JayB

Scary. Seems to me that the pit-bull is an especially malignant and dangerous breed that the world could easily do without. Not that such a thing will ever happen, but it wouldn't bother me a bit if all of the pit-bulls in the world magically disappeared.

Anyone else here been attacked by a dog? I've only been attacked once, while I was on my bike riding home from work just as it was getting dark. Nothing too dramatic, I just happened to ride within about 40 feet of an unleashed dog and it's owners, and then I heard the barking getting closer. At first I wasn't sure if it just wanted to play chase, but after it made the first lunge for my leg I knew it was kujo-time. Since there was no chance of out-riding the thing at this point, I didn't have much of a choice but to unlock the cleats and start kicking, and it must have taken 5 or 10 solid shots to the grill before the thing backed-off. "Blam! - bark - pedal-pedal-pedal, Blam! - bark - pedal, pedal, pedal..." over and over again. Quite an experience - nothing makes the limbic system kick in and take you back a few evolutionary epochs like being on the wrong side of the predator-prey relationship. There have always been dogs in my family, and I consider myself a dog lover, but if your are attacked by an uncontrolled dog IMO you should feel free to inflict whatever level of violence is necessary to end the attack, using whatever means you have at your disposal.

The fundamental problem with the argument from design is that it it extends to "the designer" as well as the designed. The being that you postulate must by definition be more complicated than any object or being than the being designed. Per your argument, it is far more improbable that the being that you postulate could exist without itself being designed by some other agent. If you insist that that - say - the bacterial flagellum could not come into existence without being designed by a higher intelligence, then this condition must also be true for the designer. To deny this is to deny the fundamental proposition that this particular argument is based upon. Wow, Deep. Need to think about that. Are then saying that God is controlled by our limited reasoning? At the very least, I am saying that arguments that contain clear logical flaws are not a very sound basis for either proving the existence of or inspiring belief in a supreme being. Or for attempting to construct a compelling challenge to evolution.

I knew this was coming back to the evolution debate again. Once again Evolution is a Theory. It takes just as much faith to beleive in evolution. So please don't try to teach my son something that is your religion (evoluction). You want to beleive you came from nothing fine, but don't shove that crap down my or my sons throat. I personally beleive they should leave eloution and creation out of classroom and teach science. There is plently to learn about the elements and how they work, that everyone can agree on. Science can move forward. so are you saying evolution is bunk on all levels? FUCK JESUS , FUCK GOD STRIKE ME DOWN PLEASE SO I DON'T HAVE TO SHARE A PLANET WITH SEAHAWKS ANYMORE. anyone who would take on the user name of a nfl team is cheddar in my book anyway. LOL nice post. Not sure what your doing with your post. Being funny, Being an ass, or just an angry person. Three way I could go. 1. Evolution I beleive in micro not macro. But see your willing to hate me over this I think. 2. Maybe angry with God for somereason? Maybe being funny? who knows? 3. Seahawk name. Hell this coming from someone with "pink" and a "666" LOL okay you must be taking the humor route. seahawks, i am definitely an ass, but i save it for dumb shit's like yourself. i am not angry but making decisions on informartion given. anyway if god made you then who the fuck made god. tell me, who made god and why did he make you so dumb. Maybe just maybe Pink God comes from a place where there is no time. Just becuase this universe had a beginning and everything around us has a time, doesn't meen there not another place with out a start. Something will be mysterious until you die. Dumb?? shit look at every living thing. Not even the highest super computer in the world can even figure out a rats brain. Oh wait they just mapped it. it comes down to belief. choice or not. Hope your right for you not for me. if you find a watch in a field would you say it just appeared? Or someone made it? You see what around you, choice. But since I choice to beleive you want to call me a clown. Go fuck yourself with Hitler. The fundamental problem with the argument from design is that it it extends to "the designer" as well as the designed. The being that you postulate must by definition be more complicated than any object or being than the being designed. Per your argument, it is far more improbable that the being that you postulate could exist without itself being designed by some other agent. If you insist that that - say - the bacterial flagellum could not come into existence without being designed by a higher intelligence, then this condition must also be true for the designe. To deny this is to deny the fundamental proposition that this particular argument is based upon.

