Jihad needs scientists

[Daniel Mandic]

Eeyore wrote:

Hindered ?

Graham

Handicapped. Mongolids for example.

Here in Town also Mongolids can do a first communion. And a priest here
has been nominated for the Best Austrian 2006. I hope he wins ... I
know that Church where he lives from my Kindergarten Times and the
Primary School Time (Everything in one Area...).



Best Regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:57:10 +0100, Eeyore
<rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 06 11:50:44 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:

Pushing in certain areas is not the best way to prevent future
messes. I've found that the only way for people to learn how
not make new messes is to have them clean up the ones they
already made.


Excellent. Care to assign cleanup duties in the Middle East and
Africa?

Which bits of Africa did you have in mind ?

Well, let's see. We could start with the Belgian Congo, and maybe
Rhodesia, perhaps Cote D'Ivorie and German East Africa.

John

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:50:34 +0100, "T Wake"
<usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

They threw rocks at people with guns?

Figuratively speaking, yes. An act of defiance towards a superior,
oppressive, organisation. Pretty much the same thing.

only much, much stupider.

John

 

[Jonathan Kirwan]

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 19:57:20 +0100, "T Wake"
<usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

snip
If you assert ID is the _only_ other possibility there needs to be some
serious scientific evidence produced.
snip

I apologize for snipping a lot. But I needed a segue and stole this
one. John Larkin holds to some "open" minded thing on and off again
and chastises anyone who doesn't keep their minds as open as his own.
I completely sympathize with his desire to emphasize imagination and I
value it, too. But John does not appear to have anything to balance
that desire and hold it close to reality. And imagination alone,
while uniquely required to push frontiers into new territory, is also
pretty much dime-a-dozen, too. 99.9999% of it is crap. Probably out
to 10 or 12 9's of precision. It is the rare 13th digit of it that
gets us to a new place. So while I value it, I don't worship it. And
it needs to tethered to fact and reason.

I think (and I may very well be wrong) that John Larkin believes that
he can just add imaginative ideas he has and modify neo Darwinian
evolutionary theory, ad hoc, and that it should be taken seriously by
others. Quite frankly, I don't imagine why that should be and he
certainly hasn't been very convincing about it. But in any case, one
cannot just concoct some scifi idea and paste it into some new Chimera
idea and claim that you've improved anything. Actually, it makes for
a monster that couldn't survive the light of day. But he doesn't
realize that fact.

If John wants to modify such theory, he needs to do that from a
position of knowledge, not ignorance, of the facts to be explained and
results to be predicted. I know that he feels his imagination is as
good as anyone's, and it may be. But that doesn't mean that ideas
grabbed out of thin air mean much. And he doesn't seem to realize
that or do any of the real work needed to find out one way or another,
instead appearing to expect others to take his ideas and run with them
for him. That's not a wise expectation.

In any case, Darwin's theory was so darned incredible, even in the
early stages of it, that it can be reasonably argued that Darwin's
theory predicted the discovery of a new energy source beyond all
chemical knowledge of the time. Which turns out to have been fusion,
in hindsight.

See:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/articles/fusion/sun_1.html

---
"Firmly opposed to Darwinian natural selection, William Thompson,
later Lord Kelvin, was a professor at the University of Glasgow and
one of the great physicists of the nineteenth century. In addition to
his many contributions to applied science and to engineering, Thompson
formulated the second law of thermodynamics and set up the absolute
temperature scale, which was subsequently named the Kelvin scale in
his honor. The second law of thermodynamics states that heat naturally
flows from a hotter to a colder body, not the opposite. Thompson
therefore realized that the sun and the earth must get colder unless
there is an external energy source and that eventually the earth will
become too cold to support life.

"Kelvin, like Helmholtz, was convinced that the sun's luminosity was
produced by the conversion of gravitational energy into heat. In an
early (1854) version of this idea, Kelvin suggested that the sun's
heat might be produced continually by the impact of meteors falling
onto its surface. Kelvin was forced by astronomical evidence to modify
his hypothesis and he then argued that the primary source of the
energy available to the sun was the gravitational energy of the
primordial meteors from which it was formed.

