Mister P-Mosh

Having female roommates wasn't as fun as I thought it would be at first. Even if you are attracted to a girl, living with her in those conditions often makes her either like a bad wife or a sister.

Yet some of his accomplices in genocide are still running loose.

I'm sorry to hear this LG. I don't really know what to say, but I wish you and your family the best of luck and I hope that you surprise yourself and your doctors with your longevity.

I would suggest that we move this to a new thread, but I can address a lot of that. This is true, but we all commit crimes. Do you ever go faster than the speed limit? That's more dangerous than undocumented immigration. In either case though, it isn't (or wasn't last time I checked) a felony to come here without a visa. On the other hand, it's pretty much impossible to come here legally if you are poor, so most of those who come here do so just to feed their families. If my family were starving and living in third world conditions, I would be willing to risk my life to enter another nation and make money to be able to feed them. Our immigration system is biased towards those with white skin and with loads of money. They do have a bigger problem with corruption, but that is being dealt with. We have our fair share here in the U.S., but it's institutionalized. We call it "lobbying." As for studying and working hard to get ahead, it works there like it does here. The only difference is that there are less opportunities there. MS-13 (somewhat from El Salvador rather than Mexico) is the biggest foreign gang we have a problem with here in Houston. However, the statistics show that immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than U.S. citizens are. I saw a copy of that book, and basically it was telling them how not to die in the desert and what their human rights are. It didn't encourage them to come here and if I read it without knowing anything else, it would discourage me from going to the U.S. This is incorrect. A large number pay both income and sales taxes. The income tax is usually by using fake SSNs when getting a job, and the result has been that undocumented immigrants' tax payments are more than enough to pay for the public services they use. Also they are not eligible for most public services. You're not going to see undocumented immigrants on welfare, for example. It depends on the customers. Would you pay $10 a week to have your lawn mowed without knowing the person's immigration status, or would you rather pay $50 a week for someone you know is a U.S. citizen? Of course, this doesn't stop with lawn services or immigrants. Shopping at Walmart is just as bad if not worse for our country than hiring undocumented immigrants is. Walmart has put thousands of Americans out of work, if not more, has helped push our manufacturing base overseas to China, and have caused many small and medium-sized businesses to go out of business. Nevermind the fact that Walmart does not provide health insurance to most of their workers, and encourages their employees to go on Medicaid and use other government services. We need to have a discussion in this country that does not demonize people from Latin America, but does take an honest look at our economy and jobs. We blame the undocumented immigrants for what we are doing to ourselves. Now that we've cracked down on them, we already see that our food supply is shrinking and farms are going out of business now while the big grocers simply buy cheaper fruit and vegetables from other countries. In my mind, immigration is an American value, when we let people come in to work and spend their money here and contribute to our nation. Offshoring everything is not an American value, and is hurting our nation deeply.

I agree with you that inner city schools face a huge problem and that the students are not taught as well as suburban schools, but quotas to college won't help the kids become smarter or better able to learn. We have to address the root of the problem in the primary education. I agree that money is a tough thing, but that's not just for minority students. Non-minorities go deep into debt to get degrees that are mostly not worth the paper they are printed on. We're all screwed when dealing with the higher education system. That's why India and China are passing us by so quickly.

In my mind, this would be done by educating about other cultures, which I think most colleges do well. Unfortunately in the U.S. our public education system is pretty bad and doesn't really teach about other countries, religions, ethnic groups, etc. very much. In fact the history we learn in school is pretty much just government propaganda since they take out the bad stuff and practically deify our founding fathers. I'd say that they were even more polarized than we are at times -- you don't see congressmen having duels in this day and age, for example. Even though the federalist vs. states rights argument has pretty much gone away at this point, a lack of knowledge of it means that kids don't know why our nation had so many problems early on that led eventually to the civil war. I should stop though, my history rant is unrelated to this topic at present. Hate speech requires someone from a privileged class to make a disparaging remark about a minority class person. I strongly believe in the 1st amendment, so hate speech doesn't really apply on a government level to my mind. However, I can understand why minorities appear to have more protections under the law than we of the majority do. It's simply because they have problems that we do not have, related to their minority status. It's relevant because history always repeats itself, although in different ways. I really don't care what happens in the middle east, as long as we can avoid being involved. My point about the Moors is that a once great culture can regress, while a crappy culture can change and become dominant. It always happens. My concern right now is the direction I see this nation heading. I think we all agree that something bad is going on, even if we don't agree on the causes. I see militant Christianity, which I'm pretty sure did not exist 50 years ago, as a new threat. It's not really a threat right now, but in the long view, it could easily become one. I just don't trust people who want to establish a theocracy, whether by votes or with force. My wife is from Mexico and I'm very familiar with the country. However, there is no single "Mexican culture" just like there's no single "American culture." Every region and every group is different, just like here. I could say quite a bit on the topic of immigration and Mexican politics but I don't want to derail your thread. However, in my experience, most Mexicans are more like the old-school Christians who believe in helping their fellow human beings out and taking care of others. Of course, there are all sorts of different people and not all of them are good. Still, the culture they are raised in values giving what you have extra to those who need it and believing that all are sinners and that nobody is perfect so you shouldn't judge each other. I wouldn't have considered the situation in New Orleans to be diversity, that's more like a place where poor black people were hidden so they would be invisible to the rest of us. I have some other opinions but I live in Houston so I'm pretty sure that I'm unfairly biased against New Orleans. Anyway, back to the Christian heritage topic. I am proud of Christians who have done good things, like starting off the civil rights movement of the 60's, and all the good work they did throughout our history to help protect the people from "bullying" from big government and big business, and to establish equality. The diversity that you discuss pretty much originated with Christians. The abolitionist movement to eradicate slavery was primarily run by Christians, the push to let women to vote had Christian involvement, and yes, the founding of this country did involve Christian leaders. However, I wouldn't say that our government has a specific Christian foundation because history shows that our government is based on Greek, British, and possibly some native american ideals. Diversity wasn't originally one of them, but it seems to fit in well with our nation if done right.