Interesting Aside: "Circumcision and HIV transmission. * Quinn TC. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Bethesda, Maryland, USA bThe Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. PURPOSE OF REVIEW: To review the recent literature on male circumcision and its effect on HIV acquisition. RECENT FINDINGS: The report from the randomized clinical trial of male circumcision in South Africa demonstrating a 60% protective effect in preventing HIV acquisition provided the first clinical trial evidence of efficacy of male circumcision in protecting men against HIV infection. This protective effect was consistent with both ecological and epidemiologic studies which also show a protective effect of 50-70% in men at high risk for HIV infection. Biological studies also demonstrate an increased number of HIV receptor cells in the mucosa of foreskin providing additional evidence of HIV susceptibility in the uncircumcised male. Male circumcision may also have a beneficial effect in preventing HIV acquisition in women and lowering selected sexually transmitted infections in both sexes. SUMMARY: The results of two ongoing randomized clinical trials of male circumcision in Kenya and Uganda are awaited with interest, however male circumcision should be carefully considered as a potential public health tool in preventing HIV acquisition. If other trials confirm the results of the South African trial, implementation of this surgical procedure will need to be carefully scaled up and integrated into other prevention programs with emphasis on surgical training, aseptic techniques, acceptability, availability and cultural considerations." While I'd agree with the notion that all religions are essentially equal in the respect that they ultimately have to appeal to faith - belief in the unprovable - at some point, I think that it's patently absurd to insist that this renders all religious codes and the behavior that they inspire in their followers morally equivalent to one another. Are you really prepared to argue that because the codes that inspire both the beliefs and the conduct of the Quakers and the Salafis are both religious, there can be no distinctions made between them? As far as circumcision is concerned, the practice needs to be viewed in light of its intentions and in the social context within which it occurs. Is male circumcision undertaken within a social context in which men are systematically denied rights and liberties available to women? Is the modification undertaken to deny men the capacity for sexual gratification as part of a larger strategy to enforce their obedience to their wives? These are only a couple of distinctions that separate male circumcision from the varieties of surgical desexualization practiced in the Islamic world. It's worth repeating again, that physical equivalence and moral equivalence are two different things. In this case, the distinctions are obvious and quite elementary to anyone with a capacity for making moral judgments that extends beyond a cheap and impulsive relativism that's as shallow as it is facile.

It's one of the few books that I've read lately that I can honestly say will appeal to all readers of all political persuasions, and that has no explicit partisan axe to grind. Can't say the same about the book that I'm about to take to lunch with me - Schumpeter's "Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy." Great stuff, though.

You should read the book, or at least read some of the reviews and then decide if it's something that you'd be interested in reading.

"Canadian town to immigrants: you can't stone women." TTAWA (Reuters) - Immigrants to the small Quebec town of Herouxville must not stone women in public, burn them alive or throw acid on them, according to an extraordinary set of rules made public by the local council. The declaration, published on the town's Web site, has deepened a debate in the predominantly French-speaking Canadian province over how tolerant Quebecers should be towards the customs and traditions of immigrants. "We wish to inform these new arrivals that the way of life which they abandoned when they left their countries of origin cannot be recreated here," said the declaration, which also says women are allowed to drive, vote, dance, write checks, dress how they want, work and own property. "Therefore we consider it completely outside these norms to ... kill women by stoning them in public, burning them alive, burning them with acid, circumcising them etc." No one on the town council was immediately available for comment on Tuesday. Herouxville, which has 1,300 inhabitants, is about 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Montreal. Andre Drouin, the councillor who came up with the idea of the declaration, told the National Post newspaper that the town was not racist. "We invite people from all nationalities, all languages, all sexual orientations, whatever, to come live with us, but we want them to know ahead of time how we live," he said. The regulations say girls and boys can exercise together and people should only be allowed to cover their faces at Halloween. Children must not take weapons to school, although the Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled that Sikh boys have the right to carry ceremonial daggers. The Herouxville declaration is part of a wider discussion over "reasonable accommodation", or how far Quebecers should be prepared to change their customs so as not to offend immigrants -- figures from the 2001 census show that around 10 percent of Quebec's 7.5-million population were born outside Canada." http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070130/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_stoning What the hell is going on up there? First that madman Harper gets elected, now this band of fanatics have the audacity to suggest that the norms and values that have hitherto defined the country and the manner in which it has been governed shouldn't necessarily be jettisoned in favor of whatever system of beliefs that immigrant groups happen to bring with them without at least a bit of debate about the respective merits of each. I hope that the more astute cultural relativists up there nip this one in the bud before things get truly out of control. Dru - your hour has arrived!

Que the high-hat for SC. What are you reading these days?

"The Looming Tower" provides an excellent overview of some of the broad historical trends and specific personalities involved in the events that lead up to 9/11. The book has been praised by folks who view 9/11 from both sides of the partisan divide, and I hope that some of the nuttier folks on this board actually get around to reading it someday.

Definitely an improvement.

Why use the term "Energy Independence" then, instead of a more accurate expression?