"Thus, with great authority and eloquence Lord Kelvin declared in
1862:

'That some form of the meteoric theory is certainly the true and
complete explanation of solar heat can scarcely be doubted, when the
following reasons are considered: (1) No other natural explanation,
except by chemical action, can be conceived. (2) The chemical theory
is quite insufficient, because the most energetic chemical action we
know, taking place between substances amounting to the whole sun's
mass, would only generate about 3,000 years' heat. (3) There is no
difficulty in accounting for 20,000,000 years' heat by the meteoric
theory.'

"Kelvin continued by attacking Darwin's estimate directly, asking
rhetorically:

"What then are we to think of such geological estimates as [Darwin's]
300,000,000 years for the "denudation of the Weald''?

"Believing Darwin was wrong in his estimate of the age of the earth,
Kelvin also believed that Darwin was wrong about the time available
for natural selection to operate.

"Lord Kelvin estimated the lifetime of the sun, and by implication the
earth, as follows. He calculated the gravitational energy of an object
with a mass equal to the sun's mass and a radius equal to the sun's
radius and divided the result by the rate at which the sun radiates
away energy. This calculation yielded a lifetime of only 30 million
years. The corresponding estimate for the lifetime sustainable by
chemical energy was much smaller because chemical processes release
very little energy.

"As we have just seen, in the nineteenth century you could get very
different estimates for the age of the sun, depending upon whom you
asked. Prominent theoretical physicists argued, based upon the sources
of energy that were known at that time, that the sun was at most a few
tens of million years old. Many geologists and biologists concluded
that the sun must have been shining for at least several hundreds of
millions of years in order to account for geological changes and the
evolution of living things, both of which depend critically upon
energy from the sun. Thus the age of the sun, and the origin of solar
energy, were important questions not only for physics and astronomy,
but also for geology and biology.

"Darwin was so shaken by the power of Kelvin's analysis and by the
authority of his theoretical expertise that in the last editions of On
The Origin of the Species he eliminated all mention of specific time
scales. He wrote in 1869 to Alfred Russel Wallace, the codiscoverer of
natural selection, complaining about Lord Kelvin:

'Thompson's views on the recent age of the world have been for some
time one of my sorest troubles.'

"Today we know that Lord Kelvin was wrong and the geologists and
evolutionary biologists were right. Radioactive dating of meteorites
shows that the sun is 4.6 billion years old."
---

Anyway, this shows the power of a good theory. And evolution is a
whopper of a good theory. Not only did it presage nuclear power,
inheritance, genetics and the DNA mechanism, etc.

The point though is that you can't just paste wings on a donkey and
think you've got the next bright idea. John needs to understand this
better.

And finally, ID is a complete wash. There is no research program
being funded, no investigation, etc. From internal writings already
disclosed in court cases I've read through thoroughly, key players in
publicizing ID have admitted that it is merely an attempt to turn
public opinion and nothing to do with respecting science or having a
viable theory to replace anything with. It explains nothing and
predicts nothing. It's not science.

That doesn't mean it couldn't be. It's a very tough subject, trying
to concoct a theory about how a designer of life would design things.
We can recognize design of things we make because... well, because we
make and use them. So we can understand and recognize designs in that
fashion. But that is because we can define those earmarks that
represent what we know about ourselves and things we design. But we
have little way to understand how some other creature might go about
designing a universe or designing life on a planet for purposes we can
barely even begin to describe. So it is admittedly a tough subject.
But not necessarily impossible to pursue. I think there is room for a
research program to work out and provide some concepts that would be
smaller steps along the line of how such designs might have to take
place. I can't do that, but it may be possible to have a viable and
honest research program. (At least, I can grant the possibility right
now until someone convinces me it isn't possible.)

However, that's not what ID organizations do. They do not fund
research at respected science colleges in respected universities to
help ferret out avenues and ideas to press these frontiers. What they
do is to make this a public opinion campaign, instead. With no active
research program. In court, this gets shown for what it is, over and
over again, with the correct conclusions resulting from careful and
thoughtful deliberation after examining the true facts. In public,
it's just one man's opinion against another and the whole thing is
muddled -- which is a win for the ID team, because to them muddled is
better than clear, if clear means that science fact is taught, or
worst of all, understood and accepted as fact.

