I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.
Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebearers, and true to our founding documents.
So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans...
Spengler: ... The Gazans cannot be economically viable on their 139 square miles of sand, and the humiliation of perpetual dependency and poverty makes a political solution unattainable.
The international community could help most by finding better homes for a few hundred thousand Gazans... (!?!)
Hamas indeed respected their side of the ceasefire, except on those occasions early on when Israel carried out major offensives in the West Bank. In the last two months, the ceasefire broke down with Israelis killing several Palestinians and resulting in the response of Hamas. In other words, Hamas has not carried out an unprovoked attack throughout the period of the cease-fire.
In order to reach the top colleges, certainly SAT's, AP exams, and high student-rankings are valuable assets, all. But the Ivy Leagues have plenty of applicants with the highest scores. I would argue that of greater importance is our character, particularly our leadership and our ability to contribute positively and constructively to our academic community. But even greater still, we need a certain fortune; that fortune which comes as a result of our sincerity and our ability to respect and appreciate the foundations upon which we stand: Fortune is, in part then, a function of Gratitude and of the will to nourish the roots of benevolence.
My friends, we have -- we have come to the end of a long journey. The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly.
A little while ago, I had the honor of calling Senator Barack Obama to congratulate him. [BOOING]
Please. To congratulate him on being elected the next president of the country that we both love.
In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.
YouTube
Barack Obama's victory speech
Full video and text
I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he�s fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nation�s promise in the months ahead...
In 1990, Saro-Wiwa started to dedicate himself to the amelioration of the problems of the oil producing regions of the Niger Delta. Focusing on his homeland, Ogoni, he launched a non-violent movement for social and ecological justice. In this role he attacked the oil companies and the Nigerian government accusing them of waging an ecological war against the Ogoni and precipitating the genocide of the Ogoni people. He was so effective, that by 1993 the oil companies had to pull out of Ogoni. This cost him his life.
walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not,
about to speak or speaking.
All about us is noise.
All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din,
each one of our ancestors on our tongues.
Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform,
patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky;
A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."
We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth,
whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will
of someone and then others who said,
"I need to see what's on the other side;
I know there's something better down the road."
We need to find a place where we are safe;
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain, that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,
picked the cotton and the lettuce,
built brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign;
The figuring it out at kitchen tables.
Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."
Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.
What if the mightiest word is love,
love beyond marital, filial, national.
Love that casts a widening pool of light.
Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
anything can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim,
on the cusp -- praise song for
walking forward in that light.
At last week's North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Chinese automaker BYD, - which is backed by MidAmerican Energy Holdings, a Berkshire Hathaway Inc. company - unveiled a model it claims can go 60 miles on electric power only. It is scheduled for release sometime this year.
The company also makes batteries and screens for mobile devices, among other things.
General Motors is planning a 2010 release for the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt. The car can go up to 40 miles on a single charge before using any gasoline. When the battery is depleted, a small gasoline engine activates to power the electric drive system. The car is expected to retail for around $40,000.
BYD also has an electric-only auto in the works for 2011 that aims to go 250 miles on a fully charged battery.
There are safeguards to put in place, actions to take, costly mistakes to avoid, and even opportunities to be had, so that you are protected during the bad times and prepared to prosper when things take a turn for the better. No matter what situation you�re in, you will find a plan of action and the answers to your questions about: * Credit * Retirement *Savings and Spending*Real Estate
*Paying for College* Protecting Your Family ...
Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.
About Sir Ken Robinson
Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types�
Some officials say the troops are needed to train up an Afghan army capable of taking over security duties as soon as possible, to secure the border against infiltration and to watch over presidential elections due this year.
But Afghan people are wary of the injection of more soldiers into their already war-ravaged country, where attacks have increased as the numbers of international troops have risen.
"You don't need more troops," said Hamidullah Tarzi, a finance minister in the 1989-1992 communist regime.
"You need construction, developing the economy and jobs," he said, listing key complaints among Afghans sceptical of the results of foreign intervention.
The main "mistake" of the past years of UN intervention in Afghanistan has been the focus on the military effort and not on the development and diplomacy needed to persuade people to buy into the new system, said analyst Waheed Mujda.
