If papparazi can hound celebrities without recourse then I don't see how a police officer with this device can be stopped from using it.
Public is public. Even more so for the police when you are operating a state authorized device (a car) on a publically paid for road.
If you want to travel around without getting your license plate being scanned take a bike or walk. You could even save the world or something like that at the same time.
Maybe traditionally that was the case. However, for our current incarnation of liberals the "seriousness of the allegations" regardless of the source of the allegations or the merit of the people making the allegations are enough to call for the individual in question to be run through the wringer in public, denounced, villified, and, if possible, removed from office.
Dialogue requires coherent communication between two entities. A crowd will usually not have a coherent voice. A crowd that is in need of some external control even less so.
By your statements though it seems that you are implying that any crowd of lawful, peaceful protestors will be obligatorily blasted by this device when police arrive.
In fact, my husband and I have started avoiding trailers for much-anticipated movies, because even that spoils our enjoyment some.
To whit, the greatest movie experience of my adolescent life:
My friend Nancy tells em a new Tarantino movie is out and we should go see it. I have no idea what i is as I am on one of my "no tv, no radio" jags and haven't heard an advertisement for so much as a bar of soap in over 6 months.
The movie was "From Dusk to Dawn" and you can't imagine how cool it was to all of a sudden have vampires jump out and slaughter everyone halfway through the movie.
If I had seen the previews the movie would have just been another B movie. Instead it was a total riot.
Actually that rationale is more Ward Churchill than Osama.
Al Queda stated that the US shoud be held accountable for every death in the middle east as a result of hte UN sanctions and US support of Israel. I seem to remember a 10 to 1 ratio being mentiond, in that whatever trumped up number of deaths they say occurred they wanted to inflice ten times as many on the US.
Also, as a "Christian" nation there is no need to differentiate between military and civilian targets.
"those stupid poor people deserve to die because they're poor, why should we help them avoid it".
The closest thing I have heard to this from anyone who is a Republican is how it is immoral to bribe the poor into voting for you with the promise of social programs. That, or the idea that government handouts make people dependent on the government and dependency on the government is antithetical to the founding principles of this country. Kind of a far cry from your "let them die" interpretation.
There are ideological differences between conservatives and liberals, that's a given. Writing inflamitory, untrue, and obviously prejudiced rhetoric like this has no positive effect on debate. With the same subjective brush that you use to paint an unflattering picture of some neo-cons you also paint yourself as a fanboi with no moral compass and even less intellectual rigor. Just remember that the only people it will resonate with are the ones that are already firmly convinced of your viewpoint. Everyone else will say, "if that is what it is to be a liberal I will NEVER be one."
Stick to the facts, stay away from hyperbolie and outright fiction.
Here is another way to think about it. If, at the end of time, there were a readout of the universe that detailed every event down to the smallest time unit possible and going back to the beginning of time, would that interfere with free will of those that came before? The answer most people will say is "no." Now if you consider an observer outside the temporal frame we exist in, this readout may be obvious, or changing your observed position in time might be done as easily as you and I change the position of our head.
Also, a useful way to consider omniscience is to know the universe as it was, is, will be, and as it could have been in all other posible outcomes as simultaneous knowledge.
Yeah, and we know that all terrorists will act exactly like the 911 terrorists. Every time. For the rest of history.
And we know that all trojans, malware, and viruses will always use the exact same exploits, overflows, and methods of attack as those we have seen before so there is no need to update any of your security software. Oh yeah, and you can now safely run as root no matter what, because we know how everything works and its perfect now. Right?/sarcasm
You can't honestly be implying that because this might not have helped in one situation in the past(and not even that is proven by your statement) that it will be completely ineffective in preventing all similar situations in the future. Please, please tell me that is not what you are saying.
If it would reduce the traffic I drive through in the morning and help my wife (considered unskilled even with college after 12 years as a home maker) get a job that pays relatively well, I say deport them!