Jon

 

[Jonathan Kirwan]

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 19:59:50 +0100, "T Wake"
<usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

"Jonathan Kirwan" <jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote in message
news:u72aj2hftm5dat2uqrt7fhen6uhjhe28pa@4ax.com...
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 09:12:54 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 05:57:25 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan <jkirwan@easystreet.com
wrote:

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 20:14:47 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:50:08 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote:

American Christian fundamentalists are as dangerous if not more so
than their
Muslim counterparts.

More so, because they (through political influence over the power of
US action) have so much greater power by which they can act. (They
are a very large, very well funded, and highly-catered minority here
and they often pass around internal lists of who to vote for, as
well.)


And you think the Mother Jones crowd doesn't have their own lists? You
seem to imply that there's something wrong with political organizing
among people you don't agree with. Stalin thought that, too.


John, I've never seen a list for liberals to vote towards. Not ever.
Nor has anyone ever suggested one to me. Perhaps you might be the
first for that. But I take it you haven't ever experienced these
religious groups. If you had, you'd understand. This isn't a matter
of choice for the flock. This is a matter of whether or not you go to
Hell. Different thing.

Much more serious.

And you still haven't dealt with my little disseration on why politics
and organized religion do not mix. They don't, by the way.

Jon

Now you have:

http://www.emilyslist.org/

There are lots more... just look.

Please show me the list there. All I see is a busy screen with lots
of crap I don't intend digging through.

Badly designed website but the best I could find was:

"EMILY's List WOMEN VOTE!Ž is going door to door in Columbus, OH to help
turn out voters for House candidate Mary Jo Kilroy, who is dizzyingly close
to defeating Rep. Deborah Pryce, the fourth-highest ranking woman in the
House leadership and Jennifer Brunner, who is running to claim the secretary
of state's office."

Why do you think John Larkin considered it valid to send me there to
make any point in this discussion?? Did he even go there and check
anything? Or did he just read someone else's comment and post without
giving any of this a single thought?

Jon

 

[Jonathan Kirwan]

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:48:25 +0100, "T Wake"
<usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:009aj2dksthbu9fopngsr64nhfofi1dnjl@4ax.com...
On Tue, 17 Oct 06 12:40:58 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:

In article <odi8j25ttpiuu9t6tbg4jne9cdut88qmin@4ax.com>,
John Larkin <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 17:38:14 +0100, Eeyore
rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:



Lloyd Parker wrote:

JoeBloe <joebloe@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote:

All of Islam (read the moslems) believe that all others that are not
moslem are "infidels" and that killing them is not, nor should not be
a crime.

You are lying.

I suspect it's what he learnt at Church.

American Christian fundamentalists are as dangerous if not more so than
their
Muslim counterparts.


Yeah, all those Southern Baptist suicide bombers.

Sigh! Wait. If this gets results it will be tried.
Have you not noticed what's been happening lately?
And it's not just Southern Baptist.


Judiasism and Christianity have generally considered suicide to be a
sin. Radical Islam considers it to be a holy act.

An interpretation issue really. It would not be unreasonable for Radical
Christians or Jews to redefine some aspects of their faith to enable suicide
for a just cause. The bible has killing anyone a sin, Christians have been
fairly free with the definition of this though.

I already cited a web site where you can see how Christian
organizations could justify this as holy. And there is 'Jesus Camp,'
the movie.

Jon

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:37:11 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
<jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 13:05:07 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 20:07:41 +0100, "T Wake"
usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:0h7aj25ckalb1dr630lm9apu323h2hj3ah@4ax.com...
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 16:45:03 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 08:50:18 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:38:17 GMT, <lucasea@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

"Jonathan Kirwan" <jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote in message
news:i9n8j29atodlsous5hl3bpuk1avrj0s9a4@4ax.com...
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 03:39:16 GMT, <lucasea@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

Nicely written.

Thanks.

Ever heard of a dinky, crappy little liberal arts college called Kent
State?

I'm not sure how you intend that to be applied, of course, since you
don't say what you are thinking here.

Sorry if that sounded snotty--no hidden agenda, just the obvious example
of
troops being ordered into a situation and attacking their own people.

Somehow it never occurred to me to throw rocks at armed National Guard
troops.

And by that comment do you mean to justify the application of deadly
force and the taking of lives in this particular circumstance? Just
curious.


Of course not. But if you do really, really stupid things, you can get
hurt, no different from poking a pit bull with a stick.

