onoway

I am curious as the the meaning of your instruction to ask a "real " farmer about organic farming.? Also, an interview on the CBC a month or so ago was with someone who had just completed a study on how many people "waste" food. I guess (I couldn't hear the whole interview) that the percentage in North America at least, is pretty close to 100%. Re the book on the disappearing nutritional value of foods..I wonder if that has any impact on the amount of food people are eating, if somehow unconsciously people are eating more to try to get the same level of nutrition that they used to get from less food?

Any policeman will tell you that if a group of non involved people see an event, their various descriptions of the event may vary widely, from descriptions of the people involved, or the sequence of events to actually who did what. They all agree on the basic result of the event, just not on some of the details of how it all happened. Are any of them exactly right? How do you know?If so, which one was it? Was everyone else just too lazy to pay attention? Or was each reacting out of his own experience and understanding? And oh the world would be a weary place if there was no mystery or wonder in it. The idea that all things should be able to be explained reminds me of the teachers whose idea of teaching literature was to dissect it to dust. They could tell you exactly how a piece of prose or poetry was able to capture your imagination and involve you in its life but damned if any of them could do it. They could put the components together but the result was as effective as reading the sides of a cereal box. Why is that? And more to the point, is this necessarilly more valuable to anyone than learning to appreciate the work for what it is? Before I learned to speak a little spanish I thought it the most lovely language to listen to. Now I hear the sense but have lost the music. Well, that's a trade off I am willing to make because communicating is more important to me. But if someone will never have a need to communicate in Spanish, why is it necessary for him or her to lose the music? If they get pleasure from listening to the sounds of the language, like birdsong, without needing to know what the words mean, what right do I have to say that that person is mentally lazy because they don't have the same values or needs that I do about learning Spanish? As has been pointed out elsewhere no-one can figure out everything on their own.People choose where to focus their energies, and to patronize someone who doesn't share your values is more demeaning to the patronizer than the patronized.

Looking for something else and found this quote from John Buchan: an atheist is someone who has no invisible means of support. :(

I shouldn't read these things late at night. Sorry.

You made quite a jump when you assumed I am saying that religion is responsible for morality. It would be as apt to say religion is responsible for good manners. What I said was I see absolutely no reason to say that humans have an innate sense of morality. Telling me it's obvious that they do is simple contradiction, and as such worthless. I think that most people prefer to live relatively peaceful lives, but some are much more willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want. Generally,whatever the modus operandi, (these people may be more forceful or clever at manipulating, or they will stop at little to achieve their goals,) over time, they push the passives too far and then you get such things as the Magna Carta and other documents or arrangements. These are simply supposed to stop the aggressive members of society from being able to stress the society so much. It is a large jump to say any of this presupposes morality. It is simply societal organization. Other species have the same sort of organisation, though obviously without the paperwork. I imagine that religions have probably always been closely involved with the structuring and control of societies because they offered a bridge between the known and the unknown. How perfect a platform for either the philanthropist or the sociopath to wield influence.Why do virtually all cultures historically have some sort of religion as part and parcel of their structure? Possibly it's a way of defining society so people know what is expected of them, how they are fitting into the larger group. It's much easier to manage a society if everyone plays by the same rules. It's even easier if people behave in a cooperative way in the first place. Religion gave structure and validity, true or not depending on your point of view, by offering reasons for the structure or rules. (Even if the reason was, because God said so). All of this is has to do with the organising and running of a society. It has nothing to do with morality, it has to do with practicality. If someone runs around bashing everybody's head in, then pretty soon the only one left is the basher and the group becomes extinct. So rules are put in that people shouldn't do that to their own family or clan or group or countrymen. Again, many animals have similar patterns of behaviour.Does this mean those animals have innate morality? It's also difficult to believe in this innate morality when you look around..just one example, when the leader, the representative of the most powerful nation on earth uses his power to facilitate torture, and there is virtually no effective reaction.If he had raised taxes 2000% there certainly would have been. Which is the moral question? Telling me something is so because someone wrote a book about it simply isn't good enough. (after all, are you not one of those who take issue with the Bible?)If it is so obvious, there should be no difficulty demonstrating why and how my point of view is mistaken.