Seriously though, I take issue with your numbers. Most sources say there are about 12 million illegals in the US. Wouldn't that be about 1/25 instead of 1/10?
I hate this kind of rhetoric that seems to point toward the economic destruction of the US if we don't have an underclass of exploited illegals to do our dirty work.
Immigrations laws are not just to protect the people of the US, they are also there to prevent slave trade, serf-ism, and locking people into an inescapable system of below subsistence wages.
When I hear politicians like Hillary Clinton and others saying that we need illegals because they are the people who clean our dishes, do our nails, pick our food, etc. it just reminds me how entrenched this idea is. The really sickening part is she and others speak with the assumption that this is all these people are and ever will be. Well excuse me, but FUCK THAT. We outlawed slavery long ago for good reason, and what we do to illegal immigrants is way too similar. As long as they are undocumented and considered an invisible underclass they will never have the rights that they deserve as humans, much less as residents of the US.
I live in a border state. I meet people with degrees from Central and South American countries that are illegals. They work in those jobs you assume illegals would have. If our politicialns have their way that is all they will ever do. You think sex inequality is bad? How would you like to be trapped in a land of opportunity under the glass floor, never able to reach your potential because you have more political value as a below minimum wage cog in the economic wheel of America.
As for jumping the line, sure they jumped the line. The reason? Uncle Sam, the doorman, waved them through the back door and bought them their first drink. Make no mistake about it, the complete lack of border security enforcement and accompanying immigration laws was more than an open door, it was tantamount to season tickets with a front row parking pass. In other words, it may be unfair to the people already in line, but the onus of responsibility is not on those immigrants, it is on the US government for allowing, even fostering, this illegal behavior.
I think we can all breathe a collective sigh of DUH!
This kind of unrestrained self interest is sickening. People who believe in the principles of the Bible shouldn't be trying to deceive other people into thinking that their faith is actually science.
As for you Christians that suport ID, try looking into the book you profess to hold so closely to your collective little hearts and realize that your message to the unbeliever is not "Hey! Look at this fancy, trumped-up, minimally plausible, pseudoscientific proof of God I made!" It is very clear from the scriptures that your one and only question for the unbeliever is "what do you think of Christ?" and the follow up is to present the gospel. Remember your lessons from Sunday school? You present the gospel and the Holy Spirit does the rest. Nowhere in the Bible does God say "Go forth and make up some shit and then force teachers to indoctrinate your country's children."
All this filthy lying and high-handed intellectual posturing does is make you look stupid, deceitful, incompetent, hypocritical, and, well, downright bad. Quit trying to shove your beliefs down people's throats and trick children into believing something that was clearly created by shystey political-minded hacks and get back to the essence of being a Christian. Know your Bible, live like you actually care what is in the Bible, and please, for the love of God, act like you have compassion for those around you. If you treat people with respect and make a good example of your own life you will attract more people to the faith than you ever could with this worthless pack of lies.
And to those of you who made this ID crap up and are supporting it I have just one thing to say: Jesus has nothing to do with this. If He were a mere mortal He would be ashamed of you.
Envy has such a negative connotation. In addition it falls short when discribing current human achievement. You alluded to that yourself when you mentioned space travel.
I posit that mankind has done all these things not out of envy, but because they are in his nature. We are merely realizing our potential, in the same way that a beaver builds a dam or a butterfly emerges from his cocoon.
Maybe it was, at first, envy as you describe but that only propels us so far. We must have left that behind ages ago, for who do we have to envy when we designed the abacuss, transistor, the computer, or a supercollider? And who did we envy when we built the pyramids, or painted the Sistene Chapel?
