russell jones

Oh definitely... because the alternative of a team of people spending months setting up plastic explosives in a building teeming with people 24/7 and no one noticing while simultaneously leaving absolute no trace of evidence behind is so much more plausible. That's exactly how it happened. My eyes are open.

Lizard people aren't covered in the new plan... unless they become American Citizens.

Minimalism is a cultural movement, while minimalism is a style or outlook, rather than a movement.

Awesome. Can't they just pixelate the cocks and pussies?

seriously? Where are you at?

I know I have to be late to the party on this one: http://wikileaks.org/ Some of you will love this... if you're not already. Check out the first story on top: "This document is a classifed (SECRET/NOFORN) 32 page U.S. counterintelligence investigation into WikiLeaks. ``The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the U.S. government are providing sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org cannot be ruled out''. It concocts a plan to fatally marginalize the organization. Since WikiLeaks uses ``trust as a center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insiders, leakers or whisteblowers'', the report recommends ``The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistlblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site''. [As two years have passed since the date of the report, with no WikiLeaks' source exposed, it appears that this plan was ineffective]. As an odd justificaton for the plan, the report claims that ``Several foreign countries including China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe have denounced or blocked access to the Wikileaks.org website''. The report provides further justification by enumerating embarrassing stories broken by WikiLeaks---U.S. equipment expenditure in Iraq, probable U.S. violations of the Chemical Warfare Convention Treaty in Iraq, the battle over the Iraqi town of Fallujah and human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay."

Ladies love Mahayana... ask Richard Gere.

Cool, we agree! I don't think evolution has anything to do with the existence or non-existence of a higher power. Science needn't disprove anything in the spiritual world, in fact, it can't, since science deals only with material evidence. To add to the discussion above, Dawkins bothers me too. His point is well-taken that religion can get in the way of progress, but it doesn't have to. Being a believer does not preclude the ability to rationally assess the natural world. For many believers, God and the natural world are separate, so there is no need for one to get in the way of the other. I'm personally not a believer, but I cannot deny its value to others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FactCheck They are bipartisan, and they seem to take that stance seriously. They criticize everyone fairly equally.

A two celled organism is not a higher life form from an evolutionary perspective. It may be a more complex one, but not necessarily. Evolution only cares about success in reproduction. Human beings are not the most successful species in the world simply because we are a "higher" life form. Even if macro-evolution had not been observed directly (it has been), the unity of life on the planet and the clear connections between different forms in the fossil record is plenty of evidence to prove evolution exists. The alternative, that some sort of being outside of the universe created each form separately and placed them on earth is not falsifiable, and is not science, so it is pointless to use that argument. Evolution is falsifiable, and has been robustly proven.

That is not a bad article, it certainly does not support your views in any way ,shape or form though. How about this line: "Some of the most serious allegations against Dr. Jones, director of the climate research unit at the University of East Anglia, and other researchers have been debunked, while several investigations are still under way to determine whether others hold up. " This line is also telling: "The battle is asymmetric, in the sense that scientists feel compelled to support their findings with careful observation and replicable analysis, while their critics are free to make sweeping statements condemning their work as fraudulent." Just because many of the possible solutions to anthropogenic global warming are distasteful to you Casek, does not mean that it does not exist.

Climategate is a load of horseshit. If anything, it shows that lay people jump to conclusions based on insufficient evidence far easier than scientists. From http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate/ "Some critics claim that the e-mails invalidate the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world scientific body that reaffirmed in a 2007 report that the earth is warming, sea levels are rising and that human activity is "very likely" the cause of "most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century." But the IPCC’s 2007 report, its most recent synthesis of scientific findings from around the globe, incorporates data from three working groups, each of which made use of data from a huge number of sources — of which CRU was only one. The synthesis report notes key disagreements and uncertainties but makes the "robust" conclusion that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal." (A robust finding is defined as "one that holds under a variety of approaches, methods, models and assumptions, and is expected to be relatively unaffected by uncertainties.")" There is no smoking gun. It's science.

I think you mean anthropogenic.

Hap Ki Do has some TKD elements in it. :) It is a synthesis of Japanese and traditional Korean styles. We learn kicks and strikes from Korean martial arts, and falling techniques and arm bars from Japanese styles.

Hap Ki Do

I think Christo is giving you some good advice. I would say work on your core and stamina more than anything. Only being able to do 31 crunches means your core is in bad shape. I can do 60 in 60 seconds, and that is one tenth of my core workout. Once you are strong in the middle everything builds from there, upper and lower body. I couldn't do a pull up when I started martial arts training, but now I can kill em. My core strength allowed my upper body strength to develop. It also gives you balance, assists your breathing and keeps you alert. With cardio, you have to push yourself. If you think you can't do it anymore, keep going. Christo's advice to break up the cardio into sprints, walking, jogging, is good. You'll develop faster that way and be mentally alert while you do it. Just remember to take breaks. Work hard, rest, work hard. Give yourself a good week off every 8 weeks or so. During those times I developed more than I was working out, and was able to come back to my workout with more strength and endurance. Challenge yourself to mental tasks after your workout. If you can't do it tired, you can't do it at all.

No doubt, I agree.

I agree, but China is such a huge supplier of cheap labor that there may not be anyone to replace them. Rich depends on poor to stay rich, the more rich countries there are, the more difficult it is to manufacture cheap products. Also, we're doing pretty well in the US, despite recent problems, but unskilled workers are getting killed in this recession. The unemployment numbers for the lowest rungs are staggering. And those jobs are never coming back. The transition from a manufacturing to a tech/skill/service economy is painful.

You might want to read the rest of that article Casek.

I'm awake, enlighten me.

Nobody disputes that our climate has gone through big changes before. When those big changes happen, species die. Arguing that extreme climate change can be caused by non-human factors is illogical because it doesn't apply to the current situation, where human activities are having a huge effect on the climate.

True, although I guess there would be a breaking point in growth, which the United States had reached long ago, where the country is too rich to manufacture anything at all. In other words, labor costs make products too expensive. Cars are the only thing left in America that is still manufactured here. When China reaches that point, they will have to buy from whoever is poorer than them. The US will have to do the same. Of course, China could keep wages artificially low, as they do now, but they may not be sustainable. Of course, China is buying more of its products now. The prices are ridiculously low. I had a Chinese exchange student living with me last year, and the prices she paid for her phone and video camera were ridiculously low. You have an opinion on how long it will be before their GDP (overall, not per person) passes the US?

I read an economics blog about this very issue, I"ll try to find it for you when I get a minute. China has a problem with growth because its economy is so export based. If the economy grows enough to significantly raise incomes, they will no longer be able to provide the cheap labor that the government (somewhat artificially) now provides. The irony is that their growth could kill them in the end, unless they are able to shift to a technical/service economy, which of course would slow their growth. It's an endless feedback loop.