I am at a loss to see how anyone can suggest that there is an innate morality in humans, any more than in baboons or wolves,for example. In fact perhaps less, if you consider that humans are generally believed to have consciousness which other animals supposedly lack.

No question a lot of damage has been done over the years by people who have taken advantage of a religious setting to abuse their power and warp the meanings of their religion to their own benefit. I'm not familiar with any part of the bible, for example, which charges the faithful to go out and burn people as witches. I am more familiar with the charge to forgive your enemies and turn the other cheek and the commandment "thou shalt not kill" which apparently didn't originally come with rider clauses of acceptable exceptions. However, that said, there are horrific examples of people in other organizations also creating havoc and misery, esp. in the area of politics, science and sometimes but usually in more subtle ways, big business. Science has brought us much positive knowlege such as the role of cleanliness in disease and it has also brought us unprecedented pollution and stress on the planet, to say nothing of the various atomic, chemical and biological bombs whose only purpose is to annihilate and/or cause terror, for the benefit of whomever has them. Science has, as far as I can see, no restrictions or admonitions whatsoever , in practical terms, as far as moral or ethical imperatives go, and politicians ignore agreements made as soon as the agreement interferes with what they want to do ( if they have the power to do so). I'm not sure either is necessarilly superior to an organisation which has admittedly had a lot of people abuse their power in spite of the admonition to behave themselves, but which also gave rise to people such as Mother Teresa. In fact, it all seems very similar to me. A pox on all their houses?

Speaking of conscience brings it all full circle, doesn't it? Isn't what you know of your conscience (i.e. right vs wrong) a direct result of your upbringing?Thus, doesn't it almost entirely depend on where and when you were born and the circumstances arising out of those two things? Apparently the Inuit have several dozen words for what we call snow. It seems a bit simplistic ( or perhaps even a trifle arrogant?) to think that the questions discussed here can adequately be dismissed with two.

There is supposed to be a ghost ship off the coast of BC where a boatload of Chinese workers were chained in the hold, and abandoned when the ship caught fire. They were being brought over to work in the coal mines I think. That was the other area where they were bitterly abused, at least in Canada.

amen! :)

It depends on your definition of the word "cope". To me, it means being able to continue to function in a socially acceptable way even when you really don't feel capable of doing so. To my understanding both drug addiction and extreme alcoholism do exactly the reverse, making it virtually impossible over the long term to continue to handle your responsibilities adequately. To suggest that someone who gains comfort from their faith after the death of a child, for example, and someone who crawls into the bottom of a bottle and stays there are both somehow operating on the same level is wrong, a cheap shot and insulting. They are both operating out of the same need, but there the resemblance ends. It's like saying there is no difference feeding an infant milk or sugar water ..both will assuage the hunger pangs for a while, but one cannot nourish. For those who have faith, their faith nourishes them. I think it unfortunate that so many people who quite reasonably wish to have their rights to be agnostic or atheist respected think it's quite ok to show disdain for people who do have faith.

Sometimes the world can be a hard place and if religious beliefs don't help solve the problems they can for some people at least allow them to cope. For some, it might not do to look too closely at the belief systems as if they are found through concentrated analysis to be unsatisfactory then there is no support left, and it seems many many people find that a daunting prospect. I'm not sure that most people are able to find satisfaction in the thought of being totally responsible for themselves and their lives, and that their life has no more meaning or significance (except to them) than that of a chicken or clump of dandelions. To say that many people find comfort in religion is true, and to say you understand this doesn't imply condescention, imo. It could equally well be neutral or even show a degree of wistfulness. I'm not sure, given the emotional weight of religious beliefs, that teachers should be dealing with these questions..all too many schools are showing a truly awe-inspiring inablity to cope adequately with the tasks they have already. Perhaps a course in ethics would not be amiss, though. It seems to me that rather than dealing at all with religious questions as such in school, it would be more productive to teach good interpersonal and societal skills...which they should be doing already and usually are not. (Though some will undoubtedly challenge this, look at what is happening in schools today. Metal detectors over entrance doors. The term lockdown now applied to schools!!!) I think that by and large now many of the problems come not from religion (not speaking of suicicde bombers etc here, but "normal" people in "normal" situations) is that kids, like others, have been left adrift without religion AND without anything to replace it with. Imo the fact that virtually all societies and cultures developed some form of religious belief speaks to a need most people have, and this is cannot be ignored without consequences. What to do about it is another question . :)

