Virgin Birth!
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=513986 A mouse has been created in the laboratory by a technique that does away with the need for males in reproduction, a breakthrough that raises the prospect of fatherless babies. The mouse was generated from two unfertilised eggs and its birth has demonstrated for the first time that it is possible for mammals to be born by the virgin birth phenomenon of parthenogenesis. Scientists said the mouse developed normally to adulthood and had offspring of its own by normal sexual reproduction, showing parthenogenesis could work on warm-blooded mammals, including humans. Experts said the technique was far too complicated and risky to use on humans. But if the problems can be overcome and if experiments on other mammals can demonstrate the process can be made safe, there will undoubtedly be pressure from some quarters to apply parthenogenesis to treat human infertility. If so, it begs the question about the need to have men involved in reproduction. Tomohiro Kono, the scientist at Tokyo University who led the research, dismissed the possibility of using parthenogenesis on humans as a senseless question. Asked by The Independent whether it would be possible in theory to produce a human baby by the same technique, Dr Kono replied: No answer for empty question. Very sorry. The British team who created Dolly the cloned sheep was given a licence last year by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to activate human eggs using parthenogenesis to generate embryonic stem cells, but not to produce embryos for implanting into a woman's womb. The HFEA said its decision was partly justified because human eggs activated during parthenogenesis did not have the potential to develop into a child, a statement now undermined by the Japanese research in the journal Nature. Parthenogenesis differs from the cloning technique used to create Dolly because it results in embryos developing entirely from unfertilised eggs rather than embryos resulting from eggs combined with the ordinary cells of the body. Dr Kono's team used 598 mouse eggs to generate enough viable embryos by parthenogenesis to impregnate 26 females, resulting in 24 pregnancies. Of the 10 live and 18 dead foetuses, two survived birth and just one lived long enough to develop into an apparently normal adult female, which the researchers have named Kaguya. In effect, Kaguya has two genetic mothers. She was created by merging the chromosomes of a genetically altered mouse with an egg from another mouse. Until this study, it was thought to be impossible for mammals to reproduce by parthenogenesis, a method of reproduction common in reptiles and insects where identical female offspring can be quickly produced when resources are limited. Dr Kono said his study had shown that the crucial barrier to parthenogenesis in mice and other mammals appeared to be a process of genetic imprinting when paternal and maternal genes were selectively turned off and on. Professor Alison Murdoch, chair of the British Fertility Society, said imprinting was thought crucial in several stages in the development of the human embryo. Understanding it better would elucidate disorders, she said. This is an important scientific development that will help us understand genetic imprinting and why babies are born with abnormalities. Dr Kono's team admitted many of the embryos and foetuses in the parthenogenesis experiment were abnormal. Leading scientists said this showed it was far too dangerous to use the technique for human reproduction. Martin Bobrow, professor of medical genetics at Cambridge University, said: Ethically, the arguments for and against applying this to human beings would be much the same as for other cloning techniques. Whether it is more or less safe remains to be seen. Simon Best, chairman of the Biotechnology Industry Association in Scotland, said the inefficiency and abnormalities of parthenogenesis made it even more unacceptable than cloning. The [study] shows that, like cloning, another asexual form of reproduction is possible in mice and may be possible in some other mammals, he said. But this was achieved with even lower efficiency than the cloning process used to make Dolly, so it is even more unacceptable and unsafe to consider using this for humans. Professor Azim Surani, professor of physiology and reproduction at Cambridge University, said: This is an incredible achievement. The process of creating these mice required perseverance and patience. But from 600 eggs only two mice were created. This technique is far too complicated to be used in humans. Anne Ferguson-Smith, clinical director of Centres for Assisted Reproduction, said the study showed parthenogenesis work-ed on only a tiny proportion of mouse embryos. This does not mean that males are obsolete, she said. The requirement for paternal chromosomes for normal development is still with us. xponent Axis Of
A Reversal of the Parties
There is an interesting editorial in today's Wall St. Journal. Going beyond the short-term nailing of Kerry for flip-flopping on the primacy of democracy or stability in Iraq, a much bigger case is made. Namely that we may be experiencing a historic reversal of the parties. Students of American history know that there have been several times in history in which the parties of exchanged positions. This column argues that the party of realpolitik is switching from the Republicans to the Democrats This is interesting as realpolitik has long been associated with Republicans - and particularly Democrat criticisms for the way Republican administrations cooperated with a great many extremely unsavory regimes during the Cold War. Nevertheless, I wonder if we didn't see the beginning of this shift in the Clinton Administration's very non-idealistic refusal to intervene in the Rwandan genocide. The reversal may now be complete as the intervention in Iraq is one of the most idealistic-minded US foreign policy actions in history, which is overwhelming favored by Republicans and opposed (still!) by Democrats. JDG http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004987 Once upon a time Democrats were the great promoters of morality and idealism in foreign policy. During the Cold War, those Democrats included Harry Truman and John Kennedy, the latter most famously in the aspirations of his inauguration speech to pay any price and bear any burden in the cause of liberty. Realism in foreign policy, meanwhile, has typically been associated with Republicans, most recently with the first President Bush and his National Security Adviser, Brent Scowcroft. This school of thought attempts to run a foreign policy based on national interest, narrowly defined. Moral causes are not their thing, while dictatorships are fine if they don't threaten us. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Virgin Birth!
