"I don't think animals are capable of human-style love. '

Depends on your definition, I guess.

I figure, love is absolutely written into your genes by evolution. Any mutant shrew-like primitive mammal who didn't "love" her little bitty offspring didn't get those genes passed on. As we learn more, we see that this behavior appears even further down the evolutionary tree; once upon a time we thought dinosaurs and reptiles would just drop their eggs and leave, now we think they are devoted caring parents. Even poison dart tree frogs whose little puddle dries out on them will pack up their tadpoles before they move out to find another. Our intellectual capacity or language or anything else that comes into play is just in the service of this overwhelming absolute, not driving it. Similar for love of your "mate" except that it's more complicated for species who stay paired for long periods of time. Based on the same hormones, though.

"The US is the next target of the tribe of Abraham"

darn. oh well, plan B: Canada.

It's simple, really.

The most pro-Iran Shiites, who the US supports as the elected government, attack the most anti-Iran Shiites; Bush tells us this is "a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq," because the regime is standing up to thugs. Things go badly for our side, but luckily, the Iranians step in and broker a deal between the two sides. This is, of course, an example of what Bush describes as the Iranians fomenting terrorism and violence within Iraq, which we are luckily there to prevent.

Hope that's clear; if not, consult a Bush partisan. Reaching one is as easy as picking up your phone and speaking into it.

that being biologically literate requires both handson experience with the world, and some familiarity with the progress made in understanding it over the past 10,000 years? just a thought.

therefore waterboarding is not torture.

great great great great.

the supporters of the "healing america" uniter candidate are more than happy to resort to swiftboating and karl rove tactics. not that they're the only ones of course; i just think at this point in america's history, it's like asking the palestinians and israelis to stop the silly bickering and make up.

wouldn't that explain her back from the dead? (along with the cancelling of bionic woman, of course)

and bush is absolutely some kind of cylon mole.

wouldn't it be nice if we could get the democratic candidates and their supporters to, maybe, concentrate their attacks on McCain and the Republican party?

"Stewart's pretty biased himself

I haven't heard him make fun of McCain, yet, and Obama seems pretty safe as well. "

the daily show, colbert, and maher (who always was content driven, not sheer humor) are wherer you go for insightful analysis, fact checking, etc.; the mainstream news is where you go for something silly.

about 56% of the energy in the US is wasted. a lot of it can be prevented. pays for itself, as they say.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/04/06/weekinreview/revkin-650x1075.jpg

just checked with my buddy who put the solar panels on the roof; they generate almost all the electricity he needs. in Connecticut.

seems perfect. she's black, he's white. she's a woman, he's a man. she's rice, he's steamed.

so this week i'm supposed to send flowers and candy, or at least a card, to all the islamofasicsts I know?

" Rick Santorum told a Penn State audience, "Islam, unlike Christianity, is an all-encompassing ideology. It is not just something you do on Sunday."

Bill Maher called it, years ago. Islam's big problem is that they take their religion seriously.

Oh you folks of the reality-based community and your insistence that your actions must conform to reality. How can you just do whatever you want whenever you want to do it, if you have to worry about truth, and budgets, and responsibility, and guilt, and all that stuff? After all, we're Good People so you can trust that we won't do anything wrong; and this is the Land of the Free, and freedom means not being constrained by anything, including reality.

we never really recovered from the first oil shock of the early 70s. we've more or less staggered back to our feet periodically, but just keep getting knocked over again.

the difference between the chinese appetite for oil and ours, is that the chinese are going to use all that oil they're consuming, and all that coal they are burning now, to get them over the hump to a fossil-fuel free economy; and at the end of it, we'll still be complaining that that damned $100 a gallon gas is making us think that maybe we need to think about cutting back some, but dammit it it would take a lot of time and money and energy.

when i read the hagadah every year, what i am struck with is how so much of the wording of the plight of the jews in egypt can be used to describe the plight of the palestinian arabs. and i say that with full knowledge of the great achievement of so many palestinian arabs in gaining this status of unending victimhood for their people, and without a twinge of portraying the widely diverse but unanimously baffled opinions of the Israeli public regarding what to do to get out of this mess, as some sort of monolithic Pharoah.

i just hope that 2000 years from now, the israel will be more than just the long-dead hisotrical oppressor who served as the anvil on which the vigorous palestinian nation was forged. (a parallel to the role of egypt in today's hagadah, i unfortunately have to point out to the many who are technically literate but in practice not so much so. apologies to the rest of you for the inadvertent insult to your powers of analogy and induction).