The heavy-handed tactics of the international troops towards ordinary Afghan villagers and civilian casualties in military operations against insurgents had fed public anger and disillusionment, he said.
It would have helped if Obama had the courage to talk about what everyone in the Middle East was talking about. No, it wasn't the US withdrawal from Iraq. They knew about that. They expected the beginning of the end of Guantanamo and the probable appointment of George Mitchell as a Middle East envoy was the least that was expected. Of course, Obama did refer to "slaughtered innocents", but these were not quite the "slaughtered innocents" the Arabs had in mind.
... The history of the theory that blood type determines personality is actually a dark one. In 1900, Austrian scientist Karl Landsteiner discovered the four blood types. Like 19th-century scientists who used brain size (the larger the brain, the more advanced) to propagate theories of racial and gender superiority, many (white) scientists used the blood type theory as a way to push forward their own ideas of racial supremacy. Scientists from the west suggested (falsely, obviously) that Asians were inferior and sub-human since the vast majority of them�like animals�had type B blood.
For a picture of the US real estate crisis, imagine New Orleans wrecked by Hurricane Katrina, and before the waters even begin to recede, a second Katrina hits.
The 1,120,000 lost US retail jobs in 2008 are a signal that the second stage of the real estate bust is about to hit the economy. This time it will be commercial real estate--shopping malls, strip malls, warehouses, and office buildings. As businesses close and rents decline, the ability to service the mortgages on the over-built commercial real estate disappears.
Dear Mr. President:
Like FDR three-quarters of a century ago, you're taking charge at a moment when all the old certainties have vanished, all the conventional wisdom been proved wrong. We're not living in a world you or anyone else expected to see. Many presidents have to deal with crises, but very few have been forced to deal from Day One with a crisis on the scale America now faces.
So, what should you do?
ifamericansknew.org
If Americans Knew
What every American needs to know about Israel/Palestine
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world�s major sources of instability. Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation.
It is the goal of "If Americans Knew" to provide full and accurate information on this critical issue, and on our power � and duty � to bring a resolution.
... But this is just the beginning of Obama's political education and Wright is just one of many weapons that will be used to bludgeon the well-meaning candidate into submission. By inauguration day, he'll have been stripped of his dignity, his aspirations, and his identity as a black American. In other words, he should be primed and ready to accept his duties as the next President of the United States.
... the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, "Israel's right to exist" ... the opposite is true: that Palestine's right to exist was canceled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. ... The infamous "Plan D" resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing." Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon, "What shall we do with the Arabs?" Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, �Expel them'...
Every subsequent "war" Israel has waged has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the theft of more and more land. The lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in 1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab states had struck first. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Schlaim, Noam Chomsky, the late Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Yuri Avnery, Ilan Pappe and Norman Finklestein have dispatched this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called zionism. "It seems," wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe on 2 January, "that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system � Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology � in its most consensual and simplistic variety � has allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanize the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide]."
We cannot know what the Islamic Courts might have become had the US engaged them diplomatically or offered aid instead of rinse and repeat free fire zones. But the consequences could hardly have been much worse than they are now.
In its bloody attempt to rescue Somalia from 'fundamentalism' the US and its Ethiopian proxy have paved the way for the violent political fragmentation in which al-Qaeda thrives. While Western politicians dream of further humanitarian interventions elsewhere, it is salutary to pause and reflect on the catastrophe inflicted on yet another country that had to be destroyed before it could be saved.
Ethiopia is backing the Somali interim government against Somalia's Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). The BBC News website logs the two countries' troubled relationship.
The Union of Islamic Courts controlled most of southern Somalia for six months after winning a battle for the capital, Mogadishu, in June. The US say they are linked to terrorist groups but they deny that... Almost all Somalis are Muslim but some are wary of the hardline elements.
The Islamist group that has controlled much of Somalia for the last six months has been defeated after an Ethiopian-backed government offensive. But there are fears that hostilities could still engulf the region in conflict. So where does each side get its money, weapons and moral support?
. . . What is behind the genocides of the twentieth century if it is not the egocentrism and insecurity accompanying the affirmation of the individual's autonomy which characterizes modernity ? The temptation to project onto the other what is ours is strong. And a Rwandan proverb tells us : "Nta wiyanga nk'uwanga undi (Nobody hates himself more than he who hates others)".