It is sad that your national guard are pit bulls. Are stones really that
frightening for them?

It is sad that people are pushed to the point at which they feel they need
to throw stones at Soldiers to get their voices heard. Isn't democracy
wonderful.

How does hurling rocks get "their voices heard"?

Wrong question, John. There were a lot of people there who did NOT
throw rocks. Only _some_ threw rocks.

And a separate question, entirely, John. Do you imagine that only
those throwing the rocks are the ones who were injured or killed by
professional military action?

The Guardsmen were mostly kids, about the same age as the college
kids, but working-class, hardly "professional" military. They didn't
like being there, but they were under orders, there to prevent
violence. And the college kids assigned them the role of "authority"
and stoned them. Of course the shooting was unjustified, but the
college kids were incredibly clueless.

Some similar, but milder, stuff happened on the Tulane campus while I
was there, but nobody on either side gets too worked up over things in
New Orleans; even the segregationists weren't very dedicated. But I
stayed away from the violence part, and had the sense not to throw
rocks at anyone with rifles.

John

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 22:37:54 +0100, Eeyore
<rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 20:07:41 +0100, "T Wake"

It is sad that people are pushed to the point at which they feel they need
to throw stones at Soldiers to get their voices heard. Isn't democracy
wonderful.

How does hurling rocks get "their voices heard"?

Are you really being that obtuse ?

Graham

Apparently so. I can't see the connection between political discourse
and flinging stones at people. Can you explain it to me?

John

 

[T Wake]

"Jonathan Kirwan" <jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote in message
news:1gjaj2hicjbnjbf0o6mvugrc29dgdumnnm@4ax.com...

snip> In public,
it's just one man's opinion against another and the whole thing is
muddled -- which is a win for the ID team, because to them muddled is
better than clear, if clear means that science fact is taught, or
worst of all, understood and accepted as fact.

In turn I apologise for the large snip, but there is nothing I could say to
improve your post and I simply wanted to highlight this last bit with a
"well said."

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Jonathan Kirwan wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 00:36:21 GMT, "Michael A. Terrell"
mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

Jonathan Kirwan wrote:

The article I read pointed out that the soldiers explicitly were under
a Euro command and that if they were ordered _into_ their own country
for some reason, that they must have already sworn to uphold the Euro
command and not obey those in command in their own home country.

What happens when they are ordered to attack their own country?

How hard is it for you to imagine the case here in the US, for gosh
sake?

Let's say, hypothetically speaking, that on May 17, 1954, the US
Supreme Court rules in some case called Brown v. Board of Education of
Topeka, Kansas, unanimously agreeing that segregation in public
schools is unconstitutional. Just hypothetically, of course,
overturning the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, sanctioning "separate
but equal" segregation of the races and now ruling that "separate
educational facilities are inherently unequal."

Let's also say that, just hypothetically speaking, that in order to
comply with this Brown v. Board decision, a place called Central High
School in Little Rock, Arkansas made plans to integrate blacks around
the hypothetical time of September, 1957. Let's also say, just
hypothetically, that when nine black high school students arrived to
attend, that they were met by angry crowds and that the governor of
the great State of Arkansas, a hypothetically named Mr. Orval Faubus
in fact, just happened to order his own Arkansas National Guard to
keep the black students out of the school.

Just hypothetically, you know.

So let's say that faced with such defiance, a US President named --
oh, let's just say named Dwight Eisenhower -- responded by sending
troops from the 101st Airborne to Little Rock with orders to protect
the nine students.

Just hypothetically, you know.

Now, suppose you happened to come from Arkansas and you were in the
101st Airborne and ordered to disobey the Arkansas governor and to go
against the state's own Arkansas National Guard.

What do you do? Just hypothetically, you know.

Come off it, Mike. The US has already answered this question. Europe
can just look here for the problems and some answers.

Jon

Is that the best you can do in damming the US? Ever hear of the
Bonus Army?


http://www.answers.com/topic/bonus-army



Its still not the same as having someone order you to shoot at
freinds and family members.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[T Wake]

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:bdlaj25b5kd4s7mbahpc7ac914gt0h5fjv@4ax.com...

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:50:34 +0100, "T Wake"
usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:


They threw rocks at people with guns?

