Tautology of the Skeptical Sinner

I came across two excellent opinion pieces.

One from the LA Times 
“The United States’ so-called war on drugs brings to mind the old saying that if you find yourself trapped in a deep hole, stop digging. Yet, last week, the Senate approved an aid package to combat drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America, with a record $400 million going to Mexico and $65 million to Central America.
The United States has been spending $69 billion a year worldwide for the last 40 years, for a total of $2.5 trillion, on drug prohibition — with little to show for it. Is anyone actually benefiting from this war? Six groups come to mind.”

And One from Matt Hutchens from the MPP
“For almost forty years, America has been engaged in a war which has cost us trillions of dollars and ruined the lives of millions of our citizens. We have been fighting against drugs in a street war across the country. The definition enemy combatant has changed through the course of this conflict, first encompassing only the smugglers and distributors, then growing to include users, and now reaching beyond our borders to the farmers in the developing world who produce the source crops. Today we are told that all these parties are contributing to the forces of Terror, and that the whole chain of enemy forces is complicit in a conspiracy against us. If this were true, though, wouldn’t we disarm our enemies by taking control of the economic forces that are the source of their power?”

Prohibition fails. Prohibition puts money in the hands of those who have no disregard for law, order, decency or justice. That money isn’t taxed, or accounted for. It’s laundered and used to buy guns. It’s used to corrupt law enforcement officers. It’s used to further spread the insidious influence of the drug gangs through violence, intimidation, with reckless disregard for the innocents who are unfortunate enough to get in the way.

Yet it isn’t drugs that create these monsters. It’s policy. Just like Mob violence over liquor gambling and prostitution has drastically waned since the laws regulating them have gotten less restrictive, the same effect will occur when politicians stop trying to “BE TOUGH ON CRIME” and start “Being SMART about crime”.

Billions of dollars a year are being wasted on fighting a war that just takes fathers away to prison, and puts dollars into the hands of crooks. The crooks eventually get taken down, and like the hydra, a dozen try to take the place of the severed head. After all, this is a simple matter of risk vs reward. The Risk is prison or death, the reward is riches - and when the ability to succeed in this bloody business is measured only by how willing to take that risk you are, it’s not surprising that those with nothing to lose are throwing their lives away on the chance that those riches can be theirs.

I’m not a drug user myself, and I really have no desire to be able to purchase narcotics legally. But the simple math is this- the cost of this war is too high. In blood and Tax dollars. Legalize it, regulate it, and tax it - then just like taxes from Alcohol, educate and rehabilitate excessive abusers.

We don’t have the money to burn on this morality crusade. Lets stop spending money on protecting us from us.

Both, apparently, found this story on Rush Limbaugh’s site.

“Just yesterday — this is not anything that hasn’t happened before but it just continued to happen. Just yesterday, we learned that owners of land will not be able to develop it in Montana because of a grouse, a grouse population.  The ultimate aim is to get the grouse put on the endangered species list so the owners of that property can’t do diddly-squat with it.  There’s oil underneath that land, and there’s an opportunity for developers to make residential areas out of it or what have you.  So there are people active in this country, doing everything they can to destroy the country’s ability to grow, to remain prosperous, and to remain a superpower.”

For those of you, like me, who prefer their news without frothing, the Denver Post has a more complete story here: http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_9589531

Short summary: The departing Bush administration are trying to open up more oil drilling sites in Montana, Colorado and Utah. Many of these sites are home to dwindling populations of native species, and as such, development of this land has environmentalists deeply troubled.

What it comes down to is we either break our dependence on oil or we break a few eggs to continue sating our need for gasoline. It truly is a shame that these lands are protected by innocent animals, and not some native human population we have no problem displacing. Or invading.

Mankind has been devouring this world since the dawn of time, if environmentalists are correct, and believe that mankind needs to stop doing irreperable harm to the ecology to avoid long-term, unforseen and devastating results, then we can’t just draw circles on the map and say “ok this part’s protected”.