In their quest to surpass, artists open themselves up to all influences and facilitate the removal of projections. They thus explore a fraternity in which the identities of each and everyone are no longer the centre of human identities : not a fraternity of blood, but a fraternity of sharing.
January 06, 2009 -- The small dead bodies were laid next to one another on the tiled floor of the morgue corridor, the blood drained from their cheeks. One had a bandage still wrapped around his head, another lay with his mouth half-open in his oversized, bloodstained clothes.
Shock and awe is a military doctrine and a method of unconventional warfare that attempts to destroy an adversary's will to fight through spectacular displays of power. Its authors label it a subset of rapid dominance, a doctrine that advocates defeating an adversary by swift action against all aspects of their ability to resist, rather than by strictly military forces. It is a product of the National Defense University of the United States, and has been notably applied in the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
However, "shock" and "awe" are both synonyms of terror. To that extent, or from the perspective of the insurgent forces fighting conventional forces in military theatres such as the Middle East who frequently use terrorist doctrines or methods, or both, shock and awe is difficult to distinguish from terrorism because of the large number of indiscriminate civilian deaths. Mortality due to violence in Iraq since 2003, for example, has been due to coalition forces far more than insurgents.
I think that as Americans, we must also make a clear distinction between "guilt" and "responsibility." The Al Qaeda group is indeed guilty of committing mass murder. But the United States government is largely responsible for creating the conditions for reactionary Islamic fundamentalism to flourish. During Reagan's administration, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) provided over three billion dollars to finance the mujahadeen's guerilla war against the Soviet Union's military presence in Afghanistan. The CIA used Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, or secret police, to equip and train tens of thousands of Islamic fundamentalists in the tactics of guerilla warfare. . . .
There is a clear link between 9/11 and the shameful political maneuvering committed by the U.S. at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, only days before the terrorist attacks. There the U.S. government opposed the definition of slavery as "a crime against humanity." It refused to acknowledge the historic and contemporary effects of colonialism and racial segregation on the underdevelopment and oppression of the non-European world. The majority of dark humanity is saying to the United States that racism and militarism are not the solutions to the world's major problems. Transnational capitalism and the repressive neoliberal policies of structural adjustment represent a dead end for the developing world. We can only end the threat of terrorism by addressing constructively the routine violence of poverty, hunger, and exploitation that characterize the daily existence of several billion people on this planet. Racism is, in the final analysis, only another form of violence. . . .
The cover of the newest Nation Magazine depicts a painting of Obama's inauguration rendered and submitted by a member of the online web forum DailyKos. The painting is in no way historically accurate, as Thurgood Marshall is depicted delivering the oath, but in every meaningful way, the artwork is spot-on truth. Susan B. Anthony is there, and here, as is Nelson Mandela, and Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr., and Barbara Jordan, and Malcolm X, and Henry David Thoreau, and Gandhi, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and down at the front by the rail, there and here are four little girls from Birmingham who died in fire long ago. They are all on that podium today. We were all on that podium today...
"... the second batteries for the EV-1 were from Ovonics. It is described in �Who Killed the Electric car� The nice gray haired gentalman who invented these batteries. GM owned 51% of the company, controlling interest, and they sold that to EXXON! Who knows what has happened since, all we know is the EV-1 was DESTROYED after that sale."
The first generation EV1s used lead-acid batteries in 1996 (as model year 1997) and a second generation batch with nickel metal hydride batteries in 1999. Some of the Gen 1 EV1s were refurbished and upgraded to Panasonic lead-acid batteries.
The Gen 1 cars got 55 to 75 miles (90 to 120 km) per charge with the Delco-manufactured lead-acid batteries, 75 to 100 miles (120-to-160 km) with the Gen 2 Panasonic lead-acid batteries, and 75 to 150 miles (120 to 240 km) per charge with Gen 2 Ovonic nickel-metal hydride batteries. Recharging took as much as eight hours for a full charge (although one could get an 80% charge in one to three hours)...
... In conclusion, Jacob was victorious in taking responsibility for
the indemnity course to pay for Abraham's mistake. By using his wisdom
for the sake of God's Will, Jacob triumphed as an individual in his
struggle with Esau to win the birthright. He entered Haran and, as a
family, triumphed in a twenty-one-year struggle with his uncle Laban
to win the birthright. On his way back from Haran to Canaan, Jacob was
victorious in the fight with the angel. He was the first fallen man to
fulfill the indemnity condition to restore dominion over the angel.
