onoway

Mikeh I certainly didn't intend to suggest in any slight degree that atheists don't experience beauty and love and all the other positive things that life has to offer, so obviously I didn't express myself adequately. I agree that would be both insulting and stupid as well as simply wrong. Nor did I intend to suggest that some of the composers would have not written music had there not been religion in their lives, in fact I said many artists write or paint or compose because they must. A forum thread I've been reading with interest http://www.talkclassical.com/21863-composers-religion.html reflects much of what I was trying to say (obviously ineffectively). I suspect the same sort of interaction between religion and architecture applies...how many palaces can a leader build, and how many compare to the cathedrals such as Chartres? What would have happened to those visions had they not had a reason/excuse to be made manifest or nobody had a reason/excuse to fund them? I don't see the same sort of thing happening in an atheist society as there doesn't appear to be the same sort of shared celebratory aspect to atheism, but perhaps I've just never run across it. (By celebratory I don't mean just the rah rah stuff, I mean an emotionally involved sharing)

Or a help phone number which refers you to the internet address! What got me today though, was cancelling a program. They charge your card within minutes of buying but say it can take up to 15 business days to refund.

The thing is that it seems as though most atheists tend to be in the ..well it sounds politically incorrect but can't think how else to phrase it..intellectually more gifted segment of society. Yet nothing positive has come out of it. It's certainly a commonplace to blame religion for most of the ills of the world,, but I've not found much evidence that a non belief gets humanity anywhere positive at all. Religion has admittedly directly or as an excuse led to such appalling things as the inquisition or the genital mutilation of females or many many other such things but it has also led to such things as magnificent music and architecture and occassionally a selfless devotion to caring for the less fortunate of the world. The problem is perhaps that atheism seems not to be for anything so much as against religion. I think any psychologist would tell you, you cannot take something of value away from someone unless you offer them something perceived as equal value in return, or you will be regarded with resentment at the least, and likely some hostility. It's a cold companion, reason, and not comforting when a person's spirit is battered as everyone's is from time to time. It isn't inspirational for most people either; I doubt that anyone ever sat down to write a poem or paint or write a symphony because it was logical to do so (most could have made a much better living doing something else) but they did it because they could not really do otherwise. Sometimes faith gave them a focus and sometimes it gave them a sponsor. When has atheism managed as much? Einstein is known to be an atheist and it's hard to argue he didn't contribute, but one thing he was largely responsible for was the atomic bomb. This is not exactly a shining beacon of positive accomplishment. Would he still have done so had he been religious? Most likely. So in that case, what does his atheism have to do with anything? Nothing at all..that's my point. I don't understand the discussion about agnostics; I would consider myself one, not because I have any shred of belief at all in a sky fairy who has any sort of interest in my personal doings :) That's beyond me to manage. But I don't think we have even begun to understand the universe, for all our self congratulation, and it makes no sense to me that everything which is so amazing and so beautiful and so interconnected is simply the result of nothing at all.Why would random lead to pattern, and how? Not only pattern but an incomprehensibly complex interwoven and interconnected dancing vibrant sets of patterns? It is interesting that in our wisdom we decided that such things as an appendix is a useless bit of tissue and can be discarded but later found that it does have a reason and value. So far, nothing at all that we know about has no 'place' in the greater scheme of things. So why would we be the exception? Why would our abilities have no purpose or use? It makes no sense to me that we should have the power of thought and it comes from nowhere and goes nowhere and is entirely meaningless beyond that we arbitrarily assign it. I don't understand how music or poetry or theatre or dance can be created which can move people to joy or tears and it not be meaningful beyond the moment. It seems a very barren world to exist in if everything is only meaningful in terms of personal context and it doesn't explain how those things speak to people of all cultures, ages,intellects. I've no idea what it is, but I do have "faith" that there is more than this because it seems unreasonable and arrogant to suppose otherwise; like thinking we are the only intelligent species in the universe. We aren't even the only intelligent species on the earth as far as that goes. Maybe after today's Nobel Physics prize announcement I will have to start to consider a big invisible cloud of energy that which gave us everything to become what we are. Have they given it a name? Q, maybe? Maybe the people who tried to leap onto the comet's tail trying "to go home" weren't as far off as we all thought! Or maybe I've just read too much science fiction lately.

