scrambler

I don't know a damn thing about education but is the idea of grouping kids together by chronological age conducive to learning? I suppose that rearranging kids by IQ tests or some other measure would probably produce other problems especially if the kids are in puberty. Just seems that mass education is just that, mass education. Maybe a specialized approach? Sounds almost like it'd take a grand mission like the Shot to the Moon for a revolutionary reorganization of education in America to produce the best damn kids (adults) in the world. Ok, I'm gonna lay off the potent coffee. Later, gotta meet with some people.

No goddamn it, I'm not absolving him of any alleged criminal behavior. But isn't it a rush to justice by trying him in the court of public opinion before he is tried in a court of law? If that were true, then all arrests would result in punishment and we wouldn't need trials, only police.

Ok, this is crazy, sounds like liberal, 'see through their eyes' crap but here goes: Maybe he's only trying to relive the childhood that he missed because his parents put so much pressure on him to succeed as a child star. Being eccentric is not a crime. Nothing condones his alleged criminal behavior though. If he's found guilty, HANG THE BASTARD.

You know what, Trask? You're right muthafucker. That first photo is just a propanganda piece. I don't know the true target of that one finger salute. I don't believe the intention is to put the troops in any kind of bad light, they're doing their job. Once again, it's a fair criticism of the Bush administration. Fairweather seems to think that journalists are playing into the hands of enemy by revealing the cost of war thereby turning public opinion against the administration's efforts. I believe he'd prefer a military government that controls media, etc. Me, my vision of America and Americanism, includes a public press and freedom of speech, having my voice heard and sometimes having the gov't respond, etc. Here's a question though, should all negative information be suppressed? Should all information from the battlefield be classified and subjected to censorship pending release? If government decides 'all the news fit to be read' then are we to trust their stories??

So, I read somewhere that our military had basically been training many years for large scale Soviet attacks on the European theatre (conventional warfare), etc. The lessons learned about guerilla warfare during Vietnam were not maintained to this day so the tactics are being relearned the hard way. It seems that meeting guerilla warfare requires a different set of rules of engagement, which means getting down and dirty often. Countries and people weak in conventional weapons will rely on unconventional weapons and means, i.e., terrorism and guerilla warfare. For our favor, the Powell doctrine up to now has been to attack enemies that are manageable, e.g., Grenada, Panama.

The Horror! The Horror!

Does anyone know if these attacks were instigated or orchaestrated by Mossad?

Maybe you can kiss my , Republican fuckwad tool.

There's just something unnatural about holding a large dog like that.

Tommy Chong is spending time in the pen for selling glass bongs. Any pipe you can purchase in a tobacco store can be used to smoke the mean green. What up?

Above. The middle finger. The middle finger. Damn I know it's bad form to reply to my own thread but I gotta bring up this weblog. It's gotta be one of the best reporting from Iraq with little or no bias, just the facts, ma'am. Kevin Sites Blog "Unlike some soldiers, he is not confused about his mission. It is not for hearts and minds, but to defeat the enemy. Colonel Hickey carries himself with overriding air of formality. He was former cavalry officer and quietly revels in the history of that belonging. He wears an ascot at times and would seem at home with jodpurs and a whip. He has a reputation for being one of the most aggressive commanders in the theatre -- and if things goes well here, he likely get his first general's star. "I have a military problem here and I'm applying a military solution," he says with complete confidence. "Our adversaries are not militarily effective. They are mercenaries, terrorists and pirates and they will be defeated." --exerpt from blog ABOVE -- Al Auja: Al Auja is the birthplace of Saddam Hussein. The community here was very pampered during his rule. But now U.S. forces feels it's a nest of former regime loyalists and anti coalition fighters. It's wrapped the entire town in triple layered razor wire. Male residents must register and carry ID cards. There is only one checkpoint that all four-thousand residents must enter and leave through. This man was already cleared to exit, but spun his wheels in anger on the way out. A U.S. soldier had a bead on him with his M-16 before he stopped his car. The second search was bit more invasive. All images and exerpts above from weblog at the link.