Along these lines, I highly recommend the movie Joyeux Noel about the Christmas truce.

I actually agree with most of what you have said. There's no question that the Chinese are going to become the dominant world superpower, probably within our lifetimes. The E.U. is more financially stable than we are, but if our economy crashes the E.U. will go along with us, plus they have some major problems of their own. However, I doubt that the Chinese would oppress Christians too much if they were in charge of us (which I doubt would happen because that would result in war.) The Chinese style is more to set up a censored version that makes the state look good. I also didn't mean to insinuate that the muslims will ascend to take our place, there's no way that would happen. Once the oil is gone or too expensive to gather they'll be no better off than most of Africa. Also, Coral Ridge themselves are not so much the danger, but they started the Dominionist movement, and lots of younger groups are taking from that and going further. Kennedy started the whole "take over the U.S. government for Christianity" movement, and others are putting the military conflict spin on it. It's going to backfire.

rhino, It's pretty clear that your problem is not related to diversity or anything of the like, but rather that you didn't really read my post. In fact, you mentioned the SATs, which are to get into college. I said: My idea of diversity is not giving unfair advantages, but rather helping those who are unfairly disadvantaged, and to help people interact with those who are different than they are, with the goal that all people can see that we are all human beings and in the same boat.Additionally, nowhere in my post do I defend Muslims, and in fact say: If it wasn't clear, I was saying that the middle eastern countries have religious terrorists and we don't (although I think we're on the verge of it), and that we are more civilized while they regressed from the past. The point in bringing up the Moors is to show that Muslims don't have to be savages like al Qaeda, nor are all Christians as enlightened as many American Christians have been throughout our nation's history. History and culture are fluid.

-- From the treaty of Tripoli, signed unanimously by the U.S. congress and president John Adams. However, there's no neat and clear answer. To some founding fathers, the U.S. should have had a state religion and force everyone to adhere to it. There were religious nuts back then just as there are now. However, others were merely deists and a few were possibly even atheists (I suggest reading Ben Franklin's anti-Christianity rants, for example.) The bottom line is that the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution isn't all that clear, but the way I see it, it prohibits the church being involved with the government and the reverse. The only way I've seen people try to weasel out of that is by saying that states have the rights to establish churches, or misinterpret the view to be one that the Constitution should prevent religious people from participating in the government. Neither of those are true. In 1802, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to a small minority Christian sect that stated: We can argue all day long about what the founders of this country meant in the Constitution, but if we read more of their writing, it's pretty clear that after the AoC, they realized establishing a theocracy was a bad idea. What is unfortunate though, is that it seems a vocal minority of people want to establish a theocracy here. A book came out called America, Return to God that is a pretty good example of a Dominionist point of view. A documentary came out recently about a training camp for kids where they learned to be "soldiers" for Jesus called Jesus Camp You may be familiar with one of the founders of the Dominionist dogma, D. James Kennedy, creator of the Coral Ridge Ministries started a lot of it. We can sit around trash talking about Muslim countries all day, but the reality is that the Moors maintained civilization while our ancestors (I'm assuming most of the people here are white, since we are ex-TWI) slogged through the dark ages. Things appear to have changed for the most part and we are the advanced ones while their nations have regressed culturally. However, nothing is set in stone, and the U.S. could easily fall into something lesser than we are today if these nuts are allowed to take over our nation and remake it in their image. It's true that we currently don't have religious terrorists on par with the middle east. The reason is that Christianity is well-accepted and Christians have a privileged place in our society. If Christians truly were oppressed in this country, some would become terrorists rather quickly. Of course, all the anger against "diversity" is just a whine by a privileged member of the majority who are unhappy to see their advantage shrinking and the playing field being leveled. I'm not talking about the more extreme measures such as racial quotas for college. I can see problems with that as well. However I do see the value in not forcing students to pray in school, and the value in respecting people of other religions, races, or ideas. When I was in TWI, I learned to hate the Jews like everyone else. Since leaving TWI I learned that the Holocaust did indeed happen and on an incredible scale, that Jewish people really are from the middle east, and that Jews can be pretty nice people. In fact, a Jewish friend helped me put up blinds in my house this weekend, my wife and I went out to eat with a Chinese couple. Diversity has made our lives better, not worse. The only people who diversity has a negative effect on are those who are afraid to face the world as it really is. I'll probably go back to lurker mode now, but here's my two cents.