The population of the U.S. is growing, and will continue to grow exponentially. Short of a pandemic that only affects the human population, we’re going to continue to adversely impact nature. Species will continue to become extinct and greed, sloth and indifference will speed up that process.

In the meantime, however, expending energy time and funding on trying to save every single piece of flora and fauna is going to be a) insanely futile b) insanely expensive. Does this world really miss the Dodo? The same liberal minds who support ecologically sound policy, are also thinking people who for the most part support the theory of evolution. (If not, they can just pray for a divine solution and peacefully go about their day). Nature will adapt as it always has.

We need a compromise. We can’t go willy nilly wiping out everything that stands in our way of a quick buck, but we also can’t realistically save everything specie on the planet, unless we cut population growth to zero. Immediately. (By the way, I’m a huge supporter of zero population growth - I just don’t see it happening any time soon)

So do we really need to protect ALL of these endagered species? Or should we give them a timetable to adapt or die?

And will the earth really miss the Sage Grouse? The Tambalacoque seems to be getting by just fine without the Dodo.

Responsible. Sane. Measured.

Sadly, the only ones getting the money to make noise about one view point or the other are extremists.

Initially I found it at http://www.emaxhealth.com/24/23009.html

But it was sourced from http://jaxconservativeradical.blogspot.com/2008/07/my-way-to-fund-medicare.html

emaxhealth haven’t approved my reply yet (Shock) but I visited the Jax and shared my opinion on his epiphany.

He writes:

“I have an idea where the Congress can discover some of the money needed to keep funding the medicare program at it’s present level.
Congress spends the following amounts of your tax dollars supporting America’s own genocide, abortion!
In 2003, Planned Parenthood Federation of America extinguished the lives of 244,628 unborn babies — making the organization more deadly than leukemia, brain cancer, skin cancer, diabetes, car accidents, Alzheimer’s disease, and HIV/AIDS combined.”

He also quotes some impressive dollar amounts that the US Government have paid to planned parenthood

“2003-2004 … $ 35.2 million in tax money
2002-2003 … $ 36.6 million in tax money
2001-2002 … $ 12.2 million in tax money
2000-2001 … $ 38.9 million in tax money
1999-2000 .. $ 59.5 million in tax money
1998-1999 … $125.8 million in tax money
1997-1998 … $ 42.1 million in tax money”

Source: JaxConsertive - I haven’t attempted to verify the information, it’s moot as far as I’m concerned. Here is my reply:

“And if these operations were paid for by the government, meaning that the women undergoing the procedure were unable to, the tax payers would no doubt have carry the cost of those unwanted children over a course of 18 years.

In McCain’s open to the public townhall meeting, a 61 year-old woman was arrested cited for trespassing on orders from the McCain security detail for carrying a sign that read McCain=Bush.  Carol Kreck received a ticket and her court date is set for July 23.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/7/18337/07170/283/547890

Wow - watched the video, she was cited for “tresspassing” on City Property (that she pays taxes for) carrying a sign, non-violent, peaceful expression of opinion.

Watch the video - send her to Gitmo and Waterboard the bitch, thats what McCain needs to do, Damn Communists.

*snicker* Watch this one get some spin LOL. Dumbasses.

Go Carol, Crack open a Bud Light baby, you may be past your prime, but when you shush injustice, you’re one sexy librarian… this Bud’s for you.

But no, they think that Obama is going to turn the USA into the USSA. (Clever play on words, I’m sure you’ll agree) - read the comments, the actual article is a very well written piece.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/07/do_liberals_love_america_too.html

I saw an Inconvenient Truth, and it was an excellent documentary, well presented and quite terrifying.

The media helpfully let us know each week of some other sign that the planet is warming up.

Those who propose that it is man’s impact on the atmosphere, similar to CFCs on the ozone layer, want us to adopt a radical shift in eco-policies, and they say we need to do it now.

The cost: They don’t talk about the specifics too much, but by getting rid of cheap but dirty energy like coal, the price of energy is going to go up. Guess who pays for that: You. Higher Electricity bills, even higher prices in the Grocery Store, in fact higher prices everywhere - the only thing sure to go down in price is cars - non-hybrid cars that is. Oh, and governments are going to pay for it using your taxes.

