crozby

I've stared at this statement for ages and it just doesn't make any sense to me. Please would you explain it to me. Also, I'm curious. You talk about Jesus a lot and it made me wonder if you chose Christianity because God spoke to you or something, or if you fell into Christianity like most of us do because your parents were Christians. And if Christianity did just happen to be your family tree's default religion then have you ever wondered if you'd been born to Muslims if you'd be talking a lot about Mohammed. What if your parents were Budhists - what would you believe now? Would you have converted to Christianity? Would you have adopted Buddah with the same enthusiasm that you show for Jesus? I wonder if maybe you have the kind of personality that needs to strongly believe in something, and fulfilling that desire is how Christianity makes your life feel so meaningful.

But definitely a trrrrist, a legitimate target in The War On Trrr.

Like the the hundred and fifty thousand or so US troops in Iraq can speak Arabic?

My heart goes out to the Bush administration because despite what people think they really, really, really want to shut down Gitmo, but the poor little luvs just can't. Bless. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7411862.stm I think the Russians had the same problem with the Gulag...

I did support our troops in the Falklands war, I don't in Iraq. When UK troops were sent to Iraq Tony B.Liar told us all to support the troops even if we didn't support the war. But I just can't separate the people from the war like some can. I think it's because I wouldn't be able to 'just follow orders' if I knew in my heart that the mission was wrong. And so I find I have difficulty respecting those that do.

Mate, you really don't know what you're talking about. Maybe in the US more guns = less crime, but that almost certainly wouldn't be the case in the UK. If you polled Brits by far the majority would expect an increase in guns correlating with an increase in gun related crime. Its not because they are 'anti-gunnies', its because they have grown up in the UK and they understand the British mentality. Drunk Brits and guns just wouldn't work and British police would not be mentally equipt to deal with a gun-toting population. They are already struggling with the increased gun-related crime imported along with the Yardies. Plus, how would you introduce guns in the UK? In the states guns have been common-place for generations - people understand them better and respect them better. They learn about them from an early age. Contrast that to suddenly arming the UK population - a bunch of people who've not grown up with, and not been taught how to respect guns. You'd be introducing a new level of Friday night carnage for at least a generation IMO.

Over roughly the same time period the number of alcohol-related deaths more than doubled from 4,144 in 1991 to 8,758 in 2006. I'm thinking more guns is definitely what we need.

I voted good idea because right now getting people on side is more important than how its achieved. If Bush, Bremer and the other useless turds hadn't disbanded the Iraqi military in the first place then this would not be necessary (and this illegal invasion would have been over long ago IMO).

I think you should let this slide graciously. It's not surprising foreigners have an extremificated view of the UK given the appalling collection of newspapers we've got. If you didn't know better you'd read The Daily Mail and believe our country is on the edge of a moral abyss, about to be over-run by foreign, immigrant, single-parent, homosexual, gypsy, muslim terrorists. With Aids.

Umm... Melanie Phillips is a hack who writes for the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk) dominates the right-wing low-brow section of British journalism, so you probably don't want to be using it or articles written by its journalists in any sensible debate about any topic. Melanie Phillips is also a Jew which might possibly explain her anti-Muslim bias and the fact she misrepresents views held in the UK regarding the effect of the Jewish lobby on US policy towards Israel as being 'Jews control the US government'.

You're kind of missing my point which was simply that most educated people are not aware that the environment (with the exception of mutation-causing cosmic rays) has any effect on the information passed between generations. In fact the absence of environmental interference has always been a pretty important characteristic of inheritance as taught to the masses for decades. When I said 'genetics' in quotes it was that lay-persons version of events I was referring to. I only mentioned Epigenetics in the first place because when I first heard about it (Horizon, BBC) I though "well that's *very* different from what I was taught" and I thought others might find it interesting too. I don't have an implied rate of epigenetic change in mind, or any environmental politics, nor some kind of hypothesis about something-or-other. There's no original thought here at all - I'm just regurgitating stuff I read somewhere else on the internet. Aren't we all?