A mouse has been created in the laboratory by a technique that does away with the need for males in reproduction, a breakthrough that raises the prospect of fatherless babies. Bah. It's not Virgin Birth. It's a little different from artificial insemination. Males are obsolete :-) Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Thousands Turned Away from the Polls in CA on super tuesday
http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~2100333,00.html ... Diebold Election Services Inc. president Bob Urosevichadmitted this and more, and apologized for any embarrassment. We were caught. We apologize for that, Urosevich said of the mass failures of devices needed to call up digital ballots. Poll-workers in Alameda and San Diego counties hadn't been trained on ways around their failure, and San Diego County chose not to supply polls with backup paper ballots, crippling the largest rollout of e-voting in the nation on March 2. Unknown thousands of voters were turned away at the polls. We're sorry for the inconvenience of the voters, Urosevich said. Weren't they actually disenfranchised? asked Tony Miller, chief counsel to the state's elections division. After a moment, Urosevich agreed: Yes, sir. Flanked by most of California's local elections officials and advocates for the blind and speakers of minority-language, Diebold executives and attorneys pleaded for one more chance. ... State elections officials were dismayed to find that Diebold had sold and installed thousands of its new TSx machines in the state without getting them tested, nationally qualified and even before applying for state certification. I understand your frustration, said Diebold chief developer Tab Iredell. Why did we sell something that we didn't think we could run? Our understanding based on past experience was we thought we could get that certified. If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. - Diebold Internal Memos ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Scouted: Protecting Creation on Earth Day
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20040422_314.html A national group of Christian leaders is sending a scathing letter to President Bush to coincide with Earth Day, accusing his administration of chipping away at the Clean Air Act. The National Council of Churches argued that planned changes to power plant regulations will allow major polluters to avoid installing pollution-control equipment when they expand their facilities. In a spirit of shared faith and respect, we feel called to express grave moral concern about your 'Clear Skies' initiative which we believe is The Administration's continuous effort to weaken critical environmental standards to protect God's creation, the council wrote in an advance copy of the letter provided to The Associated Press. The New-York based group, which represents 50 million people in 140,000 Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox denominations, said it was sending its two-page letter to the president on Thursday, as people all over the country celebrate Earth Day. It took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, scheduled to run in Thursday's editions, calling on Bush to leave the Clean Air Act's new source review rules in place... Of course, if one thinks that Armegeddon is just 'round the corner, one might ignore possible future consequences of one's actions. Debbi Responsible Stewards Maru __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Happiness is
Kevin Tarr wrote: Getting your taxes done two days earlyand the printer's ink quits after two pages. I work 13 hours tomorrow and then need to drive three hours for a Thursday meeting with nursing home people. I'll be lucky to be back by 6pm, with or without new ink cartridges. This made me smile. The Dutch file income taxes on-line. No more paper, and you can even send it a couple of minuts before the deadline ends. huge grin No more paper hassels. That is untill they start checking the darn things and demand all the copies that prove the deductions you made exist and are valid. :o) Ah well it is a nice idea and it is starting to work to some degree. Sonja GCU: Technology applied only to fail in the second instance ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Scouted: Diebold may face charges in CA
This is a preliminary snippet of an article - I suspect Kneem will link more (if he hasn't already - List seems slow today?). :P http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5197870.html SACRAMENTO, Calif.--California election officials on Thursday recommended banning some Diebold Election Systems voting machines and referred an investigation into the company to the attorney general for possible civil and criminal sanctions. The California secretary of state's panel on voting systems and procedures made its recommendation to the secretary of state in a second morning of contentious hearings, during which Diebold's president apologized to the panel and admitted that the company's errors had prevented some Californians from voting. But panel members said Thursday morning that the company's apologies were insufficient, and they expressed frustration with and distrust of the leading electronic voting vendor for California counties. Time to put voting back into the hands of the people! [Or some equally proletarian/democratic/libertarian sort of slogan... ;)] Debbi Make Sure Your Vote Counts Maru __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Happiness is
This made me smile. The Dutch file income taxes on-line. No more paper, and you can even send it a couple of minuts before the deadline ends. huge grin No more paper hassels. That is untill they start checking the darn things and demand all the copies that prove the deductions you made exist and are valid. :o) Ah well it is a nice idea and it is starting to work to some degree. State of Pennsylvania has its taxes O-L, which is really convenient and a major time saver...IF its not bogged down by usage (hint to self: do taxes earlier!). I still had to mail my federal a local taxes (the latter I mailed in a mailbox 10 feet from the township building...I thought it was amusing at the time...). Damon. = Damon Agretto [EMAIL PROTECTED] Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. http://www.geocities.com/garrand.geo/index.html Now Building: __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Scouted: Protecting Creation on Earth Day
--- Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Of course, if one thinks that Armegeddon is just 'round the corner, one might ignore possible future consequences of one's actions. Debbi Responsible Stewards Maru And if one is so fiercely committed to defeating Republicans that one entirely ignores the facts, that makes it easier too. The atmosphere under the Bush Administration has not only continued to get cleaner - the Administration has made several major regulatory pushes (diesel emission regulations, for example) that substantially advance the environmental agenda. http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/enviro/04_enviroindex/Enviro_2004.pdf http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml?pid=1598 http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml?week=2004-03-30 The total committment of the environmental movement to absolute intellectual dishonesty is the principal reason people like me think that large portions of the movement are a bunch of frauds who use environmental hysteria as a way of promoting anti-free market agendas. Their pretty uniform insistence on avoiding those programs that could actually _help_ with environmental problems - like promoting nuclear power or emissions trading caps - also says something, actually. = Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Scouted: Diebold may face charges in CA
Deborah Harrell wrote: This is a preliminary snippet of an article - I suspect Kneem will link more (if he hasn't already - List seems slow today?). :P He already did. :) I'm guessing you sent this before you got his post on the subject. Julia who is contemplating sending links on to another list ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
More on the environmental movement
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/04/22/EDGKO68MID1.DTL An excellent article by Nick Shulz and the co-founder of Green Peace on the failures of the environmental movement. My particular passion on this topic is easily explainable. Norman Borlaug has saved the lives of more people than _any other human being who has ever lived_. End of sentence. No other person in history has ever even come close. He did so by bringing the miracles of modern (largely American) agricultural technology to the Third World, particularly India. For this he won the Nobel Peace Prize, incidentally. For that, he has been largely reviled by most of the environmental movement, which generally believes that the world would have been better off if the countries of the Third World had been forced to control their population (by this they actually mean mass deaths through catastrophic famine, but hey, it was only a bunch of poor brown people, and Greenpeace and its cohort have never seemed to care at all about people like that). As a very small part of that, I have little doubt that quite a few members of my family are alive today because of his work - and that the so-called environmental movement thinks it would have been better for them to starve to death. My tolerance for such groups reaches some level far below minimal. = Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Scouted: Protecting Creation on Earth Day
Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Of course, if one thinks that Armegeddon is just 'round the corner, one might ignore possible future consequences of one's actions. Debbi Responsible Stewards Maru And if one is so fiercely committed to defeating Republicans that one entirely ignores the facts, that makes it easier too. The atmosphere under the Bush Administration has not only continued to get cleaner - the Administration has made several major regulatory pushes (diesel emission regulations, for example) that substantially advance the environmental agenda. http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/enviro/04_enviroindex/Enviro_2004.pdf http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml?pid=1598 http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml?week=2004-03-30 snip Gautam: this administration's proposed alterations to the Clean Air Act allow increased mercury emissions, yet guidelines for consumption of mercury-containing fish (such as tuna) by pregnant women and young children have already been recently revised downward (I can provide any number of links if you wish). And for the record, I was *appalled* at some of the provisions of NAFTA (chapter 11, specifically, IIRC), which was a Clinton admin screw-up WRT the environment. Kindly do not mistake me for some blindly-obedient Democrat-myrmidon. Debbi __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Thousands Turned Away from the Polls in CA on super tuesday