The whole issue of free trade is a sick farce as far as I can see..looking at the myriad disputes and charges of unfair subsidization or whatever suits the fancy of special interest groups. In Canada, we are apparently going to slaughter thousands of pigs, if we haven't already, because what farmers are getting for them doesn't cover the cost of raising them. So, not only is the government subsidizing this slaughter, but because of trade agreements, no-one is allowed to use the meat in any way, not shipped to people who are starving and could never afford to buy it anyway, not for the local poor..just destroyed. But the government then turns around and pledges money to feed the starving of the world. Right. I guess that makes economic and humanitarian sense to somebody.. and fwiw, whoever they are, I bet they have university degrees.

That is a possibility as he came and went...it might have been that when we tried to sub him he was at one of the tables. I knew that was a no no for tournaments but never occurred to me it might be the same problem for team matches..duh.The only thing I can say was that it WAS very late. Thanks Pedro.

HI Last night there was a mixup for a team game and someone got left out who was supposed to play. It turned out to be impossible to allow him to play. He registered three times as a sub but not once did BBO list him on the sub list. Random people from the lobby listed but he could not get recognized. However, every time he tried to register, he was told he WAS registered as a sub. It was very frustrating for all concerned. Are we missing something? I am not aware of there having been a problem before when subbing people, but now am wondering if this has been happening and neither potential sub nor I was aware of it.

In plants an annual is a plant which completes its life cycle within a year, a perennial keeps going for a number of years, a biennial is one which completes its life cycle in two years. I had to think twice about this...and had no clue what biAnnual was...probably if I had ever seen the word before I had automatically assumed it meant the same and was just a spelling variant..

oops just saw it was a money bridge tourney. In that case I don't know...if you get travellers you should be able to retrieve it, but if not...I can't suggest anything else except perhaps checking with BBO Help...

If you know anyone else who was playing in the tourney who did finish the hand, then you should be able to retrieve it. Possibly you can do this by reviewing the hands that you DID finish earlier and check them out, that would give you names of other people who played. Then go to "my hands" in BBO and look up the tourney under their name. When the hands come up, if they did finish that one, you should be able to save it to your computer. Good luck :wacko:

Unfortunately, you are right, Ken, being really nice would not have worked with people like Hitler, for example. In retrospect, though, it seems odd that the only way he and his sidekicks could be dealt with was to kill and maim hundreds of thousands of OTHER people..seems highly inefficient way to go about things. It seems to me that we are still in the stone age when we don't bother trying to find other ways to deal with people than hitting them over the head with a bigger and bigger stick. It doesn't work, as the two world wars to "end all wars" have shown. If people never worked tirelessly on doing things that had never been done before, our lives would be shorter and more basic than they are, there would be no heart transplants, no space shuttle, no internet. It seems that no-one has the interest in learning how to deal with the things/people that cause wars, it is a lot easier to spend a bunch of money to get a bigger club to bash people with. Well the club has gotton so big now, that using it potentially doesn't affect just the basher and bashee but everyone, everywhere, and not for just the moment, relatively speaking, but possibly for MILLENIA. If nothing else it seems to me the height of selfishness to decide that anyone has the right to make any irreversible decision which has potentially that sort of impact. I don't know the answer, just as I don't know how to do brain surgery or fly a jet plane ( or even understand some of the discussions in the forums!) That doesn't mean there isn't one. That doesn't mean that at least as much effort shouldn't be put into finding one as there is to finding ever more efficient ways to build a bigger and more lethal club. It's rather pathetic that in the 21st century we are still all acting like Neanderthal behaviour is the only option with people we fear or find obnoxious - or who have something we want.