Thereupon, he received the name "Israel,"75(Gen. 32:28)
signifying that he set the pattern and laid the groundwork upon which
the chosen people would be established. After returning to Canaan with
these victories, Jacob won Esau's heart, and together they fulfilled
the indemnity condition to remove the fallen nature.
Jacob thus victoriously completed the model course to bring Satan to
submission. Moses, Jesus, and even the people of Israel would walk
this course after the pattern set by Jacob. The history of Israel can
serve as a good historical source for understanding the course to
bring Satan to submission on the national level. For this reason, it
is central to the study of the providence of restoration.
Anat Biletzki
Grieving Gaza
I write as an Israeli. Some of us, as Israelis, are grieving over what we have become. Blaming the other side with a roster of rehearsed clich�s cannot mitigate the grief...
Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff
ANALYSIS / The ball is now in Hamas' court in Gaza
Twenty-two days after launching its campaign against Hamas, Israel announced on Saturday it was pulling the plug. But the cabinet's decision to declare a unilateral cease-fire while maintaining a military presence in areas seized by the Israel Defense Forces is only a conditional cease-fire.
Michael Heart
SONG FOR GAZA:
"We will not go down"
My original intention to donate proceeds from the sale of the MP3 to charity has been complicated by technical matters; therefore, I have decided to make the song available free of charge. I would like to request that after downloading the song from this page, you kindly donate directly to a charity or an organization dedicated to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people. Worthy of note is UNWRA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), which has been helping Palestinian refugees since their dispossession in 1949. Please click here to donate through them: http://www.un.org/unrwa/
. . . This worst-case scenario may unfold unless Hamas meets the three conditions imposed by the �international community� � a technical term referring to the US government and whoever goes along with it. For Palestinians to be permitted to peek out of the walls of their Gaza dungeon, Hamas must recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept past agreements, in particular, the Road Map of the Quartet (the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations).
The hypocrisy is stunning. Obviously, the United States and Israel do not recognise Palestine or renounce violence. Nor do they accept past agreements. While Israel formally accepted the Road Map, it attached 14 reservations that eviscerate it. To take just the first, Israel demanded that for the process to commence and continue, the Palestinians must ensure full quiet, education for peace, cessation of incitement, dismantling of Hamas and other organisations, and other conditions; and even if they were to satisfy this virtually impossible demand, the Israeli cabinet proclaimed that �the Roadmap will not state that Israel must cease violence and incitement against the Palestinians.�
Jerusalem Post
Ahmadinejad: Bombs won't fix world
... The Iranian president also said he did not deny the Holocaust but that he merely "raised questions on it."
"I said that in World War Two sixty million people were killed. They were all humans with self-respect. Why (do we talk of) just six million? If it happened, it is a historic event, so why do they not allow for an independent investigation? Moreover, how are the Palestinians at fault? These questions need to be answered," said Ahmadinejad.
Surah 41. Ha Mim Sajdah: Revelations Well Expounded
http://www.ishwar.com/islam/holy_quran_(pickthall)/sura041.html
34
The good deed and the evil deed are not alike. Repel the evil deed
with one which is better, then lo! he, between whom and thee there was
enmity (will become) as though he was a bosom friend.
35
But none is granted it save those who are steadfast, and none is
granted it save the owner of great happiness.
Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi) -- September 29, 2006
Posted to the web September 29, 2006 -- Emmanuel Milingo, the renegade former Catholic archbishop of Lusaka, remained defiant on Wednesday, scoffing at the Vatican announcement that he had been excommunicated.
Milingo told a news conference in Washington, USA, that he would continue his campaign to force the Church to accept married priests, Reuters reports.
"We do not accept this excommunication and lovingly return it to His Holiness, our beloved Pope Benedict XVI, to reconsider it and withdraw it and join us in recalling married priests to service once again," Milingo said.
"I'm not excommunicated. Who says? No, I'm not excommunicated. I'm in line with God."