Figuratively speaking, yes. An act of defiance towards a superior,
oppressive, organisation. Pretty much the same thing.


only much, much stupider.

The founding fathers of the US were stupid?

 

[T Wake]

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:2flaj2d1canrc6lfvnap5dhpdot9bsr2of@4ax.com...

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:37:11 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 13:05:07 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 20:07:41 +0100, "T Wake"
usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in
message
news:0h7aj25ckalb1dr630lm9apu323h2hj3ah@4ax.com...
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 16:45:03 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 08:50:18 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:38:17 GMT, <lucasea@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

"Jonathan Kirwan" <jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote in message
news:i9n8j29atodlsous5hl3bpuk1avrj0s9a4@4ax.com...
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 03:39:16 GMT, <lucasea@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

Nicely written.

Thanks.

Ever heard of a dinky, crappy little liberal arts college called
Kent
State?

I'm not sure how you intend that to be applied, of course, since
you
don't say what you are thinking here.

Sorry if that sounded snotty--no hidden agenda, just the obvious
example
of
troops being ordered into a situation and attacking their own
people.

Somehow it never occurred to me to throw rocks at armed National
Guard
troops.

And by that comment do you mean to justify the application of deadly
force and the taking of lives in this particular circumstance? Just
curious.


Of course not. But if you do really, really stupid things, you can get
hurt, no different from poking a pit bull with a stick.

It is sad that your national guard are pit bulls. Are stones really that
frightening for them?

It is sad that people are pushed to the point at which they feel they
need
to throw stones at Soldiers to get their voices heard. Isn't democracy
wonderful.

How does hurling rocks get "their voices heard"?

Wrong question, John. There were a lot of people there who did NOT
throw rocks. Only _some_ threw rocks.

And a separate question, entirely, John. Do you imagine that only
those throwing the rocks are the ones who were injured or killed by
professional military action?

The Guardsmen were mostly kids, about the same age as the college
kids, but working-class, hardly "professional" military. They didn't
like being there, but they were under orders, there to prevent
violence. And the college kids assigned them the role of "authority"
and stoned them. Of course the shooting was unjustified, but the
college kids were incredibly clueless.

You are quite correct in that blaming the soldiers directly for their
actions is wrong. The blame rests squarely with the person who wants to use
guns and soldiers against their own people.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

lucasea@sbcglobal.net wrote:

"Jonathan Kirwan" <jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote in message
news:hra8j25plmkagerobeimflqgo6p6q9j3cg@4ax.com...
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 00:36:21 GMT, "Michael A. Terrell"
mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

Jonathan Kirwan wrote:

The article I read pointed out that the soldiers explicitly were under
a Euro command and that if they were ordered _into_ their own country
for some reason, that they must have already sworn to uphold the Euro
command and not obey those in command in their own home country.

What happens when they are ordered to attack their own country?

How hard is it for you to imagine the case here in the US, for gosh
sake?

Let's say, hypothetically speaking, that on May 17, 1954, the US
Supreme Court rules in some case called Brown v. Board of Education of
Topeka, Kansas, unanimously agreeing that segregation in public
schools is unconstitutional. Just hypothetically, of course,
overturning the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, sanctioning "separate
but equal" segregation of the races and now ruling that "separate
educational facilities are inherently unequal."

Let's also say that, just hypothetically speaking, that in order to
comply with this Brown v. Board decision, a place called Central High
School in Little Rock, Arkansas made plans to integrate blacks around
the hypothetical time of September, 1957. Let's also say, just
hypothetically, that when nine black high school students arrived to
attend, that they were met by angry crowds and that the governor of
the great State of Arkansas, a hypothetically named Mr. Orval Faubus
in fact, just happened to order his own Arkansas National Guard to
keep the black students out of the school.

Just hypothetically, you know.

So let's say that faced with such defiance, a US President named --
oh, let's just say named Dwight Eisenhower -- responded by sending
troops from the 101st Airborne to Little Rock with orders to protect
the nine students.

Just hypothetically, you know.

Now, suppose you happened to come from Arkansas and you were in the
101st Airborne and ordered to disobey the Arkansas governor and to go
against the state's own Arkansas National Guard.

What do you do? Just hypothetically, you know.

Come off it, Mike. The US has already answered this question. Europe
can just look here for the problems and some answers.

