library trying to find an appropriate topic for my senior thesis, and was amazed to discover a man whose thinking seemed so at odds with my understanding of nineteenth century morays. His popularity was even more surprising, for the same reasons. I ended up choosing another topic, but enjoyed killing quite a few hours in the library reading through some of his collected works. I imagine that Dave_Schuldt and some other folks who post here will enjoy this guys work, if they haven't discovered the guy already. Some quotes: "It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon the book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people and for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have had nothing to do. And yet there are some judges dishonest and cowardly enough to solemnly decide that this is a Christian country, and that our free institutions are based upon the infamous laws of Jehovah." -- Robert Green Ingersoll, "Individuality" (1873)" "The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called "faith." " -- Robert Green Ingersoll, The Gods "If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men.... What right have you, sir, Mr. clergyman, you, minister of the gospel to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and with fear? I do not believe this doctrine, neither do you. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena. -- Robert Green Ingersoll, "The Liberty Of All" (1877)" Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Ingersoll Internet Archive. Check out "The Gods," if nothing else. http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/ "The Gods," http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/gods.html

Interesting points. But the moral righteousness of bombing and deliberately causing collateral damage deaths on the premise of preventing even more future deaths relies on an assumption that the country choosing to bomb knows with certainty the long term outcomes of either choice (to bomb, or not to bomb). It may or may not be the lesser of two evils, yet it's the course always chosen with this rationale in mind. How do we know that some 12 year old Iraqi boy who otherwise would've become a doctor but whose entire family was blown up in front of him by one of our bombs accidently isn't now instead going to become the guy who drops a huge nuke on New York City in the year 2031? Well we don't, and that's an eccentric example, but the point is, these justifications for war have been recycled forever and we don't know what the wide ranging effects of war really have had- except that there's a cycle of violence within this supposed moral imperative of "no killing". I would have to disagree, simply because one can't base serious moral reasoning on things that are fundamentally unknowable, and one can never know with certainty the full set of long term consequences that result from any choice. That's just an impossible precondition to satisfy. I think a more defensible and realistic approach involves attempting to ascertain the probability of the set of forseeable outcomes resulting from a given action, weighing these against the probability of various outcomes if you do nothing.

Interesting points. But the moral righteousness of bombing and deliberately causing collateral damage deaths on the premise of preventing even more future deaths relies on an assumption that the country choosing to bomb knows with certainty the long term outcomes of either choice (to bomb, or not to bomb). It may or may not be the lesser of two evils, yet it's the course always chosen with this rationale in mind. How do we know that some 12 year old Iraqi boy who otherwise would've become a doctor but whose entire family was blown up in front of him by one of our bombs accidently isn't now instead going to become the guy who drops a huge nuke on New York City in the year 2031? Well we don't, and that's an eccentric example, but the point is, these justifications for war have been recycled forever and we don't know what the wide ranging effects of war really have had- except that there's a cycle of violence within this supposed moral imperative of "no killing". Using airstrikes for assassination in urban areas is certain to cause civilian casualties. War planners know and accept this; therefore those deaths are every bit as deliberate as the in the case of stoning. There is a difference in scale, of course. The stoning kills one person, the bombing many. I would also argue that our nearly psychotic paranoia regarding the vastly overblown terrorist threat is similar to the paranoia of those muslim nations who feel that female infidelity will lead to an unraveling of their social fabric. In fact, I would argue that our society IS unraveling as a result of our paranoia and pre-occupation with national security at the expense of all else. Essentially, we've allowed ourselves to become a pathetic bucket of angry, frightened kittens just because a few pricks took out a couple of our buildings. Lately, however, it seems that we might have a chance to get our balls back and move on. Using the term "I would argue.." followed by a statement of your personal convictions doesn't transmute the said convictions into an argument, much less a convincing one. It bears repeating that private acts of affection and targeted attacks on terrorists are different things, and if you wish to compare the moral codes of two different groups of people in an accurate and rational fashion, you need to compare the precepts that govern their responses to the same activities. I'll help you out here. Compare the legal punishments that a woman is subject to for engaging in consensual sex outside of in marriage under Western Law to the penalties that the same actions are subject to under Sharia. Do the same for the conduct of Islamists with respect to the moral considerations that they undertake with regards to civilian casualties. Islamists not only take no effort whatsoever to minimize civilian casualties. This is because civilians are the target, and they make every effort to maximize the number of civilians that they kill, and use every means at their disposal to do so. Now compare this philosophy to the practice of using precision strikes to kill people in an effort to limit the number of civilians that the terrorists are able to murder. The fact that you keep attempting to tether the practice of stoning women who commit adultery to death with targeted airstrikes against terrorists who may or may not be surrounded by civilians with nothing more substantial than a bald assertion is telling. The reason that you are unwilling to make an apples-to-apples comparison is that the act of doing so would undermine the unreflective moral relativism that you are attempting to pass off as serious moral reasoning. Either that or you would look quite foolish attempting to argue on behalf of arguments that are transparently false, and that not even you believe. If a female relative of yours had an affair and she would be either subject to Sharia or Western moral/legal moray, and the nonsense that you are arguing on behalf of actually represented your sincere convictions, you would not object to someone deciding the matter with a flip of the coin. "Death by stoning or a few folks looking askance at her and maybe a divorce *shrug* - flip away."? Right.