Mankind's constant development is, in my opinion, one of the main attributes that differentiate us from all other animals. Birds don't learn to make better nests and them pass that on to future generations. Beavers don't take their parent's dams and reinforce them with smelted steel. Their instincts control them and therefore limit them. Their physical design constrains them as well. Man's instincts seem to force him into newer and more esoteric exploitations of the physical world and our mental components have not yet met their limits. Compound that with the traits of recording our knowledge and then transmitting this information to future generations, allowing them to build upon what we learned, and the difference between man-animal and all other animals becomes striking.
There was no "yelling" as you put it. Assigning emotional content to God is one of the fundamental weaknesses of literalism in interpreting the Bible. True emotion is a result of physicality (according to the Bible.) Words implying that God has emotion in the Bible are anthropopathism. However, there is cause, effect, and the resulting discipline. And even the discipline is measured out in a methond designed to make man stronger, more aware of his place in the hierarchy of creation, and ultimately lead him to a fuller understanding of God. Overarching all of that is the ultimate goal of complete reconciliation between God and man. One hint about Genesis, you cannot understand what is happening there until you understand the rest of the Bible.
The robot analogy is silly. Extrapolating to the lesser extreme, your lassiez-faire approach with a house pet would lead to stinky and unsanitary conditions from lack of house breaking. A good owner trains his pets. A better analogy is a parent/child relationship. Children constantly require discipline and structure to grow and become healthy adults. To NOT do so is a damning indictment of the parent.
Your idea of the Genesis story is definitely colored by your own ideas. I can't blame you though. It represents in microcosm part of the fundamental relationship between God and Man and an atheist rejects that whole arrangement. The dynamics you see probably appear heavy handed on the part of God. Not understanding the totality of the Christian ideolgy with respect to the things that God did for all mankind in eternity past, what the component parts of mankind are and how they relate to God, and not understanding the character of God and the mechanisms present in his discipline also could lead to a misunderstaning of the interaction in Genesis.
If you think you have understood some of the knowledge and wisdom of the Bible that is great. However, there are depths you haven't even probed and knowledge that you cannot even come close to knowing without a serious consideration of the subject. The Bible, like any system of knowledge, contains technical jargon that is necessary to speak about complex subjects. One simple term, like "election", could encapsulate hours and hours of study. This mnemonic shorthand is great for those that have the necessary prerequisite knowledge, however it will appear inscrutable and/or be easily misunderstood by the uninitiated.
As for not paying Christian tax, I can understand that. Even the Bible says that giving is based off of recognition of the principle of grace as expressed by God Himself. Not understanding that principle and not giving a damn about it would definitely lead me (in your position) to not going to a church. If you would like access to a free resource that encompasses a tremendous range of Christian doctrine and approaches it from a systematic viewpoint you can check this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Thieme/ out and follow the links to the Berachah website where you can order free materials and have them shipped anywhere in the world for free.
Introducing life from Earth would probably have a beneficial effect on martian life (if any exists at all on Mars.)
Anything hardy enough to live in that inhospitable and downright deadly environment for countless ages will rape the guts out of any organism from cushy ol' Earth. If anything we would see flourishing of mars life as it hungrily ate all the Earth life. Seriously, the stuff must be starving from living in a vacuum, under hard radiation, in -60 degree weather for the last 3 billion years.
Plus, if we adopt the stance that we must "survey" Mars before we introduce Earth life, when is the "survey" concluded and who decides that? Quite frankly, someone who puts the possibility of finding life on Mars ahead of the wellbeing of human lives sould be excluded from making decisions in that area.
You keep asking why to the wrong questions. Another way to put it is that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the objectives of the parties in government.
To my cynical and suspicious mind this whole issue (one among many others) is no more than theatrical handwaving. You care because you see an injustice. I care because the level of ineptitude you point to with your lucid and intellligent questions reveals what is really going on.
To be specific, the two parties are involved in a propaganda media war against the people of the country. They inflame and enrage the people to keep them fighting eachother and themselves. This facilitates the real motives of the parties which is to shore up their collective power.