Yeah, sex would suck then. I suppose you could go on the hunt for some killer psychedelics, maybe some DMT. Hell, for that matter, since you wouldn't be hurting anyone but yourself, you could do anything. Then, once you realized the futility of the situation, well maybe a shot of something for a trip to the dark side of the moon (where the dead live).

Can't judge a book by its cover. All I want to know is who killed the snaffle?

Look, I could care less about all this ‘rah rah for my team’ crap. Sometimes I feel my interests are served by the Repub, other times it’s the Dems. Sometimes I say ‘fuck both parties, they can both go to hell, goddamn self-serving bastards.” Besides all this political talk makes me feel like a tool. I want to reiterate a critical item in the DOD memo as stated: Individuals who leak or purport to leak classified information are doing serious harm to national security; such activity is deplorable and may be illegal. STATEMENT ON NEWS REPORTS OF AL QAEDA AND IRAQ CONNECTIONS With regard to leaking information to bolster the rationale for a war where someone else's sons and daughters are dying, this smacks too closely of the Plame Affair. I want to use George H.W. Bush's own words to impart my feeling about the players in the Administration who use information for purely political gains, i.e., cover their asses: "Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors. And when it comes to the mission of CIA and the Intelligence Community, George Tenet has it exactly right. Give the President and the policymakers the best possible intelligence product and stay out of the policymaking or policy implementing except as specifically decreed in the law. Because of your support - the same support given to a fledgling DCI 24 years ago - George Tenet is able to do that. Just that. Able to provide the President the best intelligence possible in the entire world. For Douglas MacArthur, Duty, Honor, Country represented a great moral code of conduct and chivalry for those who guard this beloved land. That's true here at CIA. It's true all across the Intelligence Community - the huge community that comes together under the leadership of the Director. This complex might well have been named for more deserving men who preceded me as DCI. You think of Bill Donovan or Allen Dulles or Dick Helms here with us today. Giants in their field. Or it might have been named for people like Welch, or Buckley [CIA officers Richard Welch and William Buckley killed in the line of duty.] And like all of them, and so many more, I'm proud to have served with the men and women of CIA. (Applause) It has been said that "patriotism is not a frenzied burst of emotion, but rather the quiet and steady dedication of a lifetime." To me, this sums up CIA - Duty, Honor, Country. This timeless creative service motivates those who serve at Langley and in intelligence all across the world. It is an honor to stand here and be counted among you. Thank you very, very much." --exerpts from Remarks By George Bush, 41st President of the United States, At the Dedication Ceremony for the George Bush Center for Intelligence, 26 April 1999 To wrap up, here's another link for you to ponder: The dubious link between Iraq and al Qaeda --news story from THE HILL, The Newspaper For and About the U.S. Congress, Wed., Nov. 19, 2003 Here are exerpts from the article: "Other material in the dossier either appears unsubstantiated or — like the claims regarding Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta — has already been discredited. Peter Bergen, the al Qaeda expert who interviewed bin Laden in March 1997 and presumably has a pretty good handle on the security precautions bin Laden was keeping at the time, doesn’t buy the idea that the terror chief would have shown up for a meet-and-greet in Baghdad less than a year later, as the Feith dossier alleges. “It’s just not plausible,” Bergen writes on his website, “that bin Laden would have slipped into Iraq unnoticed in January 1998. He was already a very wanted man and a widely recognized person.” I could run through all the allegations in the Feith memo, but the bottom line is that on this question, the case really is closed. Just not in the way the Standard article suggests."

I'd consider myself very special or cursed. Realistically, I guess I'd try to figure out what I need to do to survive.

Joy to the World? Check the picture at this link.

Agreed. Jacko is a wacko and there's few crimes worse than child molestation.

Hey Necro. This is bigger than that story over in britain.

I think it's on his Banana Peel sessions, something like that.