I got the same thing with the news this morning.

This ? http://www.gurufocus.com/news/99882/ed-thorp-on-bridge-and-buffett

Well... I read a bunch of the posts on metabunk and he lost me on three different points, at which point I found other (better?) things to do. The first, he claimed that scientists cited by Dane did not say anything about urgently needing to learn more about methane erupting from the thawing permafrost; one of the sentences in the very first paragraph of the article he cited said exactly that. When someone showed a BBC clip of a boat sinking in an air bubble mimicking a methane plume, his only retort was that it looked like it had been set up to sink (which of course it was, the point being that it DID) and finally when he claimed that tropical soils were basically suffering from specifically an aluminum surplus in the soil which made crops at the very least unprofitable, and demonstrating the difference between an aluminum resistant corn and an aluminum sensitive corn. It's typical of such studies to isolate one element and deal with only that element and then crow with glee that they've proven their point. People have been working in these areas to help the indigenous people there to manage their soils better through other techniques than growing gmo corn with a good deal of success. You might want to watch the BBC series on GMO soybeans in Brazil to see what that's about. I can likely find the link if you're interested. I think it's unfortunate when one person with (apparently) an axe to grind faces off with another with the opposite axe to grind as neither forwards knowledge a whole lot.

yeah I was just coming back to edit that as when I started to look into it a bit more it quickly got into some strong "conspiracy" stuff which raised red flags. Still, as they say, just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean nobody is out to get me" and some of the the connections deserve a closer look I think. As far as the pilots go, I think that would be easy to manage. Pilots are used to doing stuff like seeding rain clouds (they have done that for decades) and puffing out messages and crop dusting. Unless they thought they were carrying bombs or something they are unlikely to think anything much about what they are spraying, and I'm sure they wouldn't be told it was harmful. It might even be that the people doing it (IF they are) don't think it IS harmful. I think there are two questions; 1) are they doing this and 2) is it deliberate. I think there might be a problem in that at least some of the people associated with this seem to think it's deliberately harmful and that's unfortunate. It might be the same as GMO seeds..someone had a bright idea with good intentions, thinking it was a win/win and then it got away from them. History is littered with such events the classic being rabbits in Australia. The conspiracy aspect may actually make it more difficult to find out what, if anything, is actually happening, as then people automatically dismiss the whole thing. Oh and at least they don't single out the US Government, this is an equal opportunity conspiracy, include all the major world governments :ph34r: What gave some credence to me about this were a couple of things, mostly because a few years ago there was a whole lot of discussion about various techniques which might be used to tackle global warming, and dumping stuff in the atmosphere was being energetically and publicly promoted by various scientists. If you couple that with patents and governments led by politicians way out of their depth in terms of any of the sciences, it could well be happening, albeit with the best of intentions.

yeah I was just coming back to edit that as when I started to look into it a bit more it quickly got into some strong "conspiracy" stuff which raised red flags. Still, as they say, "just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean nobody is out to get me" and some of the the connections deserve a closer look I think. As far as the pilots go, I think that would be easy to manage. Pilots are used to doing stuff like seeding rain clouds (they've done that for decades) and puffing out messages and crop dusting. Unless they thought they were carrying bombs or something they are unlikely to think anything much about what they are spraying, and I'm sure they wouldn't be told it was harmful. It might even be that the people doing it (IF they are) don't think it IS harmful. I think there are two questions; 1) are they doing this and 2) is it deliberate. I think there might be a problem in that at least some of the people associated with this seem to think it's deliberately harmful and that's unfortunate. It might be the same as GMO seeds..someone had a bright idea with good intentions, thinking it was a win/win and then it got away from them. History is littered with such events the classic being rabbits in Australia. The conspiracy aspect may actually make it more difficult to find out what, if anything, is actually happening, as then people automatically dismiss the whole thing. What gave some credence to me about this were a couple of things, mostly because a few years ago there was a whole lot of discussion about various techniques which might be used to tackle global warming, and dumping stuff in the atmosphere was being energetically and publicly promoted by various scientists. If you couple that with patents and governments led by politicians way out of their depth in terms of any of the sciences, it could well be happening, albeit with the best of intentions. Deserves a closer look anyway, I think.

