Letters to the Editor
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Everybody knows this, WT!
Whatever drove us as a species, either at the micro or macro level, to develop a technological civilization, the impact of the costs involved on our collective psyches, and its echoes down through the generations is truly one of the great philosophical and moral conundrums
Without a doubt, WT, it was wives. You know, "the style to which they are accustomed"?
Archeologists have found evidence of many cavedwellers who were crushed while digging "just one more bedroom, for when my parents come to visit" in unsafe locations.
And you know the rest, I'm sure. And here we are, today. That re-education camp is looking better and better.
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Homeland Security office filled with feces
ST. PAUL, Minn., March 19 (UPI) -- Someone with an urge to purge took it out on the Minnesota Homeland Security and Emergency Management office in downtown St. Paul, police said.
An unknown man defecated in several rooms Friday afternoon and left on foot before an officer arrived, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported Tuesday. Based on the suspect's description, he appeared to be homeless, a police spokesman said.
It turns out the Homeland office wasn't too secure -- a contractor working for the building's management failed to properly secure a door behind him, said Susan Lasley, spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Pubic Safety.
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Quirks/2008/03/19/
homeland_security_office_filled_with_feces/9759/I swear I was in Florida all day!
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True dat
Let's face it, for the vast majority of us politics is more master than tool. -- Aycharaych
That's what I keep trying to tell all you rugged individualist types: maybe it's 'cause you ain't doin' it right. ;-)
It's an art, it involves other people, many of whom are just as cranky as you are. It takes patience, flexibility; hell, you might even have to learn how to be lovable.
Or you could just let the rest of us do it for you. I mean, we're gonna do it anyway, right?
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omoexx,re history
I don't know. When I look back at what Athens did to Melos (see Thucydides) or read the debates in congress over the Indain removal act (see Trail of Tears, etc) I find myself quite full of horror. And in a class I teach with a colleague who is a history professor on native american thought and history we have found the most effective presentation to be a dispassionate narration of what actually happened (including the facts of human suffering, the realities of it): and usually the horror hits them. Any "long view" that minimizes the realities of human suffering (by glossing over or not presenting them) is to me poorly thought out. I agree that we should not frame the history so as to evoke a certain reaction (that would be rhetoric and not history); but I think however dispassionate you are, the realities of human suffering, to a thinking mind, will have its effect. I have no fear of any real thinkers looking back at our time and not seeing the horror.
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Chimps have dominance hierarchies
but they have no "state," no "government". There is a rudimentary form of "politics" in a chimp troop, as there is with any social animals, regardless of how evolved or their level of sophistication. Chimps make war. They have been observed recently conducting "border raids" on neighboring troops. This is not a wild bunch of howling monkeys running wild. They are observed moving off in single, ordered file, using cover and being totally silent. These are normally boisterous and noisy chimps, on what can only be described as a military operation.
This is remarkable and never before observed behavior and we are just now being able to study it, and try and understand how this occurs and why, and what it might tell us about ourselves. So to say that the state is the cause of war may be putting the cart before the horse.
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LWM
This is great. How long have they been studying UT's comment section?
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Why the Mahdi are pissed
They just read the newspaper article describing how the US sent a plane load of nukular warhead fuses to Taiwan.
Think about it. The US invades Iraq 5 stinkin years ago looking for WMD and talking mushroom clouds. US proceeds to occupy all the palaces, re-fill the jails, etc etc. Kills at least 5% of the population outright in the process (1 mill dead: 20 mil pop) chases another 10% out of the country. That's the equivalent of about 45 million americans dead or gone if the same thing happened here.
Then, on the 5th anniversary of the invasion, as if to celebrate, US sends very sensitive, very important nuclear weapon components to Taiwan, thinking that they were helicopter batteries.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080325/ts_afp/ustaiwandefensemissiles_080325222505
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@omooex
Your constant digs at LWM leave a bad taste in all my sockpuppet's my mouths. Enough, find a new hobby, dude.
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I am sure
that the nuclear weapons components disguised as helicopter batteries were transported over by Milo Minderbender.
Just don't blame Yossarian.
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Jkalos
I agree there is horror. But not HORROR. If there were true horror, we would be unable to partake of any of the contrivances of the modern day or any of the territory of this country, knowing, as we must, the suffering endured by those who were enslaved to make them possible. Even now, we should feel horror when confronted with the suffering produced with the maintenance of our first world lifestyles. But here we are, not feeling to horrified, I'd imagine.
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"You're" not "your"
Damn! I copied and pasted. Now everyone will know it's one of me!
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@Oomex
Or was that Zeus?
You've hit on something which has always fascinated me. What, exactly were all those people in Europe and stuff before they were "converted" to Chritianity. Sure, there were Jews, another stultifyingly commandment-sodden, and with the air of a sure historical loser, but what about all the others? Did they like being what they were? Was it more thoroughly integrated with their humanity, and what did they feel they gained with conversion?
I know the answer varies, but it's always fascinated me. On the Virgin Birth, I have no opinion, but I think us Jews understand Mary's dilemma: Kein briere iz oich a breire.