We have a Bodyworlds display here in Houston, complete with a person standing up with their skin draped over their arm like a towel that is on all the billboards. From what I've heard, the people specifically donated their bodies to the "artist" that made the Bodyworlds show. I don't think it's science so much as art, at least from how it's presented here. I haven't gone to see it because it sounds disgusting to me, but a friend went and she said it was great.

Ok well I'm an atheist so I don't believe in hell, but if I did, there would be no question that's where he is going. The actions of Lay, Skilling, Fastow, and the others involved ruined many lives both physically and financially. I have no sympathy for them. However, I try to avoid wishing death for anyone, no matter how disgusting of a person I find them to be. It's one thing to feel no sympathy for a person who died, but it's another to relish in death.

You would be suprised. My current employer was the natural gas pipeline that became Enron and later split off during bankrupcy. Most of the people here were with Enron, and a lot of them believe that he was innocent. They think that he had responsibility because he was in charge, but that he didn't participate in fraud and was not aware of it. I've heard comments today that have compared him to a grandfather passing away. It's weird.

He died in Aspen Colorado of a massive heart attack.

We almost had our first tropical storm here in Texas the other day. It started to form and was spinning but fell apart since so much of it was over land already, and now it's down towards Corpus heading towards Mexico, without being strong enough to count.

From what I understand this only applies to Generation 1 and possibly some Generation 2 iPods. If you've bought one in the past few years you should be ok. I got mine in 2004 and it's still running strong.

I was thinking Mithras might be better. I prefer old school. Anyway, thanks everyone for the good thoughts and well wishing. We just made our first trip to the doctor and saw the 7 week ultrasound and everything is fine so we're hoping that everything continues to go well. Of course, the morning sickness (which is not limited to the morning) that my wife has sucks, but it will pass, hopefully sooner rather than later.

I research the h3ll out of something before I make a decision, but I don't take long doing it. As I announced on another thread, my wife and I are going to become parents. As a result, we've been reading a lot on it. Everything from me finding out what my insurance policy covers, to buying a house, and of course most importantly the actual process of being pregnant and giving birth. We're halfway through about ten books, and we've read a lot of stuff online, plus talked to a friend of mine whose wife (an ob/gyn) is going to give birth in a month or two, and to another friend of mine who is an ob/gyn herself. Plus we've talked to people I work with, our relatives, friends, etc. and have as much information as possible. Beyond that, there are the steps you listed of things such as putting ourselves in situations to be able to figure out how we would respond to them. How we would get to the hospital as quickly as possible, even in rush hour traffic. What money we need to save up to buy stuff in the upcoming months. All sorts of things are factors that we are working on. Critical thinking is not just something nice, but it is necessary to live well. I take nothing on "faith" but instead research, think, plan, and act as I feel it is appropriate. It's helped me stay out of trouble in the past and get into a good thing when I see it as well.

If all goes well, right around Christmas time, I should be able to answer that question for one person.

It only takes me about 30 minutes to get from the Galleria area of Houston (where I live) to Galveston, so unless you mean at an angle pointing west towards Freeport or something, or a houseboat, I'm not sure where you live. Where do you live?

My wife and I use MySpace (a coworker suggested it as he and his circle of friends use it to organize parties), so I thought I'd check it out. I tried to post but we'll see if it goes through or not. If anyone was curious what I look like or what my real name is or any of that, it will show up if my posts do. I don't really care anymore, but it is alarming that TWI has so many young people still. Also, a flippant comment but one that has to be said, there are some fine looking girls on there. I saw a few who could have easily tricked me into staying in TWI. I'm glad I didn't know them when I was in.