For the past several years Dr. Pak has been working on some projects to raise a large endowment fund for the continued operation of the Korean Cultural Foundation, the Little Angels and the Universal Ballet. In addition he was trying to set up a new foundation called "The Korean Peoples Unification Foundation" in order to promote and realize the dream of the peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula. He had many other ideas and programs that he wanted to realize for the spiritual and ethical revitalization of the Korean people. As anyone who is acquainted with Dr. Pak knows he is an irrepressible man of action to whom retirement or idleness is an impossibility.
For these reasons he was desperately pursuing some ill advised and ill-fated fundraising schemes introduced to him by some church members. To make a long story short Dr. Pak became a victim of international criminal scam artists who defrauded him of all of his money with the promise of huge financial support to the foundations.
American Clergy Leadership Conference
Exchanging the Cross for the Crown
Christian Leaders to Carry Cross,
Then Take It Down in Effort for Peace and Reconciliation
Elementary school students' sexual abuse of their peers for more than two years in a southeastern city has gripped the nation. Administrators and teachers are blamed for not preventing such crimes while public concern over children's easy access to pornography is growing.
On Wednesday, a committee of parents, teachers and women's rights groups announced that several gang rape cases had taken place in an elementary school in Daegu involving more than 100 underage assaulters and victims since 2006.
HONG KONG - The practice of an older man taking a young, school-aged Japanese girl out on a "date" in exchange for money in Japan is referred to as enjo kosai, or "compensated dating". To say that enjo kosai is prostitution or - in a Western view - child prostitution, may not always be accurate. The date may not necessarily include sex, and the inherent cultural complexities can strain perceptions of the practice...
Human sexuality, especially male sexuality, is polymorphous, or utterly wild (far more so than animal sexuality). Men have had sex with women and with men; with little girls and young boys; with a single partner and in large groups; with total strangers and immediate family members; and with a variety of domesticated animals. They have achieved orgasm with inanimate objects such as leather, shoes, and other pieces of clothing, through urinating and defecating on each other (interested readers can see a photograph of the former at select art museums exhibiting the works of the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe); by dressing in women's garments; by watching other human beings being tortured; by fondling children of either sex; by listening to a woman's disembodied voice (e.g., "phone sex"); and, of course, by looking at pictures of bodies or parts of bodies.
There is little, animate or inanimate, that has not excited some men to orgasm. Of course, not all of these practices have been condoned by societies -- parent-child incest and seducing another's man's wife have rarely been countenanced -- but many have, and all illustrate what the unchanneled, or in Freudian terms, the "un-sublimated," sex drive can lead to.
By and large, it is society, not the individual, that chooses whether homosexuality will be widely practiced. A society's values, much more than individual tendencies, determine the extent of homosexuality in that society. Thus, we can have great sympathy for the exclusively homosexual individual while strongly opposing social acceptance of homosexuality. In this way we retain both our hearts and our values...
Even if the majority of men became incapable of making love to women, it would still not be normal. Men are designed to make love to women, and vice versa. The eye provides an appropriate analogy: If the majority of the population became blind, blindness would still be abnormal. The eye was designed to see. That is why I choose the third response -- that homosexuality is unhealthy. This is said, however, with the understanding that in the psychological arena, "illness" can be a description of one's values rather than of objective science (which may simply not exist in this area)...
MELVILLE, N.Y. -- A New York man who said he donated sperm to a female co-worker as a friendly gesture and sent presents and cards to the child over the years likely will owe child support for the college-bound teenager, according to a judge's ruling.
... Gay or straight, we are all becoming homosexual because we cannot achieve the spiritual union or permanent intimacy that we really crave.
Sex is mistaken for love and replaces it, thereby assuming a deceptive importance. We are obsessed with it. Because it cannot satisfy our real need, we continue to up the ante and become kinkier.
We judge people strictly by their sex appeal and are cruelly indifferent to those who are not physically attractive. Women develop eating disorders. The aged naturally are treated with contempt.
We compensate for failure to find permanent love by making a public display of our promiscuity. This is supposed to affirm our freedom and identity. TV and movies testify to this perverse trend. In many cases homosexuals now are defining heterosexual norms. ("Sex and the City"; "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"; "Kinsey: Let's Talk About Sex")
We are in constant denial about our malaise and the forces that enslave us. . (See my "Is this Gay Behavior Sick? http://www.savethemales.ca/201101.html )
In contrast, heterosexuality is monogamous, exclusive and private. It is concerned with procreation, nurturing, and personal development.
