green

Kiddo, I think I can see what you are up to. I spent a couple of periods of my life sowing my wild oats and deliberately choosing to investigate the most immediate and certainly the most sensual and the most shallow pleasures. Although I regret none of my bad behaviour I am inclined to believe that the intelligent individuals who choose to jump into an extreme form of behaviour - whether they choose to be libertines or anchorites - are propelled by issues of emotional damage. It ain't merely a philosophical exercise and you must recognise this and you must, on the short term, take precautions! You must protect yourself against pregnancy and STDs. You do not wish to lumber yourself with the guilt of an abortion nor do you wish to lumber yourself with 9 months of pregnancy and then the issue of your future as balanced against this emotionally loaded business of a baby. And of course the STD question has become increasingly sinister since the apprearance of AIDS and those variants of chlamydia which can give us cervical cancer. I must confess that I was lucky; I got to behave badly during those golden years when birth control was fairly au point and AIDS didn't yet exist in the human race. I think that what I am anxious to relay to you is that you must maintain your intellectual focus. Your earlier engagements on this site were discussions about political and (implied) economic theories. You must continue to be engaged in and deliberately exploit the materials made available to you at your university. You must do this cold-heartedly and callously. The only way that you will catapult yourself out of Shitsburg and into the real world is by winning a post-graduate scholarship. Sow your wild oats. I think that this is a phase that some of us who have felt ourselves to be marginalised for one reason or another will profit by exploring. I know that I certainly did. My only advice to you is that you cover your ass during this period. Later on you will need to consult with a mental dentist or two. This is no big deal. It is kinda interesting.:eek:

Sounds like a pretty nice group of individuals whom you are describing in the above-quoted post, Cusano. Sounds like a well read, intellectually curious, kindly disposed, relaxed group of individuals. I am looking forward to our party on the beach. I know it's gonna be some kind of big fun. Yep, there is gonna be some atheists there, some secular humanists, and there is gonna be a bunch of Christians, too. Two Canadians from, well, you know, Soviet Canuckistan, are planning on showing up. If we are lucky we will get some full Semites, eh. The incomplete kind who may be Jewish or Arab. Now, let us get down to business. You comment that 'Jesus said that we shouldn't be surprised if "the world hates us for His name's sake...."' (Your quote is, by the way, incoherent; this would be due to your careless attention to written grammar.) In fact, Christianity is no longer a beleagered religion; it is has the widest population base world wide with Islam coming in second. This would indicate that the world no longer hates Christians for their beliefs; the glaring exceptions at this time of writing are those countries which are owned by Islamic fundamentalists. Your own country, the United States, is overwhelmingly Christian. This does mean that the name and teachings of Jesus are recognised in this part of the world by an overwhelming majority. To employ such a quote in order to imply that Christian beliefs are under attack, whether it be by Muslim terrorists, atheists, Christian liberals, or any individuals who do not belong to the Christian fundamentalist Right is both manipulative and specious. I am, moreover, baffled by both your often exhibited foul temper and your equally often displayed lack of generosity towards your fellow Christians. To tell you the truth, I don't get it. I would have thought that you would be happy to see so many folks taking the trouble to write into this thread in order to say that they, too, count themselves as Christians, that they, too, believe in God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Instead you choose to spend your time damaging these people and belittling their beliefs. This is not the best way to spread the Word, kiddo. This is not a good marketing technique, is it? 'A soft answer turneth away wrath' or so they say. Browbeating never works unless you can blend this in with the rest of the Manchurean Candidate techniques.

So, for an answer on the socialism question you must look to Russia according to Cusano. Well, this is a comment from an individual who is apparently lacking basic information on history and economic thought. What was practiced in the USSR was Communism under a series of cruel and often incompetant totalitarian regimes. Moreover, this system was transposed on a third-world country which up to that point had a feudal system of illiterate peasant serfs and often barely literate landowners. Many, many sucessful democratic economies practice a modified form of socialism, a fusion of capitalism and socialism. In so doing these countries seek to control the damage that unharnessed capitalism can wreck on the middle and lower classes and yet, by controlling socialism too, encourage the creativity and the business acumen of the citizens. You may wish to examine the countries which comprise the European Common Market, Cusano, and Canada, the Scandinavian countries, Australia, and New Zealand.

Oh, the my God is better than your God statement! How refreshingly juvenile. This reminds me of my schoolyard era and that was a long, long time ago. :rolleyes

And what is wrong with socialism? (Perhaps you are confusing socialism with totalitarianism, eh.)

