alienlovechild

Why would it?

Burn witch burn.

If you're going to equate all those sentenced to death you should at least make the method it more dramatic. A more painful death is the same as a more "humane" one.

Feinberg and Willer found that participants primed to have a stronger belief in a just world reported levels of scepticism that were 29% higher, and a willingness to reduce their carbon footprint that was 21% lower, than those primed to see the world as an unjust place. Their findings are reported in Psychological Science1.

So the belief is that somehow justice will be fulfilled whether not global warming takes place.

A more likely answer is the planet is complex environment and an individual can only see a part of it in relatively short lifespan.

Lotteries are for suckers. A lot of the poor blow what little money they have and the uneducated don't understand the concept of odds.

There's a sucker born every minute but at least it's a voluntary "tax" that pays for some government programs so I thank those who bought tickets.

What "comparative divorce stats" are you referencing?

As far as I am aware, the ONLY credible stats related to Cross-Cultural marriage are those we commissioned a while back that clearly indicate cross-cultural marriages fail at a lower rate than US domestic marriages.

- Dan

Believe it or not. . .

I know that but another nameless poster on this thread has no idea what we're talking about on a website dedicated to varying degrees of cross-cultural marriage.

Nor your ignorance.

Try looking up comparative divorce stats of the general population vs. women who came here on K visas and factor in the screening out of petitioners for abuse since 2006(?). Even you could probably connect at these least two dots given a GPS and bloodhound to lead you to a conclusion.

Two missing Coptic women had been abused by priest husbands

The wives of two Egyptian Coptic priests, forbidden by the church from divorcing their abusive husbands, desperately sought another way out by converting to Islam. When their intentions were discovered, police handed them over to the church, and their whereabouts since have been unknown.

The cases caused a furor at home that spilled over the borders and turned deadly when al-Qaida in Iraq cited the women as the reason behind the worst attack ever on Christians in Iraq — a siege of a church in October that left 68 people dead.

It was a stark example of the schism between Christians and Muslims that runs through the Middle East and periodically erupts into violence.

The conversion of two priests' wives led to two mass bombings to kill almost 100 people and injure many others. Luckily women are treated so much better under Islam that bloody acts of chivalry are carried out by extremists hoping to capitalize on any slight.

Al-Qaradawi stressed that "the perpetrators of this crime are criminals, assassins and non-Muslims because Islam asserts the sanctity of human life and strongly prohibits aggression against it. Islam does not condone the killing of the innocent civilians of any nation or nationality except for a prescribed penalty. Murdering the civilians of any nationality by a group, individual or even nations at random, especially if they are celebrating in a place of worship could never be viewed as jihad and is undoubtedly against the teachings of the Qur’an and the Sunnah".

Al-Qaradawi alluded to the possibility that there are foreign hands behind the deadly suicide bombing in order to ignite sectarian strife in Egypt . It is inconceivable that Egyptians were behind it and sedition is a danger we will not allow to happen. In fact, I condemn these hideous acts as it is absolutely unlawful.

These statements of condemnation may as well be written on the epitaph of the Coptic Church in Egypt. The bombers could care less about what some Muslim scholar says as if they are excommunicated from Islam (is that even possible in Islam?).

Mubarak may use his iron fist to crack down on terrorism as he did with Muslim terrorists threatening the state but how long is he going to be around and does the government really give a damn protecting about a minority group that isn't allowed to build a church without presidential assent?

Scalia considers himself a strict constructionist, which is another name for a narrow-minded judge who can't see the forest for the trees.

He's doing his job intepreting the Constitution correctly. I thought you believed in a representative democracy not a star chamber of non-elected geezers doing as they please. Scalia's on the mark and was quite clear in the OP:

If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don't like the death penalty anymore, that's fine. You want a right to abortion? There's nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn't mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and pass a law. That's what democracy is all about. It's not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.

If the nice looking genes are been exported, the average looks of the Thai nation must be headed lower whilst the average looks of the American population must be improving

Economics apart, this is surely cause for Americans to be optimistic about the future in one aspect of their society at least

The swelling waistlines of the majority of Americans ruins your theory.

The actions of a certain biracial president who lived in Indonesia makes most of us less optimistic about the future on the whole.

Meanwhile in the latest attacks on Islam in America, 3 and a half months ago some pranksters broke into a Mosque in Oregon at 3:30 am in the morning when it was completely vacant and lit a small fire....

If there was a thread on it, I'm sure there was far more outrage.

Ten year old airbases aren't permanent? We already have them and the Soviets had them, too. They remain but the landlords changed ownership.

Why does this bit not surprise me at all?

Nothing surprises me about your gullibility.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL THE MOMMIES HERE!!!