The denomination has seen a steady stream of defections since its decision to consecrate as a bishop an openly partnered homosexual. That decision was reaffirmed this summer at a national meeting of the denomination.
THE INFUSION OF SEX INTO POPULAR CULTURE
HAS BEEN SO SEAMLESS THAT SOME CRITICS
ARE CALLING IT A PUBLIC-HEALTH CRISIS
Lorna Martin at Negril Beach
Sex, Sand and Sugar Mummies
in a Caribbean beach fantasy
A controversial new West End play will explore sex tourism in Jamaica, where lonely women flock for flings with young black men. But are these holiday romances sleazy or simply harmless?
In "The Overhauling of Straight America: Waging Peace Part Two" written in 1987, it outlines the recommended steps to be taken in order for America to accept homosexuality as normal... "To desensitize the public is to help it view homosexuality with indifference instead of with keen emotion...if you can only get them to think that it is just another thing, with a shrug of their shoulders then your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won..."
To bring a balance of resource sites I recommend visiting Changing Worldviews' Issues Library under Dr. Christopher Wolfe's and Dr. Warren Throckmorton's interviews with us for links such as People Can Change, and Is Homosexuality Genetic?
There will be those who design machines with values that don't comply with regulation, but this threat is best met by putting resources into the development of complying AIs that can help detect and eliminate non-complying AIs. This is very similar to Kurzweil's own prescription for accelerating development of defensive technologies for genetic engineering and nanotechnology. He makes clear that such defenses are very difficult but that the problem must be solved to avoid a catastrophe. The same logic applies to defenses against pathological AI: very difficult but necessary.
. . . Ray Kurzweil has advocated regulation of biotechnology and nanotechnology, but appears to be pessimistic about regulation of AI. In The Singularity is Near, he writes "But there is no purely technical strategy that is workable in this area, because greater intelligence will always find a way to circumvent measures that are the product of a lesser intelligence." I think the answer is to design AI to not want to harm humans (I think SIAI agrees with this, although we disagree on the details).
Kurzweil also writes that AI will be "intimately embedded in our bodies and brains" and hence "it will reflect our values because it will be us." But the values of some humans have led to much misery for other humans. If some humans are radically more intelligent than others and retain all their human competitive instincts, this could create a society that the vast majority will not want. If they are given a choice. Meetings like the Singularity Summit should help educate the public about the ethical choices they face with new technologies.
... Senegal has lowest AIDS and CANCER incidence in the world because the soil there has the highest selenium content. Neighbouring countries has a very high AIDS rate, and very low soil selenium.
... Though far from proven, it is possible that the research for a polio vaccine created AIDS. We know that the monkey tissue cultures used to develop the polio vaccine (for which Ender recieved the Nobel Prize in 1954, the same year Jonas Salk used the technique to develop the first working vaccine) introduced a number of simian virii (SV’s) into the human population on a large scale for the first time. It is known now, for example, that SV40 went undetected in the first years of the polio vaccine, contributing to many patients developing cancer later in life. This, too, was an unintended consequence–SV40 went undetected because is was unknown at the time, and thus, impossible to test for. There is some indication that AIDS may have been caused similarly: by introducing a simian virus into a large human population, early polio vaccine trials in the Belgian Congo may have provided the perfect environment for such a simian virus to jump the species barrier and mutate into HIV as we know it today. To date, this theory has not yet been properly investigated, so conclusive evidence is lacking.
It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind,
That you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and therefore unto yourself.
And for that wrong committed must you knock and wait a while unheeded at the gate of the blessed.
Like the ocean is your god-self;
It remains for ever undefiled.
And like the ether it lifts but the winged. Even like the sun is your god-self;
It knows not the ways of the mole nor seeks it the holes of the serpent.
But your god-self dwells not alone in your being.
Much in you is still man, and much in you is not yet man,
But a shapeless pigmy that walks asleep in the mist searching for its own awakening.
And of the man in you would I now speak.
For it is he and not your god-self nor the pigmy in the mist, that knows crime and the punishment of crime. . .