To look at Enron as an anomaly or an unusual situation is to miss the real lesson entirely. They couldn't do what they did without help. You need to look into how all sorts of other companies were involved (especially financial institutions), how the states and federal government was involved. Enron did not develop into what it was on it's own, it was a huge scam. Also, Enron still exists, both in the bankrupt company as well as all the various divisions being moved to other companies with other names. I work for them, and while the company I work for isn't doing electricity trading like Enron used to, we are involved with various aspects of the oil industry. Fortunately, the Sarbanes Oxley act has been able to keep some fraud from being committed. However, the same "screw everyone for my selfish benefit" attitude that Enron pushed is still out there. There's also a disturbing idolization in some of the former leaders of Enron. I know lots of people that idolize Jeff Skilling, Andy Fastow, and even more Lou Pai, who got away with everything, divorced his wife to marry a hot stripper, and is free and in no trouble whatsoever. If you are bored, feel free to search for some of the various emails sent in Enron here. I've already looked up my boss, his boss, and various coworkers and didn't find anything too damaging. However, if you do a search for a name like Tom Delay (arguably the most corrupt politician in the U.S.) it looks bad. It is definitely an incomplete list of emails though. My boss and I were looking through it earlier today and he seems to think that it's mostly limited to people who sent and recieved emails externally, as well as people in higher positions of management.

Global warming is a reality, but it isn't as simple as just "the whole Earth getting warmer all the time" but is actually a complicated "climate change" that basically just means that the weather gets worse over time. As others have pointed out, the ice in the Arctic have melted at a record level, resulting in the deaths of many polar bears, as well as destroying the Inuit way of life. To them, global warming is a real part of daily life. However, even calling it "global warming" is a bit of a misnomer, as what is really happening is that things are basically just getting more unstable. As the temperature rises, more ice melts, the ocean's water levels raise, but it gets worse. A half degree raise of temperature in the gulf of Mexico is equivalent to the energy of nearly a million atomic bombs. I live in Houston, which is not directly on but near the gulf coast. We are going to see a lot more Katrinas and Ritas in this region, because the energy caused by the raise in temperatures feeds the intensity of the storms. Global warming is appropriate here as well as the arctic, but eventually it will lead to global cooling. The problem is that as the ice melts, the fresh water will pour into the oceans and disturb the currents that keep the northern areas of the world warm. After the currents are shut down (which is already happening at an alarming pace) places like England and the northern U.S. will eventually be covered in ice and way too cold for people to keep heavily populated. Eventually, the cycle may go back and things balance out to the way things are now, maybe they won't. This whole thing will take a long time to come to full fruition, but the effects are already being felt. Record heat waves in the summer, record hurricane seasons, and record storms in the winter all are potentially the results of climate change. It's likely to only get worse. On a side note, I've not seen any serious scientists questioning global warming. I know Michael Chrichton recently wrote a book making global warming sound like some sort of conspiracy, but it was a work of fiction. The few scientists that have said that global warming does not exist always seem to have been given huge grants to fund their research by companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron. There is no credible argument against global warming.

Actually, it's the oil companies that don't want to build new refineries. I've read that we've not had a refinery built in this country since before I was born. Want to know why? It's expensive. No company wants to pay that expense, especially when the only potential effect would be to lower the price of their product. Spending lots of money to make your goods less profitable is idiotic from a business sense. Also, environmentalists have so very little political influence that using them as a scapegoat is laughable. Ok, then find me a company willing to build a refinery, and find some proof that those proposing the drilling in Alaska would guarantee that the oil only be sold and used in the U.S., and not sold to China. The whole thing sounded to me like a plot to sell more of our oil to China and Japan, which is where a huge amount of U.S. oil goes. Even the stuff we import we often export to those nations at a much higher price than we could sell it for here. No, if you want to make up stories to make you feel better then go ahead. What I blame them for is their risky "shut down refineries for a little while for trumped up maintenance in order to make gas more scarce and more profitable" scheme which has hurt all of us in the wake of two hurricanes that they apparently didn't expect. I did notice, and having gone through the evacuation I saw hundreds if not thousands of people stranded on the sides of the roads and literally fighting each other at gas stations over what little gasoline could be found. If there was sufficient gasoline, this whole thing would not have been such a problem. What book do you want to hear it from? Apparently you and others here have learned nothing from Enron, and how their operations are standard business practices rather than an exception. Still, start with these memos which lists some of the discussion about making money by shutting down refineries. Like I said, it's a common business practice in the energy industry in general. It's also why eight governors are asking for an investigation into oil company profits in the wake of Katrina. Most likely you will never be convinced because it would be a big change to your world view to find out just how backstabbing and sneaky the people in charge of our nation's oil are. Unfortunately, the more I get involved with the business the worse it looks. There are plenty of good people involved as well, most of the people I work with are good folks who care about others. Unfortunately though, enough bad people are in high positions in companies that they do come up with "creative" ways to make profits, such as shutting down refineries for longer periods of time than necessary.

I am aware of how long it takes to shut down a refinery, but they were shutting some down way ahead of the storm. I am also aware that some refineries that are not in Texas were being shut down before both Rita and Katrina in an attempt to raise gas prices. If you don't believe that these things happen, then you really need to learn a little bit about the industry.