We're sorry for the inconvenience of the voters, Urosevich said. Inconvenience? To call that putting it mildly is putting it mildly. Weren't they actually disenfranchised? asked Tony Miller, chief counsel to the state's elections division. After a moment, Urosevich agreed: Yes, sir. Duh! Flanked by most of California's local elections officials and advocates for the blind and speakers of minority-language, Diebold executives and attorneys pleaded for one more chance. Uh-uh. Put these mother-fuckers out of business NOW. State elections officials were dismayed to find that Diebold had sold and installed thousands of its new TSx machines in the state without getting them tested, nationally qualified and even before applying for state certification. I understand your frustration, said Diebold chief developer Tab Iredell. Why did we sell something that we didn't think we could run? Our understanding based on past experience was we thought we could get that certified. Why did they sell it? To make money, of course. That's the only value of capitalism. That's why Republicans and other tub-thumpers for deregulation are their own worst enemies. Capitalists need government to keep capitalists from ruining capitalism. Obviously there's plenty of blame to go around here - the county clearly did a poor job. But unquestionably the bulk of the blame here goes to Diebold. Whose CEO (Wally O'Dell) is a major Republican donor and Bush backer and has promised to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush. And we're supposed to give HIM a second chance? So they can steal another election? For more on Diebold's LONG history of screw-ups (and worse), go to www.blackboxvoting.com and www.blackboxvoting.org. -- Tom Beck my LiveJournal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/tomfodw/ I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never thought I'd see the last. - Dr. Jerry Pournelle -- ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unguarded Iraqi nuclear facilities
Robert Seeberger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Robert J. Chassell wrote: Does anyone know more about this? If true, this means that terrorists in Iraq have or had relatively easy access to materials for building a `radiological' or `dirty' bomb. Everyone willing to spend a few million bucks buying _smoke detectors_ has the capacity to build a dirty bomb - it is, worryingly, not all that hard. What exactly do you mean about it being easy? The amount of Americium in a smoke detector is quite small. (Though there was more in older detectors.) And acquiring enough to make a practical dirty bomb would require an ungodly number of manual labor man hours. Why bother with smoke detectors when there's plenty of missing concentrated radioactive material around the world? I think the former USSR is the worst WRT this, but as Rob pointed out, medical sources are a relatively unrecognized source, and are quite poorly guarded in general. There's even missing fuel rods here in the USA [entire article pasted]: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storycid=519ncid=718e=7u=/ap/20040422/ap_on_re_us/nuclear_fuel_missing Vt. Nuclear Plant Looks for Missing Parts Thu Apr 22,12:43 PM ET By WILSON RING, Associated Press Writer MONTPELIER, Vt. - Engineers at a Vermont nuclear plant searched Thursday for two missing pieces of a highly radioactive fuel rod while experts acknowledged they may never be found. The operators of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant reported the missing pieces Wednesday, saying they were not where they were supposed to be in the large pool used to store fuel rods. One of the missing pieces is about the size of a pencil. The other is about as thick but is 17 inches long. The spent fuel rods are highly radioactive and would be fatal to anyone who came in contact with them without being properly shielded, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan said. Spent nuclear fuel could be used by terrorists to construct so-called dirty bombs that would spread deadly radiation with conventional explosives. We do not think there is a threat to the public at this point. The great probability is this material is still somewhere in the pool, Sheehan said. The pieces could also have been sent years ago to a testing laboratory or a low-level nuclear waste disposal facility. The pieces were part of a fuel rod that was removed in 1979 from the Vermont Yankee reactor, which is currently shut down for refueling and maintenance. The pool where used fuel rods are stored is 40 feet deep and contains 2,789 fuel assemblies. The pencil-thin fuel rods are 12 feet long and filled with uranium pellets. Sheehan said that the missing pieces might have been cut from longer rods for testing or could have broken when they were removed from the fuel assemblies. The search for the missing pieces was going to include the use of a remote controlled camera in the pool as well as review of the documents dating back decades that cover shipments and movements of radioactive material. Sheehan cited the heightened awareness of the need to control nuclear material that followed the Sept. 11 terror attacks. We don't want this falling into the wrong hands, he said. This is something we would never take lightly. Gov. James Douglas, after speaking Wednesday afternoon with the head of the NRC, said he was very concerned about the missing fuel at the plant, run by Entergy Nuclear. This situation is intolerable, he said. In 2002 a Connecticut nuclear plant was fined $288,000 after a similar loss. That fuel was never accounted for. Vermont Yankee is located in the southeastern town of Vernon, on the state lines with Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The state's Public Safety Department and Homeland Security Unit also were notified of the missing fuel. Debbi who probably ought to ask somebody to show her how to make those shorter-link thingies, as others have been chastised for such awkward URLs }:-} __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: More on the environmental movement
Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: some snippage http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/04/22/EDGKO68MID1.DTL An excellent article by Nick Shulz and the co-founder of Green Peace on the failures of the environmental movement. My particular passion on this topic is easily explainable. Norman Borlaug has saved the lives of more people than _any other human being who has ever lived_. ... He did so by bringing the miracles of modern (largely American) agricultural technology to the Third World, particularly India. For this he won the Nobel Peace Prize, incidentally. For that, he has been largely reviled by most of the environmental movement, which generally believes that the world would have been better off if the countries of the Third World had been forced to control their population (by this they actually mean mass deaths through catastrophic famine, but hey, it was only a bunch of poor brown people, and Greenpeace and its cohort have never seemed to care at all about people like that)... As a doctor, the notion of just allowing people to starve to death is repulsive -- that's why groups like The Heifer Project, who promote environmentally sustainable economic growth on a tiny scale (helping individual families with training and starter animals like ducks, goats and cows etc.) are so worthy. Lumping all environmentalists into the radical fringe is incorrect and misleading. And since I'm on a tear, I will not-so-tangentially toss out that the idea of letting women control their own fertility is apparently repulsive to some in this administration. Yet when women have been educated on the possibilities, and know that the children they do have can be vaccinated etc. and so evade the cruel mortality stats of less-developed countries, many chose to limit the number of children on their own. IIRC, there was a good study in India which demonstrated this not too long ago (I'm remembering reading it within the past couple of years, but in fairness it could be only that that's when I read it, not when it was published). Debbi The Dragon And The Tiger Maru __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: unguarded Iraqi nuclear facilities
Deborah Harrell wrote: Debbi who probably ought to ask somebody to show her how to make those shorter-link thingies, as others have been chastised for such awkward URLs }:-} 1) Open a browser window and go to the link-shortener site of your choice. I like tinyurl.com, myself. 2) Cut paste the link into the space provided. 3) Hit the button provided to hit after you've entered the URL. 4) Cut paste the new short URL into your post. Pretty simple, just a bit of extra time. Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Scouted: Protecting Creation on Earth Day
--- Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Gautam: this administration's proposed alterations to the Clean Air Act allow increased mercury emissions, yet guidelines for consumption of mercury-containing fish (such as tuna) by pregnant women and young children have already been recently revised downward (I can provide any number of links if you wish). Do please. Because, quite frankly, I don't believe you. I mean, I'm sure you think you're correct, but the level of dishonesty on issues like this is so total that I don't believe _anything_ put out by any environmental group. Gregg Easterbrook - who's wrong on many things, but does pretty well on environmental issues - pointed this out as well. http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml?pid=1500 It may be the case. But I'd have to see something other than a Greepeace press release to convince me - my attitude towards them echoes Dorothy Parker's famous comment - everything they say is a lie, including and and the. Kindly do not mistake me for some blindly-obedient Democrat-myrmidon. Debbi No, I just notice that you tend to believe things that the environmental radicals do, and I don't believe them. I don't think you're dishonest, I think you trust people who are completely dishonest. Witness your discussion with Dan on nuclear power. Since the environmental movement has done more harm to the poor of the world than any other such supposedly well-intentioned group, their dogma gets a very visceral reaction from me. When you get down to it, you've got a bunch of people who would rather millions of poor brown people die from malaria than even consider the possibility of using DDT. So I don't trust them, and when they claim - against all evidence - that mercury pollution is going to go up, when every pollutant in the US is decreasing in release quantity - I don't believe them. Their credibility is less than zero. = Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: More on the environmental movement
--- Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As a doctor, the notion of just allowing people to starve to death is repulsive -- that's why groups like The Heifer Project, who promote environmentally sustainable economic growth on a tiny scale (helping individual families with training and starter animals like ducks, goats and cows etc.) are so worthy. Lumping all environmentalists into the radical fringe is incorrect and misleading. True, if it were true that attacking the Green Revolution was the radical fringe. It wasn't, at all. Paul Ehrlich, MacArthur Genius grant winner, best-selling author, one of the fathers of the modern environmental movement. If he's the fringe, then the whole _movement_ is the fringe. Stopping yellow rice - that's not a few loonies, that's a mass movement. Banning DDT in Third World countries - that's not the fringe, that's _everyone_. You've got a movement of a bunch of rich white people advocating policies that could not be more carefully designed to screw over poor brown people, patting themselves on the back over their virtue the whole time. And it isn't the radical fringes that advocates these things, and you can't pretend that it is. They're far too powerful for that. You want to compare and contrast? I'm not thrilled with the Administration's policies on contraception in the Third World, but they don't do much harm because they're totally unenforceable and fairly marginal in their impact even if they were. Retarding yellow rice means that millions of kids will go blind to salve the conscience of some people in the Upper East Side who probably drive SUVs to go to the grocery store. If I've got to choose between them and poor kids (and I do, since that's what they want), I know whose side I'm on. = Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: This time I won't blame Bush
Julia, in snottier-than-thou mode: That's really brilliant -- counter an ad hominem argument with another one. You got it! I was so afraid that would go over everyone's heads. Now, there may be some irony intended in that. I'll assume that ML is calculating enough to have planted the irony intentionally, and give him half a point for it. I'm more generous: you deserve a full point for your facility in belaboring the obvious. -Mike Lee Islamic Moderate ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: This time I won't blame Bush
David Hobby thinks that workers are coerced into taking dangerous jobs and that government can make us all safe: That's a great laissez-faire argument, which I might even accept if unemployment were sufficiently low that it was clear that employees had some other options. Are you really going to try to argue that people don't have multiple options about what jobs to take, regardless of the unemployment rate? Just checking, before I spend time with obvious rebuttals. When the market messes up, and people start dying from risks they did not have a chance to freely accept, then Government SHOULD intervene. Do you really feel that helpless, living in the presence of more abundant choices than at any previous time in history? -Mike ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: This time I won't blame Bush
- Original Message - From: Mike Lee [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Killer Bs Discussion' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 4:50 PM Subject: RE: This time I won't blame Bush David Hobby thinks that workers are coerced into taking dangerous jobs and that government can make us all safe: That's a great laissez-faire argument, which I might even accept if unemployment were sufficiently low that it was clear that employees had some other options. Are you really going to try to argue that people don't have multiple options about what jobs to take, regardless of the unemployment rate? Just checking, before I spend time with obvious rebuttals. When the market messes up, and people start dying from risks they did not have a chance to freely accept, then Government SHOULD intervene. Do you really feel that helpless, living in the presence of more abundant choices than at any previous time in history? And, of course, one of the choices is to work together for the common good. Dan M. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Virgin Birth!
From: Robert Seeberger [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Virgin Birth! Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 05:23:16 -0500 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=513986 Interesting. Incidentally, I now know how Anakin Skywalker was conceived! -Travis _ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN Premium http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-capage=byoa/premxAPID=1994DI=1034SU=http://hotmail.com/encaHL=Market_MSNIS_Taglines ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: More on the environmental movement
On Earth Day Remember: If Environmentalism Succeeds, It Will Make Human Life Impossible By Michael S. Berliner Earth Day approaches, and with it a grave danger faces mankind. The danger is not from acid rain, global warming, smog, or the logging of rain forests, as environmentalists would have us believe. The danger to mankind is from environmentalism. The fundamental goal of environmentalism is not clean air and clean water; rather, it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization. Environmentalism's goal is not the advancement of human health, human happiness, and human life; rather, it is a subhuman world where nature is worshipped like the totem of some primitive religion. In a nation founded on the pioneer spirit, environmentalists have made development an evil word. They inhibit or prohibit the development of Alaskan oil, offshore drilling, nuclear powerand every other practical form of energy. Housing, commerce, and jobs are sacrificed to spotted owls and snail darters. Medical research is sacrificed to the rights of mice. Logging is sacrificed to the rights of trees. No instance of the progress that brought man out of the cave is safe from the onslaught of those protecting the environment from man, whom they consider a rapist and despoiler by his very essence. Nature, they insist, has intrinsic value, to be revered for its own sake, irrespective of any benefit to man. As a consequence, man is to be prohibited from using nature for his own ends. Since nature supposedly has value and goodness in itself, any human action that changes the environment is necessarily immoral. Of course, environmentalists invoke the doctrine of intrinsic value not against wolves that eat sheep or beavers that gnaw trees; they invoke it only against man, only when man wants something. The ideal world of environmentalism is not twenty-first-century Western civilization; it is the Garden of Eden, a world with no human intervention in nature, a world without innovation or change, a world without effort, a world where survival is somehow guaranteed, a world where man has mystically merged with the environment. Had the environmentalist mentality prevailed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we would have had no Industrial Revolution, a situation that consistent environmentalists would cheerat least those few who might have managed to survive without the life-saving benefits of modern science and technology. The expressed goal of environmentalism is to prevent man from changing his environment, from intruding on nature. That is why environmentalism is fundamentally anti-man. Intrusion is necessary for human survival. Only by intrusion can man avoid pestilence and famine. Only by intrusion can man control his life and project long-range goals. Intrusion improves the environment, if by environment one means the surroundings of manthe external material conditions of human life. Intrusion is a requirement of human nature. But in the environmentalists' paean to Nature, human nature is omitted. For environmentalism, the natural world is a world without man. Man has no legitimate needs, but trees, ponds, and bacteria somehow do. They don't mean it? Heed the words of the consistent environmentalists. The ending of the human epoch on Earth, writes philosopher Paul Taylor in Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics, would most likely be greeted with a hearty 'Good riddance!' In a glowing review of Bill McKibben's The End of Nature, biologist David M. Graber writes (Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1989): Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet . . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along. Such is the naked essence of environmentalism: it mourns the death of one whale or tree but actually welcomes the death of billions of people. A more malevolent, man-hating philosophy is unimaginable. The guiding principle of environmentalism is self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of longer lives, healthier lives, more prosperous lives, more enjoyable lives, i.e., the sacrifice of human lives. But an individual is not born in servitude. He has a moral right to live his own life for his own sake. He has no duty to sacrifice it to the needs of others and certainly not to the needs of the nonhuman. To save mankind from environmentalism, what's needed is not the appeasing, compromising approach of those who urge a balance between the needs of man and the needs of the environment. To save mankind requires the wholesale rejection of environmentalism as hatred of science, technology, progress, and human life. To save mankind requires the return to a philosophy of reason and individualism, a philosophy that makes life on earth possible. ___
Re: Low cal for long life?
