one difference between American TV and Canadian, or British, is that for whatever reasons, American shows with unlikeable protagonists don't last long. Look at "Buffalo Bill" (reaching way back) or "Becker" or compare the US version of "The Office" with the British version. If there were to be an American version of "The Newsroom", it would be filled with lovable eccentrics, led by a boss who fell into funny situations due to his inadequacy, but by trying hard made it through.

Hey, anyone wanna greenlight this?

the problem is, that all the things that are usually held up as badges of our superiority, like morality and love and ethics, and courage, are all clearly stuff evolved painfully by out animal ancestors and visible in all the nonhuman animals around us, especially mammals; what makes us unique, language and the rational skills focused around it, are for most folks kind of dismissable. Certainly nobody would admire somebody who based his behavior on what was most logical and suppressed any kind of urge; Mr. Spock's pretensions to pure logic notwithstanding.

"Have I personally encountered compelling evidence that any non-human animal species has the capacities of consciousness advanced enough to formulate an ideal of "universal love"- as in "an all-pervasive feeling of the heart, consciously awakened to encompass all of creation with love (etc., etc.)"? No."

You've never owned a Labrador retriever, I guess.

and for the other direction, re the cruelty of other species, what other species came up with Hitler? and all his followers, who implemented his intellectual concepts on the personal face to face level? sure a cat is cruel from the viewpoint of a mouse, but objectively, you couldn't say more cruel than the person who raises an animal in captivity from birth just to eat it. particularly when the conditions of that captivity and the final slaughter are such as we know them to be.

seriously, all these emotions come from way back in the older parts of the brain, the limbic system, hypothalamus, etc. we think about them and embellish them, but the drive comes from way back. the intelligence and language just gives us better ways to implement them.

as another perhaps (perhaps slightly politically incorrect for which i apologize) example, the Down's syndrome and similar folks i have met are generally a lot sweeter and more accepting and closer to the ideal of universal love than the normal individuals. and you sure can't attribute that to their higher intellectual skills.

sure, no other species came up with Jesus and his teachings. but no other species then used these teachings as a pretext for the crusades, the inquisition, and the subjugation of whole nations of "uncivilized savages".

i understand that obama saved a bundle on his car insurance with geico.

are the folks accusing American Jews of dual loyalty also accusing Americans of Arabic or Iranian extraction of dual loyalty? Are they merely opposing the attacks on their ancestral homes because of that dual loyalty, not because of any consideration regarding the US's interets? What about Cuban Americans? It's a cliche at this point, but stil, it apparently needs to be asked; could it be their overwhelming support for screwing Castro regardless of anything else might just be considered a dual loyalty that's been detrimental to US interests? And might have more to do with the war in Iraq than all the Jews put together, given that Jewish Americans continue to oppose the war, Bush, and the Republican party by a huge margin, while it was the Cuban Americans who put Bush in in the first place?

i'm not worried about the secret muslim who hates whites candidate versus israel. in fact, i'm more worried about the guy who's stuck with continuing the failed policies of his predecessor regarding israel leading to the brink of disaster.

thanks for listening.

without them, we'd have to fight the wars ourselves.

you know those bumper stickers "I'm spending my grandchildren's inheritence"? they oughta be required by law for every american.

i hope that this will shut up for once and for all the blockhead Bushies who call everybody who opposes them communists, socialists, or marxists.

Is that being intentionally ironic, or just that unintentional Bushie irony?

well, no sane civilization is going to deliberately run itself over the environmental cliff. as the risk becomes nearer, policies will change and disaster will be averted as it always is.

except of course for

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangareva#History

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anasazi#Warfare_and_cannibalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_collapse#Systemic_ecological_collapse_model

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland#The_demise_of_the_Greenland_Norse_settlements

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Pitcairn_Islands#Pitcairn_before_the_Bounty

and of course

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island#Destruction_of_the_ecosystem

But these were all just ignorant savage natives, certainly today's global sophisticated civilization knows much more about how to avoid ecological disaster.

"These days, I cure my own meat. Well, to be fair, it's really my boyfriend"

it begins.

just comparing this with my year old motorola krazr; battery life when new was two days, max, which i thought was way too low; builtin gps worked just fine, complete with turn by turn navigation. maybe it has a bigger antenna than the Iphone, clevely disguised somewhere.

(the battery really got weak after a year and I got the double-strength battery, which is also double sized and comes with a double width battery cover; battery life is now extremely good but the thing is no longer as nicely thin and light as it was, in fact kinda clunky. gps still works nicely)

good analysis. thanks.

how screwed up do you have to be to make a Star Wars reference, where you see yourself as Darth Vader, going to the Dark Side but for good reasons?