Such little things that go wrong...there were only a FEW bees that got loose in South America ....there were only a FEW rabbits which got loose in Australia..both examples of little mistakes or miscalculations which got out of control with results far more devastating than the people responsible had ever anticipated. Some things, like nuclear war, we don't as a species have the luxury of making any mistakes or miscalculations at ALL. The concept of suicide bombers is alien to me, though I suppose anyone in the business end of war has similar dedication, they just have better odds of surviving if they are in the usual sort of army. Starting a nuclear war is running the risk of being the biggest suicide bomber possible, because there cannot be a winner, all there can be is the questionable satisfaction of taking everyone with you when you go..some quickly some not so quickly...and saying oh my god I didn't REALIZE.. I'm so SORRY....isn't going to cut it. If you believe the prospect of possibly causing nuclear winter is a rational choice to consider, under any circumstances, then you have a different understanding of the word than I do.

It is amazing to me that anyone anywhere with any sense of imagination whatsoever can conceive that the idea of nuclear strikes could possibly be anything but catastrophic, pretty much anywhere you want to say they happen. It is also frightening that this is something which people discuss as though it could in any way be a rational thing to do under any circumstance. Some time ago I took part in a simulation run by a Political Science class. After it was over the prof told us quietly that no matter how many times he ran it and no matter if he used real countries' names or made up ones...the simulation invariably ended up with nuclear war.. It used to be that in most wars there was supposed to be a winner and a loser..there is no way anyone anywhere comes out ahead in a nuclear war, including the people who had nothing to do with it..but the longer it is discussed as a rational possibility the larger the possibility becomes. The future is beginning to look very frightening.

The only thing I object to is the situation where a vulnerable pair has reached the optimum contract and the unvulnerable opps can overbid, knowing they are going down, and even if doubled they make a better score than the players who have maxed out their hands. It seems to negate the point of the whole exercise.

It isn't even the petroleum based products we use directly but the fact that almost everything we use depends of some mode of transport to get it to us. Consider also the rising cost of growing food, every time a tractor get fired up to plow. disc, fertilize, seed, spray, harvest....not a lot of choice but to cope with the price of fuel Interesting, perhaps..years ago I read a study done way back on the comparitive value of horse vs tractor. At that time the conclusion was, that if all factors were taken into consideration, as long as fuel was under 50cents a gallon, tractors were the most efficient/profitable way to go. Well...horses are cheap and tractors are not, and grass grows most places, but it's rare to find anyone who would have a clue now how to use a horse to farm, or to find the equipment to put behind it, plus it's hellishly hard work to plow with horses. It also wouldn't be possible to farm 12000 acres or so with horses nowadays, unless you had a LOT of horses and a LOT of people to work with them. Someone once told me with pride that he needed a tractor that was the size of a small apartment complex because he had so much land to work...the problem was he needed that much land just to pay for the tractor.. Anyway, (anyways? :) ) gardens this year might be a good idea as I expect food prices to climb considerably, especially next winter.

I don't understand why the version I see when I try to log into it is entirely different from the one that has the introductory video'. The video one looked infinitely better than the one I get...I wanted to go back and see if it was possible to see who is kibbing at various tables, as I often use that as a guideline. For example I generally check out who is doing the commentating on vugraph and choose which table I want to watch on that basis.Will it still be possible to do this? And why doesn't the same format come up when I try to go there? At first glance, the new one seems MUCH nicer than the interim one was, I might even give it a try for fun, although I am very happy with the classic view and find it very user friendly. One thing I liked about the interim version was the ability to see profiles of people not online. It was most helpful to have some sort of guideline when trying to set up teams for matches out of a bunch of single players I don't know. Is that a feature of the new version as well?

When I hear people speak about war, I think of the time (I believe ww1) when the Germans and the English in a battle, stopped for Christmas. Someone made the first overture,they crossed no man's land, and instead of shelling and shooting each other, had a day of socializing, sharing, singing and celebrating Christmas. The next day they went back to trying to kill one another. I didn't believe this story when I first heard it, but apparently it's true...