I am no longer convinced that political leaders represent their constituents other than in name. If you identify yourself as a democrat or republican your party's leaders see you as a resource to be manipulated. They create issues like this to form public action and shape public opinion. They pose and posture at fighting eachother and yet vote almost unanimously for things that remove our rights, reduce the action potential of the public sector, and subvert our tax dollars for things that the people do not want.
Yes, you have good questions. However they exist in a bubble on a sea of deliberate misinformation and bad intentions createde by the people we elect. Good luck holding those same people accountable for the answers they would rather die than reveal.
Technically speaking, religion is a system of actions, thoughts, rituals, etc. that are done in an effort to make the believer acceptable to God.
The Bible starts with the premise that mankind is acceptable to God on the basis of one thing and that one thing is performed by God Himself at the mere request of man.
The difference may seem trivial to some; however, if you believe it and are a mature human the results are very different.
Years ago, I went with a friend to a local teen hangout when I was in high school. Fame City was the name. It had a dance club at night and all sorts of indoor amusements (game room, bumper cars, bowling, skill games, skating rink, movie theater) open during the day.
On the way out we were followed to our car by 4 young men. They proceeded to attack us (rather ineffectively in my case) with a chunk of cement with a rusty nail sticking out of it, a set of nunchucks, and their fists. My friend didn't fare so well and received a nasty bloody cut on his head where the guy with the cement chunk tried to put the rusty nail part of it into his skull. I think I did a bit better as one of the attackers knew me personally from middle school and I was not the target. Make no mistake about it, the person attacking my friend was trying to hurt him severely or kill him.
Now comes the fun part. The attackers went back INSIDE the building. Normally you leave the premises after attempting murder, but these guys thought going inside (where the Fort Bend County Sheriff's department had a huge presence and even an office to operate out of) was a good idea. We thought it was a good idea to immediately report this to those ubiquitous Sheriffs. So we walk (stumble in the case of my friend, who incidentally had blood soaking the front of his shirt and covering half his face now from the gash in his skull) in and go to the sheriffs.
Interestingly, the four guys who attacked us are actually talking and smiling with 3 sheriffs. They even hand them the nunchucks, point at us, laugh, and walk off unhindered by the sheriffs. Two of the sheriffs then come over to us and tell us that they know who we are, and we need to leave immediately and never come back. We explain to them what happened and they start getting angry, even denying the nunchucks exist (Even though we saw them handed to one of the sheriffs who has since disappeared into the office), and that we are "this close" to going to jail.
Meanwhile my friend is bleeding all over the floor and people are watching. I, being young, shocked, hurt, and a bit scared of the police at this point realize that something other than normal procedure is happening, pull him away and we leave for the hospital.
To this day I can't tell you what happened there. My friend was sure that it was rascism (the sherrifs and the guys that attacked us were all the same race, while my friend and I were another.) He and I reported it to the internal affairs department and nothing ever happened. Denials of the incident were all that was ever heard.
All I know is that you should never, ever trust a fucking cocksucking Fort Bend County Sheriff because they are the lowest forms of inhuman crap to ever be molded into a resemblance of human form and stuffed into a uniform. I wonder some if someone was to take a piece of cement with a rusty three inch nail sticking out of it and say bash it in to one of these sheriff's wives', mothers', or daughters' head a few times if they would have the same reaction they had toward my friend and I?
Needless to say, I expect to see injustice every once in awhile. What is suprising is to see someone in a position of athority, who is tasked with the responsibility to "serve and protect", do something that despicable.
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If papparazi can hound celebrities without recourse then I don't see how a police officer with this device can be stopped from using it.
Public is public. Even more so for the police when you are operating a state authorized device (a car) on a publically paid for road.
If you want to travel around without getting your license plate being scanned take a bike or walk. You could even save the world or something like that at the same time.
Maybe traditionally that was the case. However, for our current incarnation of liberals the "seriousness of the allegations" regardless of the source of the allegations or the merit of the people making the allegations are enough to call for the individual in question to be run through the wringer in public, denounced, villified, and, if possible, removed from office.