Something which came to my attention today and is quite alarming; http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/live-updated-presentation-the-most-important-topic-of-our-time/

Dr. Vandana Shiva ( http://www.myhero.com/go/hero.asp?hero=Shiva ) started another seed saving project with the express purpose of saving seed which may otherwise be lost forever, and that seed most definitely will not be available to Monsanto and their ilk. Meanwhile, the UN has even got into the discussion and called for a drastic change in agricultural practices for a number of reasons, but diversity is high on the list: http://permaculturenews.org/2013/09/18/paradigm-shift-urgently-needed-in-agriculture-un-agencies-call-for-an-end-to-industrial-agriculture-food-system/

They get access to the seeds in there (although you and I can't) and so can use the material for their genetic engineering. I imagine it's also what Al_U_Card said, PR, but it's like allowing the fox to help guard the chickens. In spite of the patents, scientists are still not "creating" anything, they're just moving things around into new combinations and messing about with what they consider the raw material. So the seed bank is a treasure trove to them of raw material.

Well, the process we are following now is more appropriate to a hostile environment like the moon than it is to a natural environment which managed to provide well for people for however many thousands of years until we decided we could make things work better, things are really quite simple, no need to consider complexity at all and nature was our enemy. As I said, I know very little about loss of diversity outside of my area of concern; there are too many things to be concerned about and only so much energy. Like most other people I've heard about "THE TREE" that someone supposed would be the straw that broke the camels back in terms of the rainforest being able to cope. I DO know that a number of people who have turned their back on the scientifically recommended and traditional way of doing things have restored diversity when they restored habitat..Willie Smits, Allan Savory, Sepp Holtzer, Bill Mollison are some examples, all working in entirely different climates initially, found exactly the same result. Willie Smits has a terrific TED Talk and his project has been hugely successful in all regards as far as I can tell. I am a bit cynical about large organizations since I learned that an organization supposedly dedicated to "saving the earth" was using RoundUp on plants they imagined were non natives. I think that most of them walk a fine line between actually doing anything productive and not annoying too much the "powers that be". Greenpeace, whatever you or I might think of their various activities, has been less concerned about that than they have in following their convictions. But surely you can see that thousands upon thousands of acres of monocrop held in production by chemicals, some of which sterilize the soil for anything else to grow, sometimes up to 10 YEARS, as just one example, is going to affect diversity. The AIM and GOAL of monocropping is to restrict diversity. Now we are monocropping everything from almond trees to onions. Fields used to be relatively small and bordered by hedgerows which sheltered and provided for any number of life forms from microbes to birds and animals. Now fields can literally be up to a thousand acres of one field, stripped of any trees and running as close to the road as possible. No habitat for anything else including in the soil which holds up the crop plant. The habitat loss is also considered to be partly responsible for colony collapse disorder AND the disappearance of native bee species as well as badly stressing bat populations, and bats are also far far more useful to humans than people give them credit for. Even the lawns that people care for so assiduously are an enemy to diversity as anyone who has been vigorously applying chemicals to rid their lawn of clover and dandelions demonstrates. It always bemuses me to see people spending hours in a veggie garden tenderly looking after their plants, when the dandelions they just poisoned or dug up are vastly more nutritious than almost anything else they grow, as is the pigweed they pull up as soon as they see it, etc. I don't have the link handy but someone who studied food said that centuries ago, people ate something like 1900 different plants. The average now is way less than half of that. I imagine most people would have difficulty naming even 300 edible plants, less than 1/6 of what used to be common in diets. I know I couldn't get anywhere close to 1900 without resorting to outside sources, and even then would be a challenge. Try it! Then tell me we haven't lost diversity. And that's just the food we eat! Monocropping is the antithesis of diversity and its mortal enemy. I'm bewildered that you don't see that as having any particular effect on diversity at all.