Fear is a great motivator, and having the population focusing on this end of days scenario is a good distraction from the other things we ought to be doing.

The reason I’m still skeptical is that we do not have accurate temperature records of the climate changes the earth has been through - we only have the last 250 years… we can draw conclusions based off archeological evidence and historical accounts of both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age - but we can’t directly corrolate the impact of the Industrial Revolution and the CO² we’ve pumped into the atmosphere compared to the solar cycles others say is the primary driver of climate change.

Why do most ancient cultures have The Great Flood in their mythos?

I am not a blind skeptic, there is a lot of evidence that man may be heating up the planet… but this planet’s been around a hell of a lot longer than we have, and she’s a tough old bitch.

I’m still on the fence. But if global warming were a stock would you buy or sell. http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/temperature-stock-report/

Then there’s the visual evidence http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/north-pole-ice-melt-460608

Found this over at De-conversion the original survey is here http://religions.pewforum.org/reports and coverage by  The Dallas Morning News

This is not a puzzling survey result.

As we all know, Atheists tend to be smart asses(Go on deny, dare ya). And Survey takers tend to not give a crap, especially about the little things like… thinking etc.

Question 1: “Sir what is your religious Affiliation?”
Atheist A: “I’m an Atheist”

Question 2: “Sir, would you say you believe in a personal god?”
Atheist A: “… Yeah… definitely…”

Question 3: “Sir, What do you call your personal god?”
Atheist A: “I pray exclusively to the flying spaghetti monster”

So the question begs, are they lumping Pastafarians into the Atheist camp? If so, those BASTARDS need to issue a retraction. I say we storm embassies and hold large chanting get-togethers (we could make smores) - on second thoughts, lets not… we don’t want to be copycats.

… or maybe they outsourced the survey takers to India.

During my day to day work, occasionally I’ll get an escalated call from our Indian call center.

“This customer only wants to speak to an American”

I take the call and I’ll always start off by saying “Thank you for your patience, your call has been transferred to me for further assistance. I am located in the U.S. but I am, in fact, English. I hope this is not a problem”

So far, it hasn’t been. And the caller will often say “I’m not racist, but I have a very hard time understanding those people” or “I’m not prejudiced, I just don’t trust those people with my personal information”

Newsflash: You are being racist. But is it justifiable?

I like a large number of my Indian Customer service reps. A good 10 or so have very good accents (One, Rachel, has a deliciously exotic accent that makes my toes curl), are extremely sharp and customer-focused people, almost to a fault. Yes, it’s true, some of the others make me want to stab myself in the face with an icepick. It’s not that they’re dumb… most have college degrees, but the cultural divide is SO vast that it sometimes feels like I’m trying to teach a dog about quantum mechanics.

That’s on the “front end” i.e. the customer service representatives who talk directly to the customers, but what about the “back end” - those outsourced employees who handle account research, mail handling and payments? Well - from the company’s perspective, the bottom line looks healthy. But in my unbiased and reasoned opinion, they’re a bunch of F&^#tards who could barely find their own a$$ with two hands and a flashlight.

How I know this is partly because of my role as escalated customer service. Our customers aren’t calling in to say “Hey! I just wanted to say that I’ve had my card for 6 months with no problems. Thanks! <click>” no… our customers are calling in to know why we F&&^ed up their account. Guess who? Bing.

But the straw that broke the camels back for me was when our own escalated research team were approached to clean up thousands of accounts the Indian team had chronically hosed. The real plum - they had to work “on project” - i.e. no credit for doing the work would be traced back to them, it would be like India miraculously woke up one evening morning and all of their f&c#-ups had vanished!

The real kicker - They allowed the research team to do it during time-and-a-half overtime. Yeah. That’s really saving money. Dumbasses. Once again, Classic Corporate Mentality: Penny Smart, Dollar DUMB

Skep

Soon to be followed by .duh

According to CNN http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/25/domain.names/index.html

Apparently the most sought after domain name in this new land grab is going to be “dot.sex”
The least popular? I’m not sure, but my prediction: “ionlyhave.sex”

First I thought I was ambivalent about this decision, but then I was in two minds about that initial thought as well. It may help the adult industry find more available domain names, but more than likely all of the speculators looking to turn a buck will be camping the Registrars like only an ex-everquest player could do and buy chunks of domains that relate to the major players in the adult world.