Don't , life is good.

Dude I wouldn't put those two drugs in the same sentence. Bad comparison but I see your point about medicinal use. Seems to be a lot of inconsistency in drug laws.

Syd Barrett sang a song about effervescing elephants. Dude could write some wacky offbeat songs. Effervescing Elephant

Unfortunately, marijuana is a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance. "Drug scheduling is federally mandated. While states may pass their own laws regarding marijuana, ultimately federal law supercedes any state initiatives." In order for a drug to be classified as schedule I it had to have three qualities: The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse. The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision. The last two items are questionable. Marijuana does have medicinal use but the complicating factor is that it causes a 'high'. Personally, I see marijuana as having medicinal value for persons who cannot afford high priced medications . The drug companies in response are developing their own version of THC that does not cause euphoria but yields medicinal benefits. I think the item following the last bullet is plain wrong. Fortunately, other government entities are seeing the issue in a rational light. Here in Washington State, the new I-75 law passed. "Seattle voted to completely deprioritize weed, making it the ABSOLUTE LOWEST priority for police officers. What it means is one can carry personal amounts and smoke in the privacy of your home without worrying about cops. they can still arrest you, but they won't... provided you aren't dealing or smoking up in a public place." This is not an issue promulgated just by the Left. Advocates from the Right have included William F. Buckley, founder and editor-in-chief of the conservative National Review. Here are three headlines concerning the legal case brought before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court rejected an appeal that jeopardized state medical marijuana laws that allow ill patients to smoke pot if they get a doctor's recommendation. Supreme Court Lets Stand Ruling Protecting Doctors and Patients From Government Censorship . Supreme Court Declines to Hear Government Appeal in Medical Marijuana Ok, I'm starting to sound like a rabid reefer head.

Short answer for those who don’t care for the long answer: For less impact, change the way we do things. lI1|1!, your example is highly improbable. A more likely scenario is the increase in the sun’s luminosity resulting in the outward shift of the Constantly Habitable Zone (CHZ), in other words, Mars becomes habitable (if enough water is available on the planet) and Earth becomes inhabitable. This solar scenario is predicted by the processes occurring in the sun such as gravitational coalescence of the core and the resultant increase in solar output. In any event, it’s something that won’t (shouldn’t) happen in our lifetime. We’re talking distant future. So I’m thinking real solutions for real problems that we face today and into the near future. In that respect, the occurrence of another ice age, which is predicted by the proxy evidence stored in such things as ancient lake sediments, rings in tree logs, Antarctic ice cores, etc., is also fairly distant in the future. The last ice age or glacial advance ended about 10,000 years ago. I mentioned sex as the most significant influence on the planet and, really, there are other things that lie outside the human realm such as plant photosynthesis that are important but I wanted to keep the list limited to things affected by human actions, specifically our influence on the biosphere. So yeah, sex and its sometimes consequence, reproduction. A person could also argue that all human activities are directly or indirectly involved with this prime directive of all sentient life, which happens to be reproduction or replication. People have even suggested that all creative works are the result of the sublimation of sexual desire. I think it is the ‘way’ we do things in the maintenance of our standard of living that must change. For instance, you mentioned the amount of sewage produced. Now this could be an artifact because sewage systems are not as well developed in some parts of the third world so how do you measure output? I agree in a certain extent, for example, considering such things as cows. One cow produces about 20 times the waste products as one person. Again, transform the way we do things. The glass is half full and the rational expansion and application of technology will allow us to increase the capacity, in our case, increase the carrying capacity (until we can pull off such scenarios as terraforming Mars). Practical solutions for practical problems. That’s why I included the reference to the item involving the coming change in the production and procurement of energy. Many of the big problems facing our world today are linked to our use of energy. Fuck I’m tired of the doomsayers stuck in Malthus’ world. This only means that they lack imagination to solve problems. The optimists will solve the problems. For everyone’s sake, let’s raise the standard of living globally.