Even our little war with Iraq was sold to the religious right wing as religious. Supposedly we would make that area safe for christianity. Many people I talked with could not believe I was telling the truth when I told them that Saddam Hussein's vice-pres was a christian. They were sure we were justified in going to war to bring christianity to that country! Whether it was official US policy didn't matter. Perception is everything.

I've heard other reasons for the Iraq War but never to save Iraqi Christians. The reality is almost half of Iraqi Christians fled the country since 2003. There's no U.S. program I know of to give them any special security. The plight of the Iraqi Christians is something no American policymakers are going to push for when we are trying to reduce our exposure there.

My own opinion is that murderous people will use whatever excuse is handy to justify what they do and religion is one of the easiest. A true christian or muslim is not inclined to be homicidal. The problem is that religion allows the weak-minded to avoid analyzing the issues personally, all they have to do is follow someone else's teaching and feel they are then righteous. Despots then use religion to enlist those weak-minded to engage in whatever murderous agenda they want.

I don't think religion is one the easier ways to justify a war especially as most of the more powerful countries are secular. Nationalism, tribalism and economics seem more common causes than religion. It could be argued that Islam, for example, is the only real counterbalance to the more onerous governments of the Middle East.

My wife and I come from different family customs and cultures. For her, when someone has a party, they pay for everything and will easily spend $300, even for a children's birthday party, which would make my mother gasp. I came from a family of 6 boys and my parents never had any fancy birthday parties for us.

Our family never had fancy birthday parties for 5 kids and we won't do it unless my wife starts nagging me about it but then again my daughter's birthday is only two months away.

I don't think it's okay to ask for money as I thought those invited paid with gifts.

Reliance on stocks in retirement plans is greater than ever; 42 percent of those workers now have 401(k)s. But the past decade has been a lost one for stocks, with the Standard & Poor's 500 index posting total returns of just 4 percent since the beginning of 2000.

Many retirees banked on their homes as their retirement fund. But the crash in housing prices has slashed almost a third of a typical home's value. Now 22 percent of homeowners, or nearly 11 million people, owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth. Many are boomers.

Vanatta was laid off last January from his $100,000-a-year job as a sales executive for a turf company. And with savings of just $5,000, he's on a budget for the first time. In April, he will start taking Social Security at age 62.

Too many boomers have ignored or underestimated the worsening outlook for their finances, says Jean Setzfand, director of financial security for AARP, the group that represents Americans over age 50. By far the greatest shortcoming has been a failure to save. The personal savings rate the amount of disposable income unspent averaged close to 10 percent in the 1970s and `80s. By late 2007, the rate had sunk to negative 1 percent.

Mortgage Debt. Nearly two in three people age 55 to 64 had a mortgage in 2007, with a median debt of $85,000.

Social Security. Nearly 3 out of 4 people file to claim Social Security benefits as soon as they're eligible at age 62. That locks them in at a much lower amount than they would get if they waited.

The monthly checks are about 25 percent less if you retire at 62 instead of full retirement age, which is 66 for those born from 1943 to 1954. If you wait until 70, your check can be 75 to 80 percent more than at 62. So, a boomer who claimed a $1,200 monthly benefit in 2008 at age 62 could have received about $2,000 by holding off until 70.

But in an acknowledgment of reality, 40 percent said they plan to work "until I drop."

I thought people weren't supposed to put most of their retirement funds on the stock market after age 50 or 55. If you gamble and lose whose fault is it? Whose fault is it when you get stuck with a 30 year old mortgage that you'e trying to pay off in your old age?

Case in point being Vanatta made a $100K/year but has only $5K in savings.

I'm more sympathic to the people that never made much money to save but life's rougher when you don't have much money. I'm pretty sure that I'll have to work til I'm 70 unless my health declines rapidly.

For the Far East Communists, religion is a bit harder to distinguish as Theist, or Atheist, as the parallels between Western and Eastern religions just are not there.

The piles of dead didn't have much a religious preference either but they were killed all the same even without the usual monotheistic religious which usually get flogged on this forum.

So the most of organized murder by totalitarian states had little to do with religion. They killed people for political reasons so they could be justified if you've got political leanings to the far right or far left. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

The only sticking point may be Hitler being religious if you count a guy that was pushing a religion that didn't look much like Catholicism but has elements of eastern mysticism, norse mythology and social Darwinism based on "science" of eugenics. I'll buy the label of cult type religion that persecuted the minority traditional sects that refused to cooperate with the Nazis. More likely that the Nazis manipulated Christians with propaganda by making the claim that the Nazis weren't as bad as the godless communists. You'd have stronger case of religious facism with Franco, Mussolini and Latin American dictatorships of the past.

Winters will rapidly become less severe due to global warming so there will less of a need for SUVs that spew out GHGs.

If the polar seas are melting I wouldn't worry about deep snow thousands of miles south of the north pole.

The War on Terror is a religious war from one sides perspective and even for some on the West's side. And your statement about atheists is looney tunes child.