Nicely written.

Ever heard of a dinky, crappy little liberal arts college called Kent State?

You mean Kent State in Ohio, where outside agitators stirred up the
students and told them, "Your parents are rich! You can do anything you
want, the soldiers won't shoot at you?!"? The one where someone is
reported to have fired at the National Guard, and someone yelled "Fire"
immediately afterwards? The one, where after numerous nasty incidents
at US colleges all over the country where drunken idiots threw rocks at
the National Guard troops, and local police while they burnt buildings
and demanded their rights? I may have.


It was on the local Cincinnati and Dayton TV stations for days, and
discussed for months. You may also remember that it brought an almost
immediate stop to the campus riots all over the country. The few groups
that gathered and started trouble ran away as soon as it was announced
that the guard was called in. The national Guard is made up of well
trained soldiers who don't shoot for the fun of it. On the other hand,
if the other side is shooting at them they are trained to defend
themselves.

The thing that surprised me was that the riots went on for so long
before it happened. At least a year before Kent State I was telling
people it was going to happen, and it would stop the riots, but no one
believed me.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 04:12:10 +0100, Eeyore
rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:



John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 18:43:41 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote:

And politically potent, right now. Keep that clearly in mind as you
see US Republican political platforms playing out. They need this
base, desperately.


With things as closely balanced as they are, each party needs every
vote desperately. The Dems need the black vote and the urban liberal
vote and the farm vote and the NRA vote. Watch Hilary triangulate.

What the Dems really need is proof that Bush is Satan.


Which is inconsistant with their belief that he's dumb.

John

How can Bush be Satan? Everyone knows Eeyore is Satan.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 05:22:33 +0100, Eeyore

Maybe Cheney's Satan then ?


That view is at least consistant.

How can Eeyore believe in Satan when he doesn't believe in religion,
or that there is a God?


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

lucasea@sbcglobal.net wrote:

Not in churches, they're not. As a musician in a group that happens to play
for church services a lot, I've been to services of quite a few
denominations...and many of them preach politics from the pulpit, to the
extent of telling their congregation for whom they should vote. That is a
big problem, in my book.

Then you are a hypocrite for performing at those churches if you know
their views. If you don't know and perform there, you should tell them
why you won't be back.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Jonathan Kirwan wrote:

Particularly so when you factor in the charitable dollars involved, by
the way.

Also, I've done a little research on the subject just recently. The
IRS gives 501(c)3 status to churches without their having to even
apply for it. It's an a priori assumption, by dint of just being a
church, at all. Also, churches, unlike other 501(c)3 orgs, do not
have to file Form 990s with the IRS describing their contributions.
There is _no_ requirement for passing along any of that information to
the government by churches.

They _can_ file for 501(c)3. They _can_ file Form 990s. But they
don't have to do any of that. (In other words, they are a great way
to hide activities and launder money, if that is the way you are
bent.)

More, I also did some research on how our own state's ability to
control land use changed after Clinton signed the RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
PROTECTION ACT in 2000. Turns out that churches now enjoy simply
unfettered construction. Our state no longer can require much of any
conformance. It is still permitted to require engineering sense, of
course, in construction plans. But it can no longer control land use
by churches. I assume this is the same circumstance pretty much
elsewhere in the US, now.

The below link is _not_ an anti-religious link by any stretch -- it is
pro, in fact. But:
http://religiousbroadcasting.lib.virginia.edu/pro_orgs.html
"Religious broadcasting in the U.S. now exists on a vastly larger
scale than in any other nation. In fact, it exists on a scale beyond
the recognition of most Americans. Further, religious broadcasting
continues to experience a period of sustained growth."

If you are interested in just how many dollars are involved here, last
time I looked at summaries, there was some 73 billion US dollars in
charitable contributions in 1993 to religious organizations throughout
the US. (This was about 66 billion US dollars in 1990. You can check
some of these numbers for yourself:
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju59929.000/hju59929_0.HTM
... and there are other sites to check more on this.)

It turns out that much of that money is going into church construction
and other capital projects around the US, not into operational
expenses or "good works." The above link points this up.