If they’re smart, instead of doing a first come first served virtual land grab, they should auction the domains themselves a la ebay (ooo ebay.sex! - lawsuit waiting to happen!), themselves.

An advanced, unauthorized review of their new thriller: Alone in the Dark, has apparently created a wonderful PR experience for Atari. One site broke the pre-release review publication with a “negative review” (5 out of 10 - that’s not negative, thats “meh”) in dutch.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53249

How DARE journalists warn the public in advance that a much hyped product that has a zero return policy is in fact a steaming pile of fecal matter and thereby interfere with a corporations bottom line. God forbid the game publisher should actually wait and release a game that’s original and worth playing.

Pre launch, this game was generating a lot of excitement:
http://buttonbasher.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/alone-in-the-dark/

The good news is that with all of this publicity, gamers will hopefully be put off purchasing the title and rightly so. The hilarity is that this one little Dutch site, that’s IN dutch, would probably not have impacted sales nearly as much if Atari had just quietly black-balled them. That’s right, boys and girls, classic Corporate strategy at work: Greedy AND Dumb.

 A while back, I was writing freelance for a gaming magazine. I panned a game called Master of Orion 3 in a review I wrote, mainly because out of the box it was a pile of steaming fecal matter. I awarded it a magnanimous 18%, which the editor upgraded to a 30 something, because he didn’t want to upset the publishers. But to his credit, he published the review intact.

So… Dutch Computer Games Reviewing Website no one had heard of before all this. Crack open a bud light, we salute you. You may have a funny accent, but when it comes to fighting the good fight against corporate sell outs, you tell it like it is.

Oh, and an advisory to any Game Publisher who plans on sending me an advance review copy, if it sucks, I’ll break your embargo to tell the 3 people who visit my site regularly world… and sue you for wasting my time.

And it will be in English, mother-f^@#*rs, not dutch. How’d you like THEM apples?

Skep

What a very well thought out and written article at the 15 minute Genius

His/Her question: “But then you have to ask them the question, ‘Why is murder wrong?’ At this the most common answer is because of humanity being of importance. Aetheists would say humans shouldn’t kill humans because humans don’t have the right to. But where would they get or not get this right?”

The ten commandments essentially boil down to one. “Thou Shalt not steal”. Taking something that is not yours without the permission of the owner is wrong. Unless we have that rule, human society would be brutalized by the strong taking away from the weak. We are a society, for a society to function, there has to be some order. But who gets to establish that order?

Early religious leaders realized this, and controlled the masses by letting them know that there was an all powerful being who would punish them for eternity if they broke society’s rules (This was before CSI).

The majority of the moral code in all religions is essentially the rules for a society where the weak are protected from the strong.

Great minds came up with the Bill of Rights. But even then, some still practiced slavery, most mysogyny, but their hearts were in the right place, and the path they illuminated sets us off in the right direction.

Why aetheists are so keen in pointing out the flaws in religion is not (necessarily) to feel superior to those of faith. But to get across the message, you can’t rely on faith to solve this world’s problems.

As an agnostic, I struggle occasionally. I respect people of faith for following sound moral guidelines, but despair because some of these guidelines are so out of date, and taken only as it suits.

Xtians, for the most part, are homophobic, because Leviticus states it’s an abomination. So why don’t we see protests of Red Lobster? Because it no longer suits them to follow those rules.

As we as humans move forward, we will see more and more that the crux of religion is man controlling man through “you must have faith”, “trust in the lord”, “judgement will come” are all ways of saying “Forget about what is wrong in your life right now, just be good, and it will all work out”

I cannot truly say that I don’t believe in the supreme maker. But I do believe in mankind’s ability, and propensity to avert its’ eyes from things that need changing.

Skep