green

Though it is true that the do-gooder antics of the Hollywoodite types can be irritating and usually do carry with them the powerful stench of hypocrisy, one can ignore these folks and instead choose to pay attention to what the European governments, the U.N. and the many serious scientists have and are saying about this issue, Cusano. It is now generally deemed that this is an issue that can no longer be ignored, whether the cause is a natural planetary phase or due to our own behaviour or some combination of the above.
Certainly, by thinking green or greener we can loosen our dependency on fossil fuels and on the Middle East and that would be a good thing in and of itself. We can also clean up our own backyard, you know, the land where we live if we figure out methods of controlling pollution for the truth is that both the air we breathe and the major waterways have become corrupted by our activities. This, by the way, does not only apply to city folk; there are rural folk who are falling sick in ways that urbanites are not and this is due to the run-off of the chemicals now used in farming.
Unfortunately environmental work is complex and will require that government become engaged as well as individual families. You Americans might remember FDR and the fine work he did on the TVA....
As a Canadian I am always surprised by the mistrust with which Americans view their government. Up here we kind of view our government as being something which we put in place by virtue of voting for it; perhaps our relationship with our government is more intimate for we know that if it gets uppity we can throw it out in the next election. It for this reason that our elected officials make some attempt to remain responsive to the will of the people.
I am aware that you who live below the 49th parallel are terrified of something which you view as socialism. This is, I suspect, because of your founding philosophy, a kind of Ayn Randian way of thought, of rugged individualism. Up here we are more concerned about the general health of our society and we figure that the needs of many trump the desires of one. This is why we have universal health care and this is why we endure an elaborate system of recycling our garbage in my big city which is, quite frankly a bit of work, but to which there is a compliance rate in the high 90s%.
Pat Robertson once referred to Canada as Socialist Canuckistan, and I still find this hilarious. If you look up Canada in Wikipedia you will see that this country functions on the capitalist system and is a member of G-8, the countries which routinely participate in economic summits.
Now, I am fully aware that is has been an irritating and really quite smug-sounding post and I am sorry for that. Canada certainly has its on-going problems and I am a big fan of America. I guess what I am trying to say is that modified socialism is practised north of your border and in most of the western European economies and that the notion of government intervention in certain spheres of activity does not seem as frightening to us who are not American, and thus your fear of it seems to be an on-going puzzle.

My stats when I was banded: 5'6", 195 lbs, 57 years old. I paid for my own operation. My weight gain was post menopausal and getting worse every year. I am glad I was able to get banded when I did and the band worked really well for me as my problem was simple Portion Control. Exercise just made me firmer but I was still apple-type chubby and we all know that dieting is just a yo-yo trip.

Child rape and serial murder are bad because they have a negative impact on the well-being of the tribe. Most people, I believe, understand this on a basic level. Thus the majority of us do not need our civil laws nor threats from a diety in order to keep us in line. Civil laws and dieties which threaten Hellfire are there in order to exert a measure of control over those of us who are psychologically damaged and are thus unable to behave in a manner which protects the well-being of the tribe.
Atheists are as interested in matters of right and wrong as theists. Philosophers are folks who have made it their business to study ethical questions.

Very cogently expressed, Wasa. Bravo! It is not that we choose perversely not to believe, it is that there seems to be absolutely no reason to believe. We see zero evidence to support belief, is all.