At 03:42 PM 4/20/2004, you wrote: I won't be trying this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4783035/ Tom Beck (PBS show about low cal diets and long life) http://tinyurl.com/2vvvq Doctor featured on the show. He was born June 29, 1924 and I assume still going strong: http://www.walford.com/ There was a report last week, a mouse was given a normal die for 3/4 of it's life, was showing signs of aging. Then they started his restricted diet and now is at 120% of life span and is vigerous. Kevin T. - VRWC But yeah, not thinking about doing that myself. Yet. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Scouted: Protecting Creation on Earth Day
Here's information on mercury in fish, several years old. I don't know what Bush has done to help or hurt, but mercury in fish from environmental contamination is definitely an issue: *** THE MERCURY PROBLEM One persistent problem is that unacceptably high levels of toxic methylmercury accumulate in some species of fish. Methylmercury poisoning and chronic lower-level intake can cause sensory and motor problems in adults and a variety of developmental problems in children exposed as infants or prenatally. Methylmercury can also cause elevated blood pressure, irregular heart rate, and other heart problems. Last year, Consumer Reports tested store-bought samples of swordfish, the species that has historically had the biggest methylmercury problem. Half the samples contained the compound at levels in excess of FDA safety guidelines. Fish: Weighing the risks and benefits (April 2001, Consumer Reports On Health) excerpt: In January of this year [2001], the FDA recommended that children, pregnant or nursing women, and women who may become pregnant not eat swordfish and other species known to accumulate high levels of methylmercury: shark, king mackerel, and tilefish. Tuna contains less mercury than those troublemakers but enough to cause concern (due to the high amounts consumed) according to our medical consultants. We recommend that vulnerable groups limit their consumption of tuna. *** June 2001, Consumer Reports Mercury: Gauging the risks Even though canned tuna is the most popular seafood in America--and may be the only seafood many children will eat--there is growing concern about the health risk posed by methylmercury in tuna and some other fish. Our tests of canned tuna bear that out: We found enough methylmercury in our samples to indicate that some consumers should limit their consumption of tuna. Government agencies and other groups have established standards and guidelines--sometimes conflicting--to limit mercury exposure in women who are pregnant or may become so, nursing mothers, and children whose developing nervous systems may be affected. That would include children up to age 5 and possibly several years older. A neurotoxic poison Scientists have been debating the effects of steady exposure to small amounts of methylmercury for years. Studies of fish-eating populations show that low-level exposure, prenatally or through breast milk, inflicts subtle but measurable harm on neurological and behavioral functioning of the developing brain. Other evidence suggests methylmercury can affect the cardiovascular and immune systems. Much of our exposure to methylmercury comes through seafood. Here's why: Mercury is introduced into the environment largely through industrial emissions (from coal-fired power plants and waste incinerators) and waste products such as discarded thermometers. Some mercury also occurs naturally when minerals in rocks and soil break down. When mercury winds up in fresh and salt water, bacteria transform it into methylmercury, which enters the aquatic food chain. This toxic substance accumulates in ever-increasing quantities as bigger fish eat smaller ones. The concentration in the flesh of species near the top of the food chain may be 10,000 to 100,000 times the level in the surrounding water. Some women and children should limit consumption of tuna because of the mercury it contains. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers 1 part per million (ppm) the acceptable limit for the level of methylmercury in fish. In January [2001] it recommended that vulnerable consumers avoid eating species known to exceed this level--shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish. It did not mention tuna because tuna levels are below 1 ppm. However, an assessment of methylmercury toxicity conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and confirmed by the National Academy of Sciences last July suggests the FDA's advice may not adequately protect all consumers. The level of mercury exposure that the EPA considers safe for everyone is one-quarter the level the FDA used as the basis for its 1-ppm limit in fish. Under the EPA's stricter guidelines, tuna can be a concern, especially since many consumers eat it more often than other fish. In our tests, white tuna averaged 0.31 ppm of methylmercury; light tuna averaged 0.16 ppm. That could be because the species used for light tuna may be smaller and have ingested less mercury than the albacore used for white tuna. We found no difference between tuna in oil and tuna in water. Average levels in the fresh and previously frozen tuna we tested recently were about the same. It's important to note that the risks depend not only on the methylmercury level in the fish, but also on how much fish is eaten and the consumer's body weight. Scientists aren't prepared to specify the precise age at which children are less vulnerable, since the brain and nervous system develop into
Re: Brin: More on the environmental movement
Dr. Brin, several right-wingers on the list have been posting screeds like this one against the environment and environmentalism. I am curious as to your thoughts on the matter, as I think this particular article is one of the most mendacious pieces of propaganda ever written. -- From: Kevin Tarr [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Earth Day Remember: If Environmentalism Succeeds, It Will Make Human Life Impossible By Michael S. Berliner Earth Day approaches, and with it a grave danger faces mankind. The danger is not from acid rain, global warming, smog, or the logging of rain forests, as environmentalists would have us believe. The danger to mankind is from environmentalism. The fundamental goal of environmentalism is not clean air and clean water; rather, it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization. Environmentalism's goal is not the advancement of human health, human happiness, and human life; rather, it is a subhuman world where nature is worshipped like the totem of some primitive religion. In a nation founded on the pioneer spirit, environmentalists have made development an evil word. They inhibit or prohibit the development of Alaskan oil, offshore drilling, nuclear powerand every other practical form of energy. Housing, commerce, and jobs are sacrificed to spotted owls and snail darters. Medical research is sacrificed to the rights of mice. Logging is sacrificed to the rights of trees. No instance of the progress that brought man out of the cave is safe from the onslaught of those protecting the environment from man, whom they consider a rapist and despoiler by his very essence. Nature, they insist, has intrinsic value, to be revered for its own sake, irrespective of any benefit to man. As a consequence, man is to be prohibited from using nature for his own ends. Since nature supposedly has value and goodness in itself, any human action that changes the environment is necessarily immoral. Of course, environmentalists invoke the doctrine of intrinsic value not against wolves that eat sheep or beavers that gnaw trees; they invoke it only against man, only when man wants something. The ideal world of environmentalism is not twenty-first-century Western civilization; it is the Garden of Eden, a world with no human intervention in nature, a world without innovation or change, a world without effort, a world where survival is somehow guaranteed, a world where man has mystically merged with the environment. Had the environmentalist mentality prevailed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we would have had no Industrial Revolution, a situation that consistent environmentalists would cheerat least those few who might have managed