I've not used that site but I have done house sitting and it worked very well, have made some very good friends and got to know some places I'd never otherwise have spent any time. It's also great in that you always have a pool of local people you can talk to about the area as the owners always introduce you to family or friends as resources while they are away. Not all are wonderful, I was dumb enough to agree to house sit while the owners were away but had a guy continuing to do some renovation and that was a disaster. It had been agreed that I wasn't responsible for anything he did or didn't do but the guy was a total freak AND he was cheating them. Other than that, though, it's been great, and even there the owners were terrific. One of the people I house sat for spent several months in travelling in Australia couch surfing with a friend and she absolutely loved that as well, and is planning to do a whole lot more of that when her (old) dog dies and she is freer to travel. So there's house swapping, house sitting and couch surfing, it all depends on how adventurous you are.

My scores for all the hands were on the movie while there were still a bunch of unfinished tables. I've never seen that before.

I was referring to your comment that there is basically the same degree of diversity and things are chugging along much as always. They aren't. The first part of your post noted that nature does a good job of sorting out which new varieties of whatever thrives and multiplies. That's simply not the case with most GMO plants, as I pointed out, they are heavilly guarded by artificial environments to prevent them from having to deal with any of nature's little challenges. It isn't even only with plants; it also applies to domestic animals, though GMO doesn't apply so much there. The exception I've heard of so far is that scientists are trying to create a cow that doesn't fart. Climate change and all. It seems that nobody noticed that cows fed on grass rather than corn or large amounts of grain, don't in the first place. But just as there are organizations dedicated to preserving heritage seeds in the cause of diversity, so are there groups trying to save threatened varieties of domestic animals...most of which used to be common. I didn't even note that scientists say we are losing species faster than ever before, I've heard as many as several species a day going extinct. I have little knowledge of that aside from such things as the passenger pigeon, which is hardly a recent event. Extinctions before have mostly been through ignorance and/or accident, small or cosmic. I was referring to the direct and deliberately active efforts to restrict diversity in an effort to make money by patenting food plants and forcing farmers to grow only those varieties.

Sorry, you are wrong. There are already governments actively restricting the sale and use of seed which is not "registered" and in some countries it is now illegal to sell, trade or even give away seeds not on that list. Farmers who try to raise crops from canola or corn or soybeans which are not genetically modified had better have their own markets as Monsanto and their cohorts now own the companies which buy these commodities and they can - and usually do - simply "not have a market" for such that don't come from their seed. Farmers in Canada tried to prevent the admission of GMO flax for this very reason, but the government denied them, so now the farmers are pretty much forced to grow GMO flax. Farmers are not allowed to sell even grass seed as "common" seed anymore, it has to be of a registered variety or they are subject to prosecution. There is even a notice to that effect in the advertisement section of the major farming newspaper. Farmers in Turkey I am told, can not only have their crops destroyed (at their cost) if they are growing an unregistered crop, but also even if that crop is registered but in the wrong field. I bought some seeds from Britain a few years back and was charged a penny to join a "club" as that was the only way they had found to circumvent the rules about selling heritage vegetable seed which wasn't on the "list". Thatchers in Britain have now to import thatching straw from Spain as they are no longer allowed to raise their own straw for thatching, those (traditional) varieties are no longer "approved" for Britain. Inbreeding and wild crossing has indeed always occurred.Of course, in nature the crossing is always between "relatives" - plants or animals with sufficient genetic similarities for offspring to survive Some are not close enough for those to be able to raise the next generation though, such as a cross between a horse and a donkey..the offspring (mules)are almost invariably sterile. You will not, however, ever naturally find (as an example), a potato with jellyfish genes, which not only now exists, but can reproduce itself. You also won't find plants in nature (for very long, at least) which are genetically coded to be unable to reproduce and we also not only have those, we are forcing farmers to raise them so they cannot save seed and must buy it every year. The main point though, is that the results of natural crossings either thrived or not according to how well they coped with their environment. This is no longer the case. Plants are genetically spliced and then supported with totally artificial inputs of fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides...some crops get hit with up to 9 different sprays in a season. What happens when those things become too expensive or even unavailable, or, as is happening, FAIL? In the past diversity has been a buffer against such things as the Irish potato famine, which occurred because almost everyone in Ireland was growing the same variety of potato. When it got hit with an unexpected blight, it was disaster. Farmers in South Africa not long ago lost thousands of acres of GMO corn - the general estimates were over 30 % of the total crop that year -because (according to Monsanto) they hadn't been given instructions for sufficient fertilizer to be applied. The corn simply didn't form ears, so there was nothing to harvest. Some years ago, a similar loss happened in the US when a new blight showed up that was immune to the GMO fungicides. Corn borers have developed an immunity to the poisons which used to kill them so now more virulent ones are being used. There's absolutely no reason to think they will not also develop immunity to those as well, we've been that route with overuse of antibiotics and have managed to develop such things as flesh eating disease as a result. Virtually all the commercially grown corn soybeans and canola, at the very least, and most of the other major food crops as well, are now GMO varieties which focus on the same traits and rely totally on an artificially supported environment. There is also growing evidence that the various sprays necessarily used for these crops are implicated in the " bee colony collapse disorder" and of course if we lose the bees for pollinating things then that is also a major disaster, they are an essential link in the production of most of the food we eat. In the US, the government has given Monsanto at least temporary immunity from lawsuits. We are deliberately setting up a situation where we are not only limiting diversity but inviting disaster. I think stupidity is an understatement.