I think that in a world of competing demands, you have to rank your priorities and make an effort to live in a manner that's as consistent with them as possible. This doesn't happen automatically, and having a tangible goal for climbing - just like staying in shape by setting a goal of jogging X-miles per week - is one way to try to insure that climbing gets the place that it deserves in your life. "Days climbing" is also probably shorthand for "not forsaking everything that climbing symbolizes to the tyranny of everyday minutia." I imagine that most people just use the "daymeter" to keep track of how well they were able to integrate this particular priority into their lives. Having said that, I've never kept track of the number of days that I've climbed in a given year. I have more outdoor hobbies than I could possibly pursue intensely all at once, so I've just gone with the flow. Less climbing has always just meant more of something else that I enjoy just as much.

By "Energy Independence" do you mean a diverse and secure energy-supply that doesn't expose the country to economic or geopolitical risks - or are you literally talking about a policy whereby we reject the use of "foreign energy," for philosophical reasons, even when it makes neither economic nor political sense to do so? No LNG or Uranium from Australia, no oil from Mexico, etc.

Something for SC to be thankful for...

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#2) Der Spiegel. "Hooray! We're Capitulating." http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,462149,00.html "The controversy over the 12 Muhammad cartoons that were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 and led to worldwide protests and unrest among Muslims was merely a taste of what is to come, a dress rehearsal for the kinds of disputes Europe can expect to face in the future if it does not rethink its current policy of appeasement. As was the case in the 1930s, when Czechoslovakia was sacrificed in the interest of peace under the Munich Agreement -- a move that ultimately did nothing to prevent World War II -- Europeans today also believe that an adversary, seemingly invincible due to a preference for death over life, can be mollified by good behavior, concessions and submission. All the Europeans can hope to gain in this asymmetric conflict is a temporary reprieve, a honeymoon period that could last 10, 20, or maybe even 50 years. Anyone on death row breathes a sigh of relief when his execution is postponed to some indefinite time in the future. The uproar over the Muhammad cartoons was symptomatic precisely because what triggered it was so insignificant. The drawings themselves were unbelievably harmless. Freedom of expression in conformity with Shariah It took two weeks for "spontaneous" protests to begin. On Oct. 14, 2005, 3,000 Muslims staged a demonstration on Copenhagen's town hall square after Friday prayers. In a letter to Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, ambassadors from 11 Islamic countries demanded that he take the "necessary steps" to avert an abuse of Islam. Rasmussen responded that it was not his responsibility to discipline journalists, and he refused to schedule a meeting with the irate ambassadors. The Egyptian foreign minister got the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) involved soon after. The OIC had already made clear what it wanted in its "Declaration of Human Rights in Islam" in 1990: "All have the right to freely express their opinions in a manner that does not run counter to Shariah law." In essence, what the OIC wanted was to compel Western nations to bring their form of freedom of expression into conformity with Shariah law. Then a delegation of Danish Muslims traveled to the Muslim world, carrying a folder with the 12 cartoons from Jyllands-Posten, as well as of three significantly more provocative drawings in their luggage. The three drawings portrayed the Prophet as a pedophile devil, with pigs' ears and having sex with a dog. Where the bonus material came from and how it found its way into the documentation remains unclear to this day. But clearly someone was interested in generating the appropriate reaction. Newspapers in Arab countries promptly wrote that the Danish media had portrayed Muhammad as a pig, the original 12 cartoons magically turned into 120 drawings, and the Danish government was accused of being behind the whole thing. The West has values worth defending. Doesn't it? European Union foreign ministers met in Brussels on Jan. 30, 2006 to discuss the crisis. Some believed that Denmark had missed its chance to resolve the conflict on its own. The foreign minister of Luxembourg wasn't just speaking for his own country when he said that the entire affair was "more a Danish than a European problem." The Austrian foreign minister went even further when she said: "statements and actions that degrade a religion in an offensive way should be clearly condemned." Even the Americans abandoned their Danish allies. During the course of a single day, three State Department spokesmen used adjectives like "unacceptable," "offensive" and "objectionable." Muslims got the message. A year ago on Feb. 3, 2006, a "Day of Anger" was proclaimed. Across the Muslim world, the Muhammad cartoons were the focus of Friday prayers. Millions of Muslims who couldn't even locate Denmark on a map demonstrated against these insults to the Prophet, incited by their imams. The embassies of Denmark and Norway were set on fire in Damascus, the Danish embassy was torched in Beirut, firebombs were hurled at the Danish consulate in Tehran, and Danish and Norwegian flags were burned in Nigeria and Algeria. In the past, an attack on an embassy would have been reason enough to go to war. But this time the affected countries did their utmost to "de-escalate." The victims were repentant and begged the perpetrators for forgiveness. Indeed, the West was intent on not doing anything that could possibly give offense and cause these fanatical Muslims to become even angrier. Objectively speaking, the cartoon controversy was a tempest in a teacup. But subjectively it was a show of strength and, in the context of the "clash of civilizations," a dress rehearsal for the real thing. The Muslims demonstrated how quickly and effectively they can mobilize the masses, and the free West showed that it has nothing to counter the offensive -- nothing but fear, cowardice and an overriding concern about the balance of trade. Now the Islamists know that they are dealing with a paper tiger whose roar is nothing but a tape recording. Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (10 Photos) As different as the West's reactions to the Muslim protests were, what they had in common were origins in feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. Critical souls who only yesterday agreed with Marx that religion is the opium of the masses suddenly insisted that religious sensibilities must be taken into account, especially when accompanied by violence. The representatives of open societies reacted like the inhabitants of an island about to be hit by a hurricane. Powerless against the forces of nature, they stocked up on supplies, nailed doors and windows shut and hoped that the storm would soon pass. Of course, whereas such a reaction may be an appropriate response to natural disasters, such a lack of resistance merely encourages fundamentalists. It completely justifies their view of the West as weak, decadent and completely unwilling to defend itself." Etc, etc, etc.