to survive without the life-saving benefits of modern science and technology. The expressed goal of environmentalism is to prevent man from changing his environment, from intruding on nature. That is why environmentalism is fundamentally anti-man. Intrusion is necessary for human survival. Only by intrusion can man avoid pestilence and famine. Only by intrusion can man control his life and project long-range goals. Intrusion improves the environment, if by environment one means the surroundings of manthe external material conditions of human life. Intrusion is a requirement of human nature. But in the environmentalists' paean to Nature, human nature is omitted. For environmentalism, the natural world is a world without man. Man has no legitimate needs, but trees, ponds, and bacteria somehow do. They don't mean it? Heed the words of the consistent environmentalists. The ending of the human epoch on Earth, writes philosopher Paul Taylor in Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics, would most likely be greeted with a hearty 'Good riddance!' In a glowing review of Bill McKibben's The End of Nature, biologist David M. Graber writes (Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1989): Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet . . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along. Such is the naked essence of environmentalism: it mourns the death of one whale or tree but actually welcomes the death of billions of people. A more malevolent, man-hating philosophy is unimaginable. The guiding principle of environmentalism is self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of longer lives, healthier lives, more prosperous lives, more enjoyable lives, i.e., the sacrifice of human lives. But an individual is not born in servitude. He has a moral right to live his own life for his own sake. He has no duty to sacrifice it to the needs of others and certainly not to the needs of the nonhuman. To save mankind from environmentalism, what's needed is not the
Re: unguarded Iraqi nuclear facilities
- Original Message - From: Julia Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 4:22 PM Subject: Re: unguarded Iraqi nuclear facilities Deborah Harrell wrote: Debbi who probably ought to ask somebody to show her how to make those shorter-link thingies, as others have been chastised for such awkward URLs }:-} 1) Open a browser window and go to the link-shortener site of your choice. I like tinyurl.com, myself. 2) Cut paste the link into the space provided. 3) Hit the button provided to hit after you've entered the URL. 4) Cut paste the new short URL into your post. Pretty simple, just a bit of extra time. There is another alternative also. If you go to TinyURL.com there are instructions for putting A tinyurl! feature in your browsers toolbar. This feature lets you make a tinyurl from what ever page you happen to be visiting and saves you a step or two. I use it. xponent With Frequent Gusto Maru rob ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: This time I won't blame Bush
- Original Message - From: Mike Lee [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Killer Bs Discussion' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 4:50 PM Subject: RE: This time I won't blame Bush Julia, in snottier-than-thou mode: That's really brilliant -- counter an ad hominem argument with another one. You got it! I was so afraid that would go over everyone's heads. Now, there may be some irony intended in that. I'll assume that ML is calculating enough to have planted the irony intentionally, and give him half a point for it. I'm more generous: you deserve a full point for your facility in belaboring the obvious. Wow! Going after the most consistently inoffensive person on this list with an insult. Not just that, But Julia is the heart and soul of this little community. I bet you spend your Tuesday nights repeatedly dialing the American Idol phone lines and voting for the l0053r5. You don't have a BOZO in your job title do you? (An obscure reference you won't get unless you actually do have BOZO in your job title) xponent Beelzebozo Maru rob ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Virgin Birth!
- Original Message - From: Travis Edmunds [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 5:21 PM Subject: RE: Virgin Birth! From: Robert Seeberger [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Virgin Birth! Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 05:23:16 -0500 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?stor y=513986 Interesting. Incidentally, I now know how Anakin Skywalker was conceived! Isn't everyone born a virgin? Shouldn't the subject be Virgin Conception? xponent Ambiguous Maru rob ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Virgin Birth!
Interesting. Incidentally, I now know how Anakin Skywalker was conceived! Here I thought it was midichlorians...now I know it was mouse eggs! Damon, either that or a bad script... ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
[L3] Re: Scouted: Protecting Creation on Earth Day
Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Gautam: this administration's proposed alterations to the Clean Air Act allow increased mercury emissions, yet guidelines for consumption of mercury-containing fish (such as tuna) by pregnant women and young children have already been recently revised downward (I can provide any number of links if you wish). Do please. Because, quite frankly, I don't believe you. I mean, I'm sure you think you're correct, but the level of dishonesty on issues like this is so total that I don't believe _anything_ put out by any environmental group. Gregg Easterbrook - who's wrong on many things, but does pretty well on environmental issues - pointed this out as well. http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml?pid=1500 Oh, ouch, I _was_ thinking purely of the medical guidelines, but I actually just _said_ I'd link about the EPA rules, didn't I? :P Navigating the EPA site is _not_ for the faint-hearted, or time-constrained. For those who want to skip straight to the spin - because spin there is - scroll down to ***. Easiest first - The new guidelines, issued this spring (the review date is a typo): http://my.webmd.com/content/article/84/98055.htm?z=1671_0_0017_f1_01 March 19, 2004 -- To protect developing babies from high levels of potentially brain-damaging mercury, the government issued guidelines today to warn women who are pregnant, nursing, or even considering having children to eat no more than two servings of fish each week. The FDA and the Environmental Protection Agency jointly issued the new guidelines, but they are still emphasizing the benefits of eating fish...Mercury occurs naturally in the environment and can also be released into the air through industrial pollution. Mercury falls from the air and can accumulate in streams and oceans, where it is turned into methylmercury. It is this type of mercury that can be harmful, especially to the developing brain of an unborn baby or young child... ...Another commonly eaten fish, albacore (white) tuna, has more mercury than canned light tuna. So when choosing your two meals of fish and shellfish, you may eat up to six ounces (one average meal) of albacore tuna per week, they say... That last is controversial, and one panel member actually resigned over its inclusion: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=articlenode=contentId=A8179-2004Mar19¬Found=true The controversial recommendation regarding tuna was immediately attacked as inadequate by a member of the FDA advisory panel that addressed it. University of Arizona toxicologist Vas Aposhian today resigned from the panel, saying that the advisory did not reflect the experts' view that child-bearing women and children should not eat albacore tuna at all and should eat less light tuna than the advisory states. We wanted albacore on the list of fish not to eat, Aposhian said. We knew that wouldn't happen because of the pressure from the industry, but we certainly didn't think there should be a recommendation to eat six ounces of albacore. The above WP article also states: Mercury, which gets into water and then the food supply through industrial pollution, builds up to potentially hazardous levels of methyl mercury in larger fish. On rising levels of mercury