I worked as a broadcast engineer at a Christian TV station in
1987/1988. We had a full 5 MW EIRP signal on a 1749 foot tower. Our
annual budget was 1.5 million dollars, vs 17 million dollars (and up)
for the local commercial stations. Even on that meager budget, 10% of
their income went to help others, via the "Prayer and Share"
department. The last that I've heard, they were trying to build a high
rise office building, keeping part of the space for their studios and
offices. The plans are to rent out the extra space to reduce the money
needed to run the station. They are in the Orlando area, and should have
no trouble leasing every square inch, when its done.


<http://www.wacxtv.com/wacxtv_green.asp?id=33>

Just keep it in mind when you consider what is going on here and the
magnitude of it.

The effects are manifest. You would have to keep your head stuck in
the ground like an ostrich not to see it playing out.

They are prohibited by law from engaging in politics, and
that's reasonably well enforced.

Not in churches, they're not. As a musician in a group that happens to play
for church services a lot, I've been to services of quite a few
denominations...and many of them preach politics from the pulpit, to the
extent of telling their congregation for whom they should vote. That is a
big problem, in my book.

Bingo. Sometimes, I think John really told the truth -- he just does
electronic design and little else. I'm not complaining -- more power
to him. But it also means he may also have his head in the sand, too.
Once in a while, it would do some good to take a look around.

They are not prohibited from doing
good works, even governmant-funded good works.

Agreed, nor should they be.

Yup.

Jon

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Michael A. Terrell wrote:

How can Eeyore believe in Satan when he doesn't believe in
religion, or that there is a God?

Hi Michael!



To whom would you ask?



Best regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 17:38:14 +0100, Eeyore
rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:



Lloyd Parker wrote:

JoeBloe <joebloe@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote:

All of Islam (read the moslems) believe that all others that are not
moslem are "infidels" and that killing them is not, nor should not be
a crime.

You are lying.

I suspect it's what he learnt at Church.

American Christian fundamentalists are as dangerous if not more so than their
Muslim counterparts.


Yeah, all those Southern Baptist suicide bombers.

John

Come on, John! Sure, their BBQ ribs are quite spicy, but eating it
isn't suicide.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Jonathan Kirwan]

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 23:33:52 +0100, "T Wake"
<usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:2flaj2d1canrc6lfvnap5dhpdot9bsr2of@4ax.com...
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:37:11 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 13:05:07 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 20:07:41 +0100, "T Wake"
usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in
message
news:0h7aj25ckalb1dr630lm9apu323h2hj3ah@4ax.com...
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 16:45:03 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 08:50:18 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 15:38:17 GMT, <lucasea@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

"Jonathan Kirwan" <jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote in message
news:i9n8j29atodlsous5hl3bpuk1avrj0s9a4@4ax.com...
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 03:39:16 GMT, <lucasea@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

Nicely written.

Thanks.

Ever heard of a dinky, crappy little liberal arts college called
Kent
State?

I'm not sure how you intend that to be applied, of course, since
you
don't say what you are thinking here.

Sorry if that sounded snotty--no hidden agenda, just the obvious
example
of
troops being ordered into a situation and attacking their own
people.

Somehow it never occurred to me to throw rocks at armed National
Guard
troops.

And by that comment do you mean to justify the application of deadly
force and the taking of lives in this particular circumstance? Just
curious.


Of course not. But if you do really, really stupid things, you can get
hurt, no different from poking a pit bull with a stick.

It is sad that your national guard are pit bulls. Are stones really that
frightening for them?

It is sad that people are pushed to the point at which they feel they
need
to throw stones at Soldiers to get their voices heard. Isn't democracy
wonderful.

How does hurling rocks get "their voices heard"?

Wrong question, John. There were a lot of people there who did NOT
throw rocks. Only _some_ threw rocks.

And a separate question, entirely, John. Do you imagine that only
those throwing the rocks are the ones who were injured or killed by
professional military action?

The Guardsmen were mostly kids, about the same age as the college
kids, but working-class, hardly "professional" military. They didn't
like being there, but they were under orders, there to prevent
violence. And the college kids assigned them the role of "authority"
and stoned them. Of course the shooting was unjustified, but the
college kids were incredibly clueless.

You are quite correct in that blaming the soldiers directly for their
actions is wrong. The blame rests squarely with the person who wants to use
guns and soldiers against their own people.

I was about to write something similar, but not nearly as well.
Thanks!

Jon