I've been to several of these forests, and felt an almost mystical experience being among these ancient beauties. I was nearly brought to tears. This book and article both perform a great educational service to a much under-educated country.

Contrast this with the words of that Republican wunderkind Reagan “if you‘ve seen one redwood you‘ve seen them all", and one comes away marveling at the dead soul of this man, and the utter ignorance of a guy who once ran this country. Ditto for all those pie-eyed Reagan followers who worship his memory.

It's easy to see Reagan-lite in our current President - a man so curiosity averse, so beholden to corporate interests as to be completely lacking in understanding this kind of beauty.

To them, a good Redwood is a picnic table or a toothpick. Absolutely shocking. How can these dead souls ever be taught to love and worship trees such as this?

>>What part of JFK's self-doubt encouraged to get involve in Vietnam? What part of FDR's drove him to intern thousands of American citizens on little more than racist suspicion?<<

Here's the difference. JFK came to deeply regret his involvement in Vietnam and was taking steps to get out before his assasination. There was also deep self-doubt in his Bay of Pigs moments. That's precisely the point the author was making. Had it been Bush in Kennedy's shoes, and had he not been assassinated, Bush would be in his late 80's and still be telling everyone that God could not be wrong and that consequently he, "W", had never made a mistake.

Can anyone picture Kennedy being the same? End of debate, your reference is wildly invalid.

As for FDR, lets imagine a similar unraveling of events as he saw them. Pearl Harbor is bombed, and that same day, FDR sits in his cabinet room with Truman and all his advisors. The first thing on FDR's mind is internment of....Chinese people. He devotes a huge effort in spinning a media campaign that Chinese are bad people, and that he doesn't want to wait for the proof in a mushroom cloud. He then locks them up, strips them of every right, tortures them all the while sleeping soundly every night without a grain of doubt in his mind of his position. After all God counseled him.

Another grape from the rotted bunch of your argument falls away.

There are canyons of difference between Bush and every other sane, doubting, curious President in history.

"I certainly don't think that this oversight was out of malice, so much as it was a prioritization of animals over ppl."

You're right. It's such a shocking thing for us leftists to continually force our ways on the world, how we force the prioritization of animals over people. Just look at how our cities are overflowing with buffalo, bald eagles, dodo birds, tasmanian tigers, Gorillas etc. It's shocking!!!

And look at those ritzy houses in Malibu those damned pesky ferrets keep building...why just yesterday, I was forced to sit in the back of the bus because a bunch of dogs and cats were sitting in the "Furred only" section up front.

Fellow humans, I say it is about time we take back our streets, let's form a religion, you know something for the really gullible, something that offers no proof as to it's main protagonist, and then lets claim that mankind has some kind of "dominion" over animals.

Yeah, then maybe we can start slaughtering billions of animals to slake our new, never ending thirst for satiation. Hell, I'm going to start wearing some furry creature as a coat to show my anger. Only then will I feel that we've taken this world....OUR WORLD back from these damned over prioritized animals!!! Enough is enough. Who else will join me as I file into the street, pitchfork in hand to end this domination of animals!

I must say that I am having a hard time understanding all this talk of meaning and purpose. As I ask in my subject line, what is the meaning or purpose of a mountain? It doesn't have one. It is the RESULT of something (tectonic plate movement) and in no way owes its existence on being the meaning or purpose of something outside of its existence. Similarly, what is the meaning of a black hole? It just is. The word meaning doesn't even have to come up. Why is this difficult to understand?

Another thing, the so-called Goldilocks principle (this universe is "just right" for life). What the hell does that mean? Saying that if anything were off by just a tiny bit, there would be no life is akin to saying that if I had bought stock in Apple in 1984, I'd be a bazillionaire. I didn't. So what does delving into the what if's prove? If I may turn the sword on the attacker, what meaning or purpose does posing this hypothetical have?

There was a time that men of learning were truly that. These men either owned or had access to a large (and rare) library of hand crafted manuscripts that contained all the great literary works of their time. Because of this knowledge they were considered wise and consulted for their educated advice.

Then the Gutenberg press entered history, and it made "scholars" of a large number of people. Still, there were certain areas that still remained the provenance of experts. Doctors, lawyers, and especially scientists were still trusted for their specialised learning.

The modern day equivalent of the Gutenberg Press (Google) has made "experts" of us all. And so we now have to listen to the tired musings of people like the Climate Change doubters...you know these blowhards who pull all kinds of stats out of their selectively biased Google searches.

By doing so, the entire landscape of intelligent and constructive dialogue has evaporated. Anyone sitting in a trailer park with a keyboard and his two friends "copy" and "paste" by his side can now sound like an expert. A stranger in a neighboring trailerpark reads what expert 1 writes, thinks it sounds authoritative, and so adopts this amateurish conclusion as his own and becomes expert 2 on the subject. His "teaching" of others then commences and we have an epidemic of misinformed stupidity.

Viral ignorance at its best.

Doubt this? Just take at look at the whole science behind climate change. Why is the incredibly complicated science of Climatology now considered to be a debateable topic by non-scientists? Because of the Internet and Google.

The Internet is just a transmission vehicle for this new mental disease afflicting mankind. Sadly, the results of this illness are affecting the planet in ways that may not be reversible.

So the author claims that names like "LaQuinda" get chosen over say..."Betty", but then fails to explain how a name like "Barack" was able to make it...

Probably one of the best analyses of the shameful treatment of Al Gore during the 2000 campaign...treatment that helped in no small way to putting this simpleton Bush into office, and helping put this country into a 7 year slide.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5920188/the_press_vs_al_gore

You must read this article.