Cusano, you have chosen to display your beliefs on this thread and thus they are open for discussion. It does not follow that TOM must display his beliefs and he has chosen to keep these to himself. What is wrong with that?

So who does have the "right" to marriage, then?

Yow! I am so glad to hear from you, grrl. I have been wondering how you have been getting on for the longest time now. I know I coulda PM-ed you or e-mailed you but I didn't want yer husband to get into the info exchange. Your latest news is very good news. and:clap2: from Green, eh. Please keep us in the loop.

I have had gay friends, both men and women, ever since I was in my late teens. I am now 57. I can say that none of my friends chose to be gay. Why, some of the older ones even got married and had kids. Some of them got beaten up and some of them quit their jobs or wanted to because of the harrassment. It is much more difficult to be homosexual than it is to be straight, and the teenage years are especially painful. Those are the years when we are all most anxious to belong, to blend in.... I have been told that the rate of suicide among gay teens is much higher than it is among straight kids. This did not surprise me. Nor was I surprised when the results of various scientific studies indicated that sexual orientation is not a lifestyle choice but something with which we are born. My gay friends have often told me stories of preferring to play with the toys and games of the opposite sex when they were very small. For any heterosexual to announce that homosexuality is only a perverse lifestyle choice borders on the irrational. If you find yourself unable to go to bed with someone of the same sex, why do you think anyone else is able to perversely and carelessly make this choice? Especially when they know that they are not going to have an easy time of it! One of my closest friends once said to me that life was much easier for us heterosexuals. He said, "you have a map. Each one of us has to make his own."

Hello to everyone. I am one of those atheists; I am an atheist with liberal values who lives in Toronto, Canada. This is a real nice, cosy, mellow thread - quite different from the usual Rant & Raves threads that I tend to frequent.:rolleyes Synicalchick, I have been enjoying following your banding stories. I could really relate to the stuff about the kitties. I have a cat that likes to sit on my port site, too. :phanvan This was a big concern when I was newly banded.

Certain Christians are refusing to recognise the civil rights of homosexuals to same-sex civil marriages.

Gadget, there is a very big difference between and Cusano; you don't lose your temper and you are never impolite. When confronted with ideas and theories that differ from your own you are interested in instructing others on your beliefs and presenting the information which underpins these. This is cool. You never insult anyone. This, too, is cool.:clap2:

I want to come to the Cusano fest. I figure that because I am half Jewish and half Scottish (and a few French ancestors, too) - the bagpipes, yuh know! - and all liberal that I will fit in.:heh: My drinks of choice are scotch and claret. And because Cusano is confused about my gender I will wear trousers and a chiffon blouse.:faint: Oy gewalt, bring on the completed bagels and let the skirl of the pipes begin!

Thanks for the good wishes. My total weight loss has been 30 lbs and I have gone from a size 18W to a size 14 pant. I weighed myself for the first time in 31 years the morning of the operation.

Hi from Green. I am pleased to hear that you are taking care of the birth control and sexual disease bizness. I have to admit that I spent a kinda irregular life during my 20s and early 30s. The reasons for this were very complex and I will not bother to drag all my own history on to this thread even though I do find my own past to be enthralling. What I can say to you is that you must always maintain a corner of yourself that is absolutely intellectually detached from your current array of follies. You must do this in order to survive and in order to profit, both intellectually and as an artist, from your current sensual and sexual activities. I am suggesting that you do have artistic and intellectual underpinnings. I have read a number of your contributions to LBT and it seems to me that you are an intelligent and curious individual, and someone who does wish to engage in debate. It strikes me that you are anxious to involve yourself in a more voluptuary and shallow world. To tell you the truth, I found that I learned a lot from my mis-spent years and I do not regret them. I did, however, always look after myself: financially, intellectually, emotionally, and healthwise. Now I am a charming old fart with a lot of scabrous stories to tell.

Gadget, I think the point is not the issue of belief between the people of faith - be they Christians, Muslims, Environmentalists, Animal Rights types, Non-Smokers, liberals or whatever - but rather their refusal to engage in debate and to recognise the civil rights of their opponents that is the point which is currently under discussion in these wonderful western cultures.

Thank you, my sweeties. Because I was and still am phobic about the scale thing I can't tell you guys about all my details on the weight loss stuff. You must know that I chose not to weigh myself after I turned 25 and now I am an ancient fart of 57 going on to 58 years old! Ugh....... All my weight experiences over the years have been NSVs - the good, the bad, and the very ugly! I gotta tell you that even though my husband has been telling