Hi I was astonished this morning to have all the scores for our hands posted on the movie while there were at least 10 tables left playing. The ranking found at the top of the movie wasn't there, just all the hand scores. The ranking only showed after all the tables were finished. I've never seen that happen before. How does that work, please?

When most of your topsoil has washed out into the Gulf of Mexico and most of what's left is so salted from artificial fertilizers that it can no longer grow anything, and that combines with drought because all the rain that falls cannot recharge the aquifers because it runs off and/or evaporates too quickly it's going to be a bit difficult to provide the food and water required. That doesn't even address the certainty (it's already occurred) of pests and diseases becoming immune to ever more virulent poisons..which humans may well not adapt so quickly to handle..and causing havoc in crops with the same genetic makeup. It's basically the Irish potato famine scenario as genetic diversity in food crops is being ever more restricted and constrained. This isn't because we have too many people but because we have a stupidly destructive way of managing food production and water use.

Deforestation and bare soil leads to more extreme temperatures both low and high. Anyone can test that in their own garden, don't need to go into a lab. Desertification leads to bare soil, as does the massive deforestation taking place around the world. It isn't at all surprising that there have been unusual floods this year in the west. We are removing the ability of the earth to moderate weather. and to make water useful rather than just either running off or evaporating. The flooding in Calgary at least, is almost certainly linked to the logging of the watershed upstream. It won't be at all surprising if we soon start to see more droughts as well as more floods.

Are you really suggesting that Afghanistan was responsible for 9/11? Aside from anything else, wasn't Bin Laden found in Pakistan, in fact? "Terrorists" have supposedly been hiding under the bed of every country that the US is unhappy with or wants to have some control over, which is a bit like the boy who cried wolf. No doubt there are always going to be malcontents and some of those develop into terrorists and it would seem as though there are more every day. So perhaps it's time to try a different approach. Perhaps trying to deal with the things which lead people to make that choice might be considered. The thing that is so frustrating is that so many Americans -and others - work so hard to make things better for people in the underdeveloped countries only to have much of their efforts get scuttled by politics and big business exploitation. Doesn't help much to prevent kids getting the measles or caring for their teeth if they are half starved because of the pittance their parents are able to earn or worse, lose their parents in such events as fires in unsafe sweatshops putting out cheap clothes for Walmart and Loblaws. Then they wait for the pittance compensation which is publicly going to be offered but somehow nobody actually ever gets around to it. Surely that sort of thing breeds desperation, anger and resentment and enough of that sometimes breeds the need to "do something". Hunting down such people to shoot them is like trying to stop the water level in a pond from rising in a rainstorm by throwing rocks in it. I'm certainly not suggesting all terrorists came that route, but I'd lay odds that those who offer some focus for that need find relatively eager recruits there. Wasn't the feeling of being exploited what led to the American Revolution? Trying for peace might be a good start.