Wrong on both counts as there's no religious element in U.S. foreign policy as far as us spreading Christianity or targeting nations solely based on their religion.

As far as loonies go, you've upped the ante if you really believe Stalin, Hitler, Mao, the Kims of North Korea and Pol Pot weren't atheists?

Maybe we should try reducing the demand instead, through prevention and treatment programs.

Ww've had prevention programs for decades and only consumption that's be curbed significantly is on the legal product of tobacco. Most of the current treatment programs have a pretty spotty record of success. You should know more about it in the medical field as that's not my field. When you talk about a profit motive, the spa type rehab centers are a big business.

"Every year, state and federal governments spend more than $15 billion, and insurers at least $5 billion more, on substance-abuse treatment services for some four million people. That amount may soon increase sharply: last year, Congress passed the mental health parity law, which for the first time includes addiction treatment under a federal law requiring that insurers cover mental and physical ailments at equal levels."

"Yet very few rehabilitation programs have the evidence to show that they are effective. The resort-and-spa private clinics generally do not allow outside researchers to verify their published success rates. The publicly supported programs spend their scarce resources on patient care, not costly studies.

And the field has no standard guidelines. Each program has its own philosophy; so, for that matter, do individual counselors. No one knows which approach is best for which patient, because these programs rarely if ever track clients closely after they graduate. Even Alcoholics Anonymous, the best known of all the substance-abuse programs, does not publish data on its participants’ success rate."

"For some addicts, a standard program may not help at all, according to Anne Fletcher, who for her book “Sober For Good” interviewed 222 men and women who had been clean for at least five years. “A lot of these people overcame an alcohol problem on their own, or with the help of an individual therapist,” Ms. Fletcher said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/health/23reha.html

The requisite caveat, however, is that we've virtually no way of knowing how inherently "evil" those behind the 9/11 attacks truly were. We would even do well to steer clear of words like "good" or "evil" - they seem to me much more the vernacular of the extremists. Chances are the orchestrators were pretty warped individuals, but the footsoldiers? The hijackers themselves? That's a different issue.

As the physicist Steven Weinberg put it, "with or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

So "good" nature of the hijackers negates the evil action of killing thousands? You may be the most moral guy around but I don't want to see you shooting into a crowd then explaining it away later. Even if it's not you but some poor misguided slob, that lond of talk influences unstable individuals.

Has very little to with religion which is your personal hangup. The biggest mass murder movements were all largely atheists and that's an indisputable fact. Name the last major "religious" war in the West and that may make you think.

Nothing really. The calendar we use now was adopted over several centuries by several regions and is still not recognized by some for religious reasons. In the FSU Christmas is not until January 7th. (I might add we also celebrate Christmas on January 7th for the very "religious" reason that we do all our "Christmas Shopping" after "Christmas" for 75% off)

The calendars we use were developed long after any event happening 2010 years ago, they were arbitrary when developed and arbitrary now.

Still the convention that the year is 2010 is far more widespread the exceptions you mentioned. It may seem arbitrary but it helps to have a common base year based on a historical event.

And my reference to money was not from the perspective of the potential users but from the people that really influence our politicians, the corporate lobbyists that finance campaigns. Majority does not rule with our representatives, I'm afraid, unless you are referring to the green-backs! And relative to prescription drug abuse vs marijuana and alcohol, it all has to do with availability. If you choke off the supply of one mind altering substance, the substance abuser switches to another. And alcohol is almost always available!

Nonsense, marijuana legalization campaigns don't lose because of slick well-funded campaigns but by the simple fact that most voters don't like pot themselves and don't want kids to smoke it. If you can find evidence to the contrary let me know as I've heard it all for least 30 years on this issue.

Availability means nothing as marijuana, booze and pills are available if you ask around. I've never seen anything that claims all of these intoxications have the same effects and product substitution is seamless for users. If booze is legal why would anyone smoke pot? A lot of people abuse multiple substances and there are those that have preferences. I've got my own experiences in these matters and knew people in the same boat. It's not a zero sum game where marijuana legalization would seriously harm the legal substances industry.

Ok , since they were crazy inferences, you don't think that the difference is based on democracy vs theocracy, the age of our country or our popularity. so now we have established what you don't think is the difference between the guy flying a plane into a building and killing 3000 people, and the guy that joins the marines to kill Al qaeda.

could you give me examples of sorts of goverment, since we have eliminated theocracy and democracy from the equation

Didn't say there's no distinction between a group of terrorists killing unarmed civilians on purpose and a Marine who kills under ROE laid down by the government. Not sure where you got that one but you've got imagination.

You don't know of any forms of government and want me to give you a list for some inexplicable reason?

"eliminated theocracy and democracy from the equation"

Just the opposite as I laid some basic differences for you which you chose to ignore.