That would be a bad precedent. I always capitalize my spaces to mess with those who cannot hear.
Dialogue requires coherent communication between two entities. A crowd will usually not have a coherent voice. A crowd that is in need of some external control even less so.
By your statements though it seems that you are implying that any crowd of lawful, peaceful protestors will be obligatorily blasted by this device when police arrive.
I thought it was "incapacitating" not "decapacitating".
Using the second word could have unfortunate results if it is slightly misreador misheard.
"But sir, we didn't bring near enough machetes."
You cannot have a dialogue witha crowd.
Insinuating that you can is disengenuous.
Ok, well then what are the chances that they would generate something BETTER than Shakespeare?
In fact, my husband and I have started avoiding trailers for much-anticipated movies, because even that spoils our enjoyment some.
To whit, the greatest movie experience of my adolescent life:
My friend Nancy tells em a new Tarantino movie is out and we should go see it. I have no idea what i is as I am on one of my "no tv, no radio" jags and haven't heard an advertisement for so much as a bar of soap in over 6 months.
The movie was "From Dusk to Dawn" and you can't imagine how cool it was to all of a sudden have vampires jump out and slaughter everyone halfway through the movie.
If I had seen the previews the movie would have just been another B movie. Instead it was a total riot.
Clearly this is an excerpt from the new erotic novel Harry Potter and the Half Black Chick.
Actually that rationale is more Ward Churchill than Osama.
Al Queda stated that the US shoud be held accountable for every death in the middle east as a result of hte UN sanctions and US support of Israel. I seem to remember a 10 to 1 ratio being mentiond, in that whatever trumped up number of deaths they say occurred they wanted to inflice ten times as many on the US.
Also, as a "Christian" nation there is no need to differentiate between military and civilian targets.
"those stupid poor people deserve to die because they're poor, why should we help them avoid it".
The closest thing I have heard to this from anyone who is a Republican is how it is immoral to bribe the poor into voting for you with the promise of social programs. That, or the idea that government handouts make people dependent on the government and dependency on the government is antithetical to the founding principles of this country. Kind of a far cry from your "let them die" interpretation.
There are ideological differences between conservatives and liberals, that's a given. Writing inflamitory, untrue, and obviously prejudiced rhetoric like this has no positive effect on debate. With the same subjective brush that you use to paint an unflattering picture of some neo-cons you also paint yourself as a fanboi with no moral compass and even less intellectual rigor. Just remember that the only people it will resonate with are the ones that are already firmly convinced of your viewpoint. Everyone else will say, "if that is what it is to be a liberal I will NEVER be one."
Stick to the facts, stay away from hyperbolie and outright fiction.
Here is another way to think about it. If, at the end of time, there were a readout of the universe that detailed every event down to the smallest time unit possible and going back to the beginning of time, would that interfere with free will of those that came before? The answer most people will say is "no." Now if you consider an observer outside the temporal frame we exist in, this readout may be obvious, or changing your observed position in time might be done as easily as you and I change the position of our head.
Also, a useful way to consider omniscience is to know the universe as it was, is, will be, and as it could have been in all other posible outcomes as simultaneous knowledge.
Yeah, and we know that all terrorists will act exactly like the 911 terrorists. Every time. For the rest of history.
/sarcasm
And we know that all trojans, malware, and viruses will always use the exact same exploits, overflows, and methods of attack as those we have seen before so there is no need to update any of your security software. Oh yeah, and you can now safely run as root no matter what, because we know how everything works and its perfect now. Right?
You can't honestly be implying that because this might not have helped in one situation in the past(and not even that is proven by your statement) that it will be completely ineffective in preventing all similar situations in the future. Please, please tell me that is not what you are saying.