"Two different societies striking a balance between removing a threat and the harm its willing to inflict to do so." The problem here is that these are, by definition, two entirely different things. One is intentional, the other is not. The fact that people choose to believe otherwise doesn't negate this difference anymore than the existence of people who refuse to believe that two plus two equals four refutes the truth of the proposition than they do. You seem to think that noting the fact that there are varying opinions on the matter is tantamount to a logical proof of some kind that actually renders them equal to one another. It's really hard to know where to begin with someone who presents observations as arguments, but lets start with the statement that's central to your examples. "Two different societies striking a balance between removing a threat and the harm its willing to inflict to do so." Yes - we have two societies. We also have two entirely different phenomena that actually have nothing whatsoever in common with one another in any objective sense. We have a woman who has had sex with a man outside of marriage. The acts she has committed will lead to no direct physical harm of anyone else. If her society fails to prevent her from engaging in this action, no direct physical harm will come to her anyone else from her actions alone. We have individuals that have already intentionally slaughtered, or plan to intentionally slaughter as many civilians as possible. Failure to prevent the attack has already cost, or will potentially cost, several, several hundred, or several thousand lives. The threat here is completely different than the threat posed by a woman engaging in consensual sex outside of marriage. It is impossible to equate the two in any objective fashion whatsoever. An additional distinction - and a critical one - is that failure to take action against the terrorists may lead to a death toll well in excess of the number of innocent bystanders who are incidentally killed in the act of killing the terrorists. Failing to avert a mass slaughter that may involve hundreds of people for fear of killing a much smaller number in order to prevent the said attack involves moral considerations that are completely absent from and nothing like those involved in stoning a woman who has engaged in a consensual act of affection outside of marriage. The differences don't end here, but those are sufficient to establish a larger point, which is that pretending that using stoning to punish female adultery with precision bombing undertaken to prevent people who plan on intentionally killing an untold number of civilians are morally equivalent to one another is not just a grotesque distortion of moral reasoning, but a complete abdication of one's responsibility for the same. The same holds for the notion that the moral systems within which these actions occur are in any way equivalent to one another. If you want to actually compare the moral perspectives and claims of one group versus the another, its necessary to compare the manner in which they treat the same thing. Brutal rape, for example. Same brutal rape. Culture A abhors it, culture B detests it. Culture A sanctions it, culture B punishes it. Here you have the beginnings of the information you need for a real, legitimate comparison of the two moral codes under consideration. Systematic moral relativists then find themselves in the uncomfortable position of arguing on behalf of something that is both false, and which they themselves do not believe, which is probably why concrete comparisons of this sort rarely make their way into either the consciousness or the arguments of the average systematic moral relativist. This is why most of them revert to comparing how two societies treat things that actually have little or nothing in common and trying to devise distortions with which to render them morally equal to one another.