http://www.abcbirds.org/abcprograms/policy/cats/materials/predation.pdf although that doesn't mean that less lethal wind generators shouldn't be designed. The VAWT types seem to be much less likely to assassinate birds.

No idea why you might think that. I'm also not quite sure why you seem to be trying to bring Iran into everything. My own personal feeling, based on admittedly not a whole lot of information, is the US is forcing Iran's hand by being as confrontational there as it has been; if the roles were reversed what do you suppose the US would do? The US has not been a friend to Iran for a long time, if I'm not mistaken ever since Iran declined to accept the role that the US decided it deserved as a second class country destined to serve the US interests. Sort of like Cuba, although admittedly the rhetoric coming out of Iran was quite horrific at times. It's also the foolish position the US has gotton itself into of supporting Israel right or wrong. It's also quite hypocritical as the US has any number of multinational companies operating in Iran, including Haliburton, I believe. I strongly disagree with Canada's position with Iran and think we are doing the old puppydog thing following the US lead rather than being adults and trying to keep a conversation going. You can't convince anyone that there might be a different or better way if there's no conversation, and conversation doesn't mean, I talk and you do as I say. Also again my personal opinion, is that war is very very seldom the right solution. I would much prefer that the military do peacekeeping http://members.shaw.ca/kcic1/peacekeepers2.html rather than getting involved with such adventures as Afghanistan. I truly resent our idealistic young men and women being used a cannon fodder for the benefit of oil cartels and such, however it's all dressed up as a "fight against terror". Do you suppose that what was happening in Afghanistan was worse than what is happening right now and for the past few months in Syria? It's commonly stated that Syria shelters terrorists, which was supposedly the reason for going into Afghanistan, and it's pretty clear that the Syrian government is horrifically abusing its citizens, so why not Syria? How can you justify one and not the other? That doesn't mean I think anyone should try to stomp on Syria, just that it's difficult to see how non interference can be justified given recent history. It's even more difficult seeing how interference would do much if any good there either. Perhaps the best we can do is look after those who show the initiative and foresight to get out, or give them somewhere to go that they can look after themselves. Last I heard there are now well over 4 million people living in refugee camps in various parts of the world, and I think that was before Syria started blowing up.

Pavarotti, Bryan Adams and friends All For Love http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If422SGJaX4

No doubt true in the short term but although Ghenghis Khan supposedly conquered what was accessible of the world in his day you'll note that Mongolian is not spoken much outside Mongolia these days.In Mexico, many people still speak Indian tribal languages and Mexico's links to Spain today are vague to say the least. Nor (afaik) is the feudal system as such still in existence. Possibly a type of that might still exist mostly in places being heavilly exploited by first world governments and companies. Many such countries in that scenario are having a growing degree of unrest to deal with, if not open rebellion. Of course if you slaughter everyone then you don't have to worry about it but then you tend to have problems with things like food production, medical facilities and general infrastucture. It's a wonder that some of those aspects aren't beginning to make themselves felt more strongly in Syria, although it may be a case of Assad (and his army)still having their wants/needs met so he doesn't care. Weapons only go so far and eventually people say enough is enough even in the face of them. I suspect that not understanding that is one facet of what leads countries to get into "unwinnable" wars...and also leads to things like underground resistance fighters, martyrs, suicide bombers and such. Whether we think of those people with admiration or not depends almost entirely on which side of the conflict we're on.

It's VERY good news that everyone seems to have backed off a little. Let's hope everyone feels enough face has been saved that they can all go back to their own business and the UN supervision goes forward.