The problem with your statement “In order for you to pass along a trait, it has to be part of your DNA” is that for the masses brought up on the idea that a childs traits are "half mum plus half dad plus a bit of mutation" it hides what is really going on. It obscures the recent discoveries that instead of your kids traits all being 'genetic' and in a way insolated from your environment, actually what you eat or drink or smoke, where you live and what you do with your life not ony affects you, but also affects your children and your grand children and so on. Thats a huge conceptual difference from the kind of genetic inheritance that mine and other generations have been brought up on.

Not strictly true. Like I said earlier, go google "Epigenetics famine". Here's an extract from an article describing it: https://notes.utk.edu/bio/greenberg.nsf/0/b360905554fdb7d985256ec5006a7755?OpenDocument

There may be more to it than just that though - the state of the individuals at the time of the creation of the egg and sperm has an effect on the offspring they produce. Google "Epigenetics famine" for a classic example of this.

Any time a kid takes their parents/guardians gun I would prosecute the gun owner as an accessory to the crime.

Much of the evidence presented by Colin to the UN was of this quality. You'd think the intelligence services wouldn't make the same mistake so soon after ... but then again

I voted 'Bad idea' because I'm sick of the state getting involved in things that don't concern them. However I think the distinctions presented here between spanking and hitting are bullshit. No matter how cutsie one dresses it up by using words like spanking, batting, etc it is basically inflicting physical pain on your child by hitting them. I would bet money that the same people here who consider hitting their children to be ok would not be supportive of middle-eastern cultures where it is acceptable to 'spank' ones wife. The stupidest double standard I've witnessed is a parent hitting their child because he hit one of his friends. If parents feel the need to resort to physical violence towards their children in an effort to teach them something then thats their right, but I don't do it and I suggest those that do have a little more imagination - there is always another non-violent approach available to them which will acheive the same or better results. And finally, to those of you who mock 'time-out': try it - i don't know why it works, but administered properly it genuinely does.

Fine, except that our taxes are paying them to be hopeless. This article is spot on in my experience. I was on the end of a number of crimes during my 10 years in London and all the police ever did was send me a letter stating "Dear Sir, We are sorry to hear you are the victim of a crime ... blah, blah, blah, ... here are the details of a counselling service to help you get over it". However, in their defence I read somewhere that it takes at least 4 hours to process anyone they arrest and more often than not the criminals get let off by the courts later anyway (or rather they get into an endless cycle of not turning up to court and getting re-arrested), so its hardly surprising the police aren't very enthusiastic.

It would be Irans fault even if it wasn't.

On the one hand I agree with it - schools are there to educate, and telling parents their kid is eating too much and exercising too little is no different than telling them their kid sucks at chemistry. On the other hand the schools determine their meal menus based on cheapness, not on quality, so school meals are complete shit in most schools. Plus many schools no longer have any playing fields for outdoor sports because they've all been sold to property developers to raise a quick buck for the local councils. So whilst there are many incredibly stupid parents out there who really do need to be educated in their childrens health, the root of the problem is penny pinching over the years by the local governments IMO.

Anyway, back on topic: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=97641

Google "Marshall islands cancer" and you'll get 1.6 million hits, some of which are reputable sources, describing the high levels of various cancers that are a result of 60+ nuclear tests in the area.

And it came to pass... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7049348.stm I think this piece of wisdom from GW is particularly amusing: . Priceless. On a serious note though, the PKK is a world recognised terrorist organisation that has been fucking with Turkey for decades. If it was ok for the USA to invade Afghanistan to stir up AQ, it is more than ok for Turkey to kick some arses in northern Iraq. ... Apparently there is evidence that the CIA provided assistance to the PKK in the past - presumably that was back in the good old days when supporting terrorists was cool and funky.

Can you imagine the motoring chaos if these radicals get their way...

I voted 'let the market decide'. But I agree that something needs doing about this: Doesn't anyone else get jarred off with the amount of packaging that gets binned as soon as they get the supermarket shop home?