If it would reduce the traffic I drive through in the morning and help my wife (considered unskilled even with college after 12 years as a home maker) get a job that pays relatively well, I say deport them!
Seriously though, I take issue with your numbers. Most sources say there are about 12 million illegals in the US. Wouldn't that be about 1/25 instead of 1/10?
I hate this kind of rhetoric that seems to point toward the economic destruction of the US if we don't have an underclass of exploited illegals to do our dirty work.
Immigrations laws are not just to protect the people of the US, they are also there to prevent slave trade, serf-ism, and locking people into an inescapable system of below subsistence wages.
When I hear politicians like Hillary Clinton and others saying that we need illegals because they are the people who clean our dishes, do our nails, pick our food, etc. it just reminds me how entrenched this idea is. The really sickening part is she and others speak with the assumption that this is all these people are and ever will be. Well excuse me, but FUCK THAT. We outlawed slavery long ago for good reason, and what we do to illegal immigrants is way too similar. As long as they are undocumented and considered an invisible underclass they will never have the rights that they deserve as humans, much less as residents of the US.
I live in a border state. I meet people with degrees from Central and South American countries that are illegals. They work in those jobs you assume illegals would have. If our politicialns have their way that is all they will ever do. You think sex inequality is bad? How would you like to be trapped in a land of opportunity under the glass floor, never able to reach your potential because you have more political value as a below minimum wage cog in the economic wheel of America.
As for jumping the line, sure they jumped the line. The reason? Uncle Sam, the doorman, waved them through the back door and bought them their first drink. Make no mistake about it, the complete lack of border security enforcement and accompanying immigration laws was more than an open door, it was tantamount to season tickets with a front row parking pass. In other words, it may be unfair to the people already in line, but the onus of responsibility is not on those immigrants, it is on the US government for allowing, even fostering, this illegal behavior.
Conversation? No.
Job interview? Yes.
I think we can all breathe a collective sigh of DUH!
This kind of unrestrained self interest is sickening. People who believe in the principles of the Bible shouldn't be trying to deceive other people into thinking that their faith is actually science.
As for you Christians that suport ID, try looking into the book you profess to hold so closely to your collective little hearts and realize that your message to the unbeliever is not "Hey! Look at this fancy, trumped-up, minimally plausible, pseudoscientific proof of God I made!" It is very clear from the scriptures that your one and only question for the unbeliever is "what do you think of Christ?" and the follow up is to present the gospel. Remember your lessons from Sunday school? You present the gospel and the Holy Spirit does the rest. Nowhere in the Bible does God say "Go forth and make up some shit and then force teachers to indoctrinate your country's children."
All this filthy lying and high-handed intellectual posturing does is make you look stupid, deceitful, incompetent, hypocritical, and, well, downright bad. Quit trying to shove your beliefs down people's throats and trick children into believing something that was clearly created by shystey political-minded hacks and get back to the essence of being a Christian. Know your Bible, live like you actually care what is in the Bible, and please, for the love of God, act like you have compassion for those around you. If you treat people with respect and make a good example of your own life you will attract more people to the faith than you ever could with this worthless pack of lies.
And to those of you who made this ID crap up and are supporting it I have just one thing to say: Jesus has nothing to do with this. If He were a mere mortal He would be ashamed of you.
Well, it may be disprovable, and therefore science, however, you have to die to get a chance at disproving it.
Hmmm. Maybe, in the interests of furthering science we should kill all the...
Ahh, nevermind.
Envy has such a negative connotation. In addition it falls short when discribing current human achievement. You alluded to that yourself when you mentioned space travel.
I posit that mankind has done all these things not out of envy, but because they are in his nature. We are merely realizing our potential, in the same way that a beaver builds a dam or a butterfly emerges from his cocoon.
Maybe it was, at first, envy as you describe but that only propels us so far. We must have left that behind ages ago, for who do we have to envy when we designed the abacuss, transistor, the computer, or a supercollider? And who did we envy when we built the pyramids, or painted the Sistene Chapel?