There is are a couple of interesting debates on the ethics of birth going on British Columbia, Canada at this time. One of them concerns a girl who is the daughter of a welfarist family who gave birth to her first child when she was 16. She had her second child two years later and two years after that she was pregnant again. All her children were by the same father, a kid who is 2 years older than her and who, until the birth of her latest kids, did not actually live with her. (For those of you who might care, let it be known that these individuals are white.)
During her 3rd pregnancy it was discovered that she was carrying twins and that they were, moreover, conjoined at the head. Yep, Siamese twins. She did have the option to abort but chose to carry them to term even though the odds of these two girls a) surviving in utero and surviving an operation to split 'em up should they make it that far were grim.
The girl is now 21, the twins are 6 months old, and she is by all accounts a very competent mother of small children. She and her extended family live on social assistance and they are a very close and supportive family. She also personally receives additional hand-outs from church groups and other well-meaning people who are touched by the story of her and her twins. She receives a lot of hate mail, too.
It seems to me after reading these news reports that she loves these children deeply and is undeniably a good mum. It also seems to me that she herself is emotionally immature and intellectually unsophisticated and thus has no idea what will await these children once they leave infanthood and begin to grow up.
Was her choice to keep these kids frivolous, thoughtless and self-centred, or not?
The second case, also in British Columbia, concerns a young Mormon couple who gave birth to a set of sextuplets. Though there is a particial news ban on the case, implicit in the news reports is that they did go out of the country for fertility assistance. The babies were born - as is so often the case with multiples - extremely prematurely. Two of them died before the government stepped in and ordered that the remaining infants be treated with blood transfusions. This is absolutely against Mormon religious belief and yet the government of British Columbia felt that the choice lay between honouring the civil liberties of this couple and saving the lives of the remaining infants. The government is now being sued by the parents.
From all that I have read, although we now have the technology in place to save the lives of foetuses who find themselves outside the womb while still in an extremely early stage of development, these acts of intervention cost millions of dollars and the sad but unspoken truth is that many of these saved babies will grow up to lag behind their peers both physically and mentally and so will continue to be a charge on their families, the medical and the social systems for the rest of their lives. Balance out these costs against the costs of, oh, lets say, upgrading the infrastructure - access to fresh Water, food, medical care and supplies, agricultural technology, etc - in a continent such as Africa and you must admit that the North American tendency to worship its own - often lily white flesh - while discounting the value of all other flesh is kinda creepy and certainly soaked in hypocrisy.

Mouse, I very much agree with you with you and, by the way, I would like to congratulate you on your weight loss. You have only got another 20 lbs to go. This is my situation, too, but those remaining lbs are, I fear, going to be a challenge.
And 396, it is nice to see that you and your wife will be walking the walk together. I know that you will both enjoy the lap band trip.
From the coverage which I have been reading of the Virginia Tech situation, the young man in question had been seriously mentally ill for many, many years before he perform this heinous act of destruction. It seems that he was an odd child when he still very young and was living in Korea. And it is said that he was a weirdo throughout his high school years. He certainly raised red flags at VT long before his final day on earth. So what could have been done?
The problem is that this issue of effectively dealing with this lunatic before he acted out really pivotted protecting on his individual civil rights as balanced against maintaining the health of the community with whom he came in contact. His civil rights won and though this was especially regrettable in this case I believe that this is the right way to protect us all as individuals from the community.
I still do believe that we as individuals must put the well-being of our community above our own selfish interests but not at the sacrifice of our civil rights.
I believe that one way of ensuring improved safety in schools and universities where so many of these crazed gun sprees take place would be to set up an effective warning system. A woman who wrote into one of the newspapers which I read suggested sirens which I thought was a good idea and an inexpensive one. She had lived in England throughout World War II and vividly remembered the sirens which warn the citizens that enemy bombers had been sighted. I remember my own mother - who lived in Bristol - talking about the sirens.

You know, it's considered irresponsible to post/forward so-called "information" like this without doing at least some research to determine its accuracy.

1. There was NEVER a provision is the SS Act of 1935 for the SS tax to be voluntary.
2. SS taxes were NEVER limited to the first $1400 of annual income. The original Act contained provisions to gradually increase the rate to 3% over 12 years and, of course, the rate has been adjusted many times since.
3. The SS Act of 1935 specifically stated that SS taxes were NOT allowed as income tax deductions, and at no time has that changed.
4. The SS Trust Fund was established in 1939. The monies from this fund are not, and never have been, put into the "general operating fund". There is a problem, in that the government has a long history of "investing" SS funds by lending them to itself. This practice, however, can by no means be blamed on one Party, or a single administration.
5. Neither Roosevelt nor the original SS Act promised that SS would not be taxed. Amendments to the SS Act passed by Congress in 1983 allowed for 50% of SS benefits to be considered taxable income, for higher income taxpayers only. The idea originated with a proposal issued by the Greenspan Commission, appointed by Ronald Reagan.
6. Legislation that increased the taxable portion of SS to 85% was part of the massive Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, which passed without a single Republican vote. Presumably because the increase effected only higher income retirees.
7. No one is eligible to collect SS benefits unless he/she has paid into the system. You are confusing SS with SSI, a welfare program designed to assist aged, blind, and disabled people who are very, very low income. The SSI legislation, however, was not enacted by Jimmy Carter, but by Richard Nixon.