in the air: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-12/acs-io120303.php Mercury levels in yellowfin tuna caught off the coast of Hawaii have not changed in 27 years, despite a considerable increase in atmospheric mercury during this time, according to a new study...Mercury enters the environment naturally and through industrial pollution, mostly from coal-fired power plants. Scientists have estimated that the amount of mercury in the atmosphere today is about two to three times what it was 150 years ago. [The above article proposes that oceanfish methylmercury levels is 'due to natural causes' rather than increased air or water pollution, since tuna caught off Hawaii have ~ the same levels as they did 27 years ago. This finding does not apply to other fish -- Morel is more cautious, however, about extending the findings to coastal fish. Bluefish, for example, run up and down along the eastern coast of the United States feeding on the continental shelf, and they may be taking up human pollution there. Lake fish are also a different situation, Morel says, since scientists have established a strong link between pollution and mercury levels in lakes.] Other sources of mercury contamination come from mining (this is about San Fran Bay, and attributes overall improvement in water quality there to the Clean Water Act and improved sewage treatment: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/05/13/BA59867.DTL -- Mercury, leaking from closed mercury and gold mines, is one of the bay's more serious contaminants. The water-quality objective was exceeded in 38 percent of water samples collected from 1997 to 2001. Concentrations
Re: unguarded Iraqi nuclear facilities
Robert Seeberger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Julia Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Deborah Harrell wrote: Debbi who probably ought to ask somebody to show her how to make those shorter-link thingies, as others have been chastised for such awkward URLs }:-} 1) Open a browser window and go to the link-shortener site of your choice. I like tinyurl.com, myself. 2) Cut paste the link into the space provided. 3) Hit the button provided to hit after you've entered the URL. 4) Cut paste the new short URL into your post. Pretty simple, just a bit of extra time. There is another alternative also. If you go to TinyURL.com there are instructions for putting A tinyurl! feature in your browsers toolbar. This feature lets you make a tinyurl from what ever page you happen to be visiting and saves you a step or two. Thank you both -- will try it out sometime soon. And if I don't skedaddle *now*, I'm gonna get stuck down here 'cause of the snow storm in the mountains! Debbi Procrastinator Extraodinaire Maru ;) __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: This time I won't blame Bush
On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 06:25:43PM -0500, Robert Seeberger wrote: You don't have a BOZO in your job title do you? (An obscure reference you won't get unless you actually do have BOZO in your job title) Wrong wringer. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Scouted: Protecting Creation on Earth Day
On 22 Apr 2004, at 10:34 pm, Gautam Mukunda wrote: --- Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Gautam: this administration's proposed alterations to the Clean Air Act allow increased mercury emissions, yet guidelines for consumption of mercury-containing fish (such as tuna) by pregnant women and young children have already been recently revised downward (I can provide any number of links if you wish). Do please. Because, quite frankly, I don't believe you. I mean, I'm sure you think you're correct, but the level of dishonesty on issues like this is so total that I don't believe _anything_ put out by any environmental group. Gregg Easterbrook - who's wrong on many things, but does pretty well on environmental issues - pointed this out as well. http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml?pid=1500 It may be the case. But I'd have to see something other than a Greepeace press release to convince me - my attitude towards them echoes Dorothy Parker's famous comment - everything they say is a lie, including and and the. Kindly do not mistake me for some blindly-obedient Democrat-myrmidon. Debbi No, I just notice that you tend to believe things that the environmental radicals do, and I don't believe them. I don't think you're dishonest, I think you trust people who are completely dishonest. Witness your discussion with Dan on nuclear power. Since the environmental movement has done more harm to the poor of the world than any other such supposedly well-intentioned group, their dogma gets a very visceral reaction from me. When you get down to it, you've got a bunch of people who would rather millions of poor brown people die from malaria than even consider the possibility of using DDT. So I don't trust them, and when they claim - against all evidence - that mercury pollution is going to go up, when every pollutant in the US is decreasing in release quantity - I don't believe them. Their credibility is less than zero. I agree with you Gautam that environmental issues seem to have been hijacked by groups which seem to also have alternative political agendas. Nevertheless there *are* legitimate environmental issues too. It's a pity the issues have become enmeshed in a partisan political debate when they are really about what's good for everybody. The hysterical fear of nuclear power, GM crops and such is the big flaw of the Green movement. Maybe they are reactionary :) And I buy free-range eggs because even chickens deserve a little happiness Maru :) -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: This time I won't blame Bush
- Original Message - From: Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 7:30 PM Subject: Re: This time I won't blame Bush On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 06:25:43PM -0500, Robert Seeberger wrote: You don't have a BOZO in your job title do you? (An obscure reference you won't get unless you actually do have BOZO in your job title) Wrong wringer. That's how I figure it. But do we have a ringer? xponent Axis Of Doppelgangers Maru rob ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: This time I won't blame Bush
On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 07:40:58PM -0500, Robert Seeberger wrote: That's how I figure it. But do we have a ringer? Yes, but this one is harmless and doesn't need to be out'ed. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: More on the environmental movement
Thanks for sending this. My response is complex so please let me put it into context. 1) The Left-vs-Right political axis is a piece of arrant nonsense that I have inveighed against before. If nothing else can kill this undead piece of mind-limiting drivel, it should be the fact that the damn thing is French. Nobody can define it. Those who idintify themselves along that one-dimensional insipidity only advertise that they are idiots. 2) Having said that, I admit that these dopes have slotted themselves INTO the axis, so I will use it. 3) The left has many sins. At worst, they often call for abandonment of the right hand of human action, market forces, which have been responsible for well over half of all human wealth, productivity and creativity. 