Mankind's constant development is, in my opinion, one of the main attributes that differentiate us from all other animals. Birds don't learn to make better nests and them pass that on to future generations. Beavers don't take their parent's dams and reinforce them with smelted steel. Their instincts control them and therefore limit them. Their physical design constrains them as well. Man's instincts seem to force him into newer and more esoteric exploitations of the physical world and our mental components have not yet met their limits. Compound that with the traits of recording our knowledge and then transmitting this information to future generations, allowing them to build upon what we learned, and the difference between man-animal and all other animals becomes striking.
"then yelled at him for something he did"
There was no "yelling" as you put it. Assigning emotional content to God is one of the fundamental weaknesses of literalism in interpreting the Bible. True emotion is a result of physicality (according to the Bible.) Words implying that God has emotion in the Bible are anthropopathism. However, there is cause, effect, and the resulting discipline. And even the discipline is measured out in a methond designed to make man stronger, more aware of his place in the hierarchy of creation, and ultimately lead him to a fuller understanding of God. Overarching all of that is the ultimate goal of complete reconciliation between God and man. One hint about Genesis, you cannot understand what is happening there until you understand the rest of the Bible.
The robot analogy is silly. Extrapolating to the lesser extreme, your lassiez-faire approach with a house pet would lead to stinky and unsanitary conditions from lack of house breaking. A good owner trains his pets. A better analogy is a parent/child relationship. Children constantly require discipline and structure to grow and become healthy adults. To NOT do so is a damning indictment of the parent.
Your idea of the Genesis story is definitely colored by your own ideas. I can't blame you though. It represents in microcosm part of the fundamental relationship between God and Man and an atheist rejects that whole arrangement. The dynamics you see probably appear heavy handed on the part of God. Not understanding the totality of the Christian ideolgy with respect to the things that God did for all mankind in eternity past, what the component parts of mankind are and how they relate to God, and not understanding the character of God and the mechanisms present in his discipline also could lead to a misunderstaning of the interaction in Genesis.
If you think you have understood some of the knowledge and wisdom of the Bible that is great. However, there are depths you haven't even probed and knowledge that you cannot even come close to knowing without a serious consideration of the subject. The Bible, like any system of knowledge, contains technical jargon that is necessary to speak about complex subjects. One simple term, like "election", could encapsulate hours and hours of study. This mnemonic shorthand is great for those that have the necessary prerequisite knowledge, however it will appear inscrutable and/or be easily misunderstood by the uninitiated.
As for not paying Christian tax, I can understand that. Even the Bible says that giving is based off of recognition of the principle of grace as expressed by God Himself. Not understanding that principle and not giving a damn about it would definitely lead me (in your position) to not going to a church. If you would like access to a free resource that encompasses a tremendous range of Christian doctrine and approaches it from a systematic viewpoint you can check this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Thieme/ out and follow the links to the Berachah website where you can order free materials and have them shipped anywhere in the world for free.
Introducing life from Earth would probably have a beneficial effect on martian life (if any exists at all on Mars.)
Anything hardy enough to live in that inhospitable and downright deadly environment for countless ages will rape the guts out of any organism from cushy ol' Earth. If anything we would see flourishing of mars life as it hungrily ate all the Earth life. Seriously, the stuff must be starving from living in a vacuum, under hard radiation, in -60 degree weather for the last 3 billion years.
Plus, if we adopt the stance that we must "survey" Mars before we introduce Earth life, when is the "survey" concluded and who decides that? Quite frankly, someone who puts the possibility of finding life on Mars ahead of the wellbeing of human lives sould be excluded from making decisions in that area.
My guess is Rove and Sandy Berger were discussing where to hide things in all those emails.
You keep asking why to the wrong questions. Another way to put it is that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the objectives of the parties in government.