Despite the physical equivalence, these two actions are in no way morally equivalent to one another. It's one thing to deny that different moral codes exist, another to insist that all moral codes are equally rational, just, and humane. Maintaining a moral distinction between intentional and incidental homicides - mowing down a pack of pedestrians because you want to murder them, and hitting suffering a stroke while driving which results in the same outcome, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, - is a basic element of any moral system worthy of the name.

So we made them up?? If we came from animals they don't have these. How did we get them? Group cooperation has been strongly selected for in evolution, and the shared behaviors that govern the behavior of social animals are every bit as much the product of natural selection as their eyes, ears, fur, etc. Show me a social animal, wolves, lions, monkeys, or even social organisms like ants, and I'll show you a very strict set of behavioral norms that govern their interaction. Most of our most fundamental moral instincts - don't eat your children, etc - are the product of our evolutionary inheritance, rather than abstract reasoning. Once the capacity for abstract reasoning emerged, so did the capacity to refine and modify the behavioral code that we inherited - but our morals are no more the product of pure reason than our bone structure is.

So did this paradigm shift relate to climbing's place in the hierarchy o' priorities, or something else?

A ghost from the "Anyone gonna get after this?" threads of yore re-emerges. I first spotted that line 3-4 years ago from the top of Exfoliation Dome, and immediately went home and looked through the Beckey guide to see if there'd been an ascent. I suspect that I was about the 400th person to do so. The line looked amazing, but after getting a better look at the snowfield looming above it, I figured that the odds that I'd find the route and myself in the right condition to climb the thing were next to none, and the move to the Least Coast put the matter to rest. That's an impressive effort on a beautiful line. Thanks for posting the photos for everyone else's vicarious gratification. Gets my vote for this year's Golden Snaffle award. On a related note? How did you guys feel about the objective hazards on the route? Seems like even folks that are solid at the grade would have to spend a long time underneath a big snowfield that looks like it'd catch some early morning sun. Old Photo: Incidently, it's always looked as though continuing up the couloir that branches up to the right would be a worthy outing in its own right, if not quite as spectacular as the plum that these gents picked.

Thanks for your input Alpinfox. But coming from a new parent who is not vaccinating my newborn…..”easily opting out” is really not that easy. I have run into snags all along the way. We knew this going into it….so I am not complaining about our decision. But it is not easy to tell the daycare who will only take vaccinated children to go to hell. I suspect the same difficulties coming from Texans I'll put the "never try to reason a man out of something he wasn't reasoned into" philosophy into practice here and simply ask what your primary area of expertise is and how you came arrived at this decision.

The New McCoffee is actually not too bad.

I've already got the name "Reinhold," picked out, and plan on reading plenty of Austrian econ texts in a cozy armchair with the dog curled up at my feet. If read aloud, this should only reinforce his natural tendency to avoid approaching competitive situations with a zero-sum mentality, and to engage in mutually beneficial transactions with the cats. The odds are quite good that the dog will answer nature's call on old copies of The Wall Street Journal though, unless someone wants to donate a stack of Mother Jones magazines from their hermetically sealed, temperature and humidity controlled archive for that explicit purpose.