Good Coffee:tup: Precious Boutique Coffee Fetish Culture Buy it, drink it, and STFU.

1."chavez seems like a pretty hip dude to me." 2. Which is why its hilarious that you of all people would describe my personal convictions as "authoritarian." That help?

That's rich coming from a charter member of the Chavista fan-club.

I said, "there are people in favor of" suing the companies out of existence. Words have meanings. The meanings of the phrases "there are people in favor of" and "there are" are not equal. You are directing a weak jibe at a point that I did not actually make. Clever fellow.

"If the level of violence against women is essentially the same in Muslim and non-Muslim countries (which you haven't come up with any statistics or attempt to disprove, probably because you can't) then your argument devolves to "Violence against women in Muslim countries is bad, but it's OK when we do it in the west" That's a big if, which you are no more able to prove with statistics than I am to refute it with statistics, unless you are prepared to say that the statistics concerning such violence that come out of Sudan et al are as robust and reliable as those coming out of the West, which is a transparently absurd claim. The reason why you have persistently avoided my *actual* argument, and chose to rebut points that you are pretending that I made instead, because you realize that you cannot under any circumstances make a factually correct, logically sound, or sane argument on behalf of the notion that Islam as an institution - which recognizes no distinction between the religious and the secular, nor the societies that its adherents have produced have produced a legal or cultural environment in which women enjoy anything like the rights and freedoms that are guaranteed throughout West. Your claim that violence against women in the West has anything like the legal or cultural sanction that it enjoys under Sharia law is as transparently false as the claim that two plus two equals five. Yes, there's violence against women everywhere, but the cultural and legal prohibitions against it vary massively from one culture to the next, and there is no other world-culture that I am aware of in which grown men feel that it is both their cultural and religious duty to murder their daughters or sisters for the simple act of unsupervised contact with the opposite sex in order to restore their family's "honor." Why you choose to ignore this fact, much less argue on behalf of a system of values which embraces this and many other relics from a barbarous past is unclear. The fact that you'd never actually permit any woman you care about to be subject to either the culture or the religion that perpetuates honor-killings says it all, and any blathering you chose to do in defense of either the said culture or the religion means nothing in comparison.

Finnish PM circa 2003 or so, and cut-and-paste.

If you were being like the Economist you'd neither use Jordan as a representative sample of all Muslim lands nor confuse homicides that the state of Jordan could specifically determine were "honor killings" and actually reported as such with the total number of women killed by men for any reason, but that's beside the point. There's a significant difference between random violence between individuals that's a contravention of both the prevailing legal and moral standards, and violence that's sanctioned by both the law, the prevailing culture, or both. Once the Supreme Court or another equivalent body issues a sentence which condemns a woman to being stoned to death for adultery because she can't produce four male witnesses who will testify that the rape was not consensual, then you will have a point. As things stand now, you are left in the position of trying to argue the impossible, which is that the odd state sanctioned stoning-to-death aside, women in Muslim lands enjoy the same level of personal freedoms and legal protection that they do in the West. You are clearly too smart to literally believe that, and I think if you ever impregnate a woman and have a daughter, and had to choose whether she'd be raised in a Western country and subject to Western law and tradition, or raised in a Muslim country and subject to Sharia for the rest of the life, there's no doubt about what you'd choose, so you are clearly just making an insincere argument on behalf of Islam's treatment of women to satisfy some other impulse or agenda.

Not much hope for that if there's people who are in favor of suing alcohol and tobacco companies out of existence - despite the fact that the risks have been none to anyone who is not literally retarded for over four decades, and both have been perfectly legal for far longer - is there? This is at least as much of an obstacle as the moralistic barriers to legalizing drugs. Not sure that Euroland is the best model for all freedoms, considering the restrictions on speech, firearms, etc that persist there.