To my cynical and suspicious mind this whole issue (one among many others) is no more than theatrical handwaving. You care because you see an injustice. I care because the level of ineptitude you point to with your lucid and intellligent questions reveals what is really going on.
To be specific, the two parties are involved in a propaganda media war against the people of the country. They inflame and enrage the people to keep them fighting eachother and themselves. This facilitates the real motives of the parties which is to shore up their collective power.
I am no longer convinced that political leaders represent their constituents other than in name. If you identify yourself as a democrat or republican your party's leaders see you as a resource to be manipulated. They create issues like this to form public action and shape public opinion. They pose and posture at fighting eachother and yet vote almost unanimously for things that remove our rights, reduce the action potential of the public sector, and subvert our tax dollars for things that the people do not want.
Yes, you have good questions. However they exist in a bubble on a sea of deliberate misinformation and bad intentions createde by the people we elect. Good luck holding those same people accountable for the answers they would rather die than reveal.
Technically speaking, religion is a system of actions, thoughts, rituals, etc. that are done in an effort to make the believer acceptable to God.
The Bible starts with the premise that mankind is acceptable to God on the basis of one thing and that one thing is performed by God Himself at the mere request of man.
The difference may seem trivial to some; however, if you believe it and are a mature human the results are very different.
Case in point:
Years ago, I went with a friend to a local teen hangout when I was in high school. Fame City was the name. It had a dance club at night and all sorts of indoor amusements (game room, bumper cars, bowling, skill games, skating rink, movie theater) open during the day.
On the way out we were followed to our car by 4 young men. They proceeded to attack us (rather ineffectively in my case) with a chunk of cement with a rusty nail sticking out of it, a set of nunchucks, and their fists. My friend didn't fare so well and received a nasty bloody cut on his head where the guy with the cement chunk tried to put the rusty nail part of it into his skull. I think I did a bit better as one of the attackers knew me personally from middle school and I was not the target. Make no mistake about it, the person attacking my friend was trying to hurt him severely or kill him.
Now comes the fun part. The attackers went back INSIDE the building. Normally you leave the premises after attempting murder, but these guys thought going inside (where the Fort Bend County Sheriff's department had a huge presence and even an office to operate out of) was a good idea. We thought it was a good idea to immediately report this to those ubiquitous Sheriffs. So we walk (stumble in the case of my friend, who incidentally had blood soaking the front of his shirt and covering half his face now from the gash in his skull) in and go to the sheriffs.
Interestingly, the four guys who attacked us are actually talking and smiling with 3 sheriffs. They even hand them the nunchucks, point at us, laugh, and walk off unhindered by the sheriffs. Two of the sheriffs then come over to us and tell us that they know who we are, and we need to leave immediately and never come back. We explain to them what happened and they start getting angry, even denying the nunchucks exist (Even though we saw them handed to one of the sheriffs who has since disappeared into the office), and that we are "this close" to going to jail.
Meanwhile my friend is bleeding all over the floor and people are watching. I, being young, shocked, hurt, and a bit scared of the police at this point realize that something other than normal procedure is happening, pull him away and we leave for the hospital.
To this day I can't tell you what happened there. My friend was sure that it was rascism (the sherrifs and the guys that attacked us were all the same race, while my friend and I were another.) He and I reported it to the internal affairs department and nothing ever happened. Denials of the incident were all that was ever heard.
All I know is that you should never, ever trust a fucking cocksucking Fort Bend County Sheriff because they are the lowest forms of inhuman crap to ever be molded into a resemblance of human form and stuffed into a uniform. I wonder some if someone was to take a piece of cement with a rusty three inch nail sticking out of it and say bash it in to one of these sheriff's wives', mothers', or daughters' head a few times if they would have the same reaction they had toward my friend and I?
Needless to say, I expect to see injustice every once in awhile. What is suprising is to see someone in a position of athority, who is tasked with the responsibility to "serve and protect", do something that despicable.