Don't take this too seriously, Murray. The only reason it caught my eye is that it seemed so counter to kind of uncritical cultural relativism that's making a run at becoming Canada's prevailing ethos. I am certainly not in favor of giving the government the power to regulate what people wear in the course of their daily lives. However, if you insist that wearing something that obscures your identity is a fundamental religious obligation that you are not at liberty to deviate from, society is under no such obligation to indulge this proclivity in certain places - like the lobby of a bank, for instance. At that point the burden is entirely on the person who has chosen to encumber themselves in their religious costume to work around the obstacles and inconveniences that this choice generates for them, not society. Wanna fly? Better be prepared to lift the veil upon request or restrict yourself to transport options that existed in the seventh century. With respect to the "racist," bit, I can understand why one might have this this viewpoint, but the fact of the matter is that being a Muslim is an identity that one chooses to retain, rather than a racial category that one is confined to by birth. Evidently per-Sharia the penalty for renouncing one's Muslim identity is death at the hands of one's fellow Muslims, and this is but one of the precepts of this particular ideology that may account for the less-than-positive sentiments that dressing in a manner that advertises one's voluntary adherence to this particular creed inspires amongst some non-believers. I also understand that the Muslim community has adopted a conscious strategy of trying to shield their beliefs, customs, and conduct from fair, rational, and reasonable scrutiny by conflating any of the above with racism or homophobia. This accounts for the appearance of expressions like - "flying while Muslim," "Gee - that sounds lot like 'driving while black,' so it must be the same thing..." "Islamophobia? I'm no fan of homophobia, so this too must be discrimination based on an irrational fear of or dislike for someone based on characteristics that they're born with, too. Sounds the same, so it must be the same thing! No Islamophobia for me, thanks!" - on the linguistic landscape. The fact of the matter is that if you mixed East-Indians and Arabs together, dressed them in sweatsuits, and made a "Spot the Muslim" gameshow you'd confound just about everyone in North America. Is the fact that East Indian Hindus enjoy a very positive reputation, and Muslims enjoy an increasingly negative reputation a consequence of the elements of their appearance that they were born with, or the beliefs that their particular mode of dress signals that they are likely to have internalized? I support the right to wear a Klan get-up or a Nazi-costume in public, public, and for the Klansman's/Nazi's right to do so without suffering from any physical violence or harassment - but it's a bit much for anyone who chooses to advertise their convictions in this manner to expect those around them to suspend judgment of their convictions. In a free society, you should be able to wear whatever you like, including full Islamic garb, but the rest of society is free to judge you on the basis of your appearance. Having said all of this, the issue of dress was but one of many items on the roster. I suppose the larger issue here is whether or not Canadians consider it racist to expect immigrants who voluntarily seek citizenship in their country to understand that when their particular customs or convictions conflict with Canada's laws, they must accept that it is Canadian law that will prevail in that contest.

My personal theory is that if you are acquiring new pets it's much better to introduce a puppy to mature cats, rather than a kitten to a mature dog, especially if the dog mid-sized or larger. Seems like once a curious or playful puppy gets a swipe across the nose, it will be cowed for life and not be tempted to get rough with the cats again. At some point down the road when and if we buy a house, I'd like to get a dog to compliment the two step-cats that I acquired by marriage, and have sold my wife on the idea based on the "young-puppy + old-cat dynamic." Is this pretty consistent with other peoples experiences? I plan on getting a Saint Bernard, and socializing, training, and neutering the hell out of it, so the probability of any aggression problems should be quite low.

Which part?

Large domestic trucks purchased with 7 year loans at interest rates of over 10% often serve in the place of or compliment pit-bulls in the socio-compensation category.

"It's a breed that can be safe but too often irresponsible people gravite towards it. It's a shame." True - it's not clear to me whether things would be different if the owner population were more responsible and took the time necessary to train and socialize their pets properly. Having said that, it seems as though some of the traits that make the dogs more likely to behave in aggressive and territorial fashion were deliberately bred into them, so it's hard to believe that they'd behave in the hands of the average dog-owner, as the average dog-owner seems to lack the ability to train a dog to consistently sit on command, much less raise and maintain a pit-bull in a manner that will minimize the potential for attacks. It's still not clear to me why the average person would want to own this kind of a dog. Most of the people who own aggressive dogs tend to be men with a low socio-economic status who seem to gravitate towards them as a means of compensating for the humble station that they've come to occupy.