4) Moreover, the word liberal has been turned into a curse word NOT by liberal causes and programs (which polls show the public profoundly prefer over the right's agenda) but because of the insane practice of badmouthing fellow citizens as suv-driving, racist, sexist so and sos The one liberal who never did this was the one they never defeated. Bill Clinton. (For more on this see: http://www.davidbrin.com/progressparadoxarticle.html 5) Having said that, let me add that the right is even worse. They are so frantic to make excuses for a band of aristocratic thieves that they will contort into every pretzel shape imaginable. The Saudis are our trustworthy friends, it's okay to lie about WMD but not about getting a little nookie in a closet, It's okay to steal a trillion dollars for your 20,000 frat brothers, even when Alan Greenspan calls trickle down an insane theory ... and so on. The latest, attacking Kerrey's war record, shows just how biliously crazy these people are. 6) It is rooted, of course, in the us-vs-them attitude that is engendered in us all by tribal instincts 100,000 years old. SOmehow, the need to demonize those you disagree with is titanic within us. ABsolutely nuts. But titanic. Somehow it makes sense to attribute to your foes motives that obviously have nothing whatsoever to do with their real motives. There is only one reason to do this. (And the left does it too). It is to make yourself feel good. That's the only thing it accomplishes. It does not advance public policy./ It does not persuade the other side to compromise. It only persuades them that YOU are as horrible as THEY want to think you are. Hence the drivel below about the motives of environmentalists. Complete hokum. Nobody who says such drivel should have been allowed to pass 7th grade logic or composition class. But you see, the right has a severe problem. They MUST exaggerate. Because if the left has any reason at all, then they can claim the moral high ground. As-is, they were responsible for fighting segregation and discrimination, as well as taking on Hitler and Stalin and such. If they can ALSO be credited for saving the world from eco-destruction? The right does have areas where it is correct. MArkets create wealth, without which taxes and schools and such are impossible. The left is nuts to ignore this! But that side is DRY DRY DRY! If Jesus arrived today, he would not give a damn about markets, and they know it. He said give the shirt off your back to the poor RIGHT NOW! He did not teach a man to fish, he gave the man fish. Face it, if he arrived here today, he would not be a democrat, or even a Naderite. He'd be a flaming socialist. That hurts though! It's the whole reason the right has gone hog wild over abortion. They could not care less about poor kids who do get born, but they obsess on saving babies for one reason. To try and take away from the left the moral high ground. Jesus may be a pinko, but he'll vote Republican. For the babies. Ach! All of which is to say that we are due for an insane season of outright lies and incredible character assasination. These friends of ous (remember that!) on the right are ill, folks. So don't hold it against them that they MUST see all opposition as hateful, evil, filled with lust for utter destruction of every decent human value. (Like the way the GOP gathered 12 males in the House ALL of whom had had messy horrible divorces, and chanrged them with prosecuting a one-marriage president with moral turpitude.) They must do this in order to mask the facts that they cannot turn around to face, about their own kleptocratic leadership. Sigh, there is no fixing this. All you can do is hope the Kerry will appeal to the vast sea of moderates who are sick of left-right fetishism. Who want to go back to the AMerican tradition of pragmatism. Save the planet WHILE having our toys. Help the poor WHILE encouraging wealth. At least this year our other enemies, the insane lefties, should be more quiet. Chastened by the hell the wrought last time by supporting Nader. With cordial regards, David Brin www.davidbrin.com --- The Fool [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dr. Brin, several
Re: This time I won't blame Bush
- Original Message - From: Erik Reuter [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 8:07 PM Subject: Re: This time I won't blame Bush On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 07:40:58PM -0500, Robert Seeberger wrote: That's how I figure it. But do we have a ringer? Yes, but this one is harmless and doesn't need to be out'ed. You're probably right. Not very sensitive to how his messages will be received is he? G xponent Templates Maru rob ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: This time I won't blame Bush
Mike Lee wrote: David Hobby thinks that workers are coerced into taking dangerous jobs and that government can make us all safe: Mike-- If you mischaracterize my position, I won't discuss things with you. Basta. That's a great laissez-faire argument, which I might even accept if unemployment were sufficiently low that it was clear that employees had some other options. Are you really going to try to argue that people don't have multiple options about what jobs to take, regardless of the unemployment rate? Just checking, before I spend time with obvious rebuttals. What if all the options are equally bad? Yes, people could take a safer job that paid even less, or that was dangerous in a different way. When the market messes up, and people start dying from risks they did not have a chance to freely accept, then Government SHOULD intervene. Do you really feel that helpless, living in the presence of more abundant choices than at any previous time in history? No, I don't feel helpless. Intervening when markets malfunction is an integral part of what Government should do. So you want to excuse the present by saying that the past was worse? Sure it was, but that's not an excuse. ---David ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Scouted: Protecting Creation on Earth Day
William T Goodall wrote: And I buy free-range eggs because even chickens deserve a little happiness Maru :) Dunno if y'all have problems with salmonella in the eggs in the UK, but eggs from free-range chickens are significantly less likely to be carrying salmonella. Happy chickens are good. Julia ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: [L3] Re: Scouted: Protecting Creation on Earth Day
--- Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK, Yahoo is truncating messages again, so I can't quote Debbi. Damn. We appear to agree that the charges against the Bush Administration about mercury have been vastly exaggerated. What does it say, btw, that with absolutely no knowledge of the issue it was still easy to predict that this would be the case? I think I'm being fair in paraphrasing her concluding thought by saying that she suggests that in the conclusion to my last message I was lumping together extremists and the mainstream environmental movement in talking about the banning of DDT. My rebuttal to that argument is simple - no one uses DDT anymore. Basically no one in the world. If it's only the extremsists, how come they won so completely? Everyone knew - without any doubt whatsoever, _everyone knew_ - that banning DDT would cause a massive spike in malaria worldwide. It was nonetheless banned, and malaria did spike. 90+% of the people in the world who have died of malaria since DDT was banned _died because DDT was banned_. They died because the environmental movement has been captured by extremists. They didn't die because environmental activists wanted them to die. They died because environmental activists _didn't care_, and they won the argument, against all reason and evidence. There are any number of other examples. Golden rice. Genetically engineered food crops in Africa. That was a really stunning example, actually. The Western Europeans decided - openly and consciously - that it was better for Africans to die in a famine than use genetically engineered American crops. I can't imagine being so callous - but for them it was about protecting the environment. I'd put it this way. I defy you to name a single person whose life has been saved by the environmental movement. I don't deny that there are such people - but no one can name them. But I can think of quite a few people who are alive _despite_ the best efforts of the environmental movement - starting with my parents. As long as that is true, how do you think I'm going to feel about Greenpeace? = Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freedom is not free http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos: High-quality 4x6 digital prints for 25¢ http://photos.yahoo.com/ph/print_splash ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: More on the environmental movement
On 4/22/04 7:08 PM, The Fool [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am curious as to your thoughts on the matter, as I think this particular article is one of the most mendacious pieces of propaganda ever written. Kevin, take this as a complement from Kneem! Because we all know what he posts it the unvarnished truth. I can go to sleep happy now because that was the funniest thing I read today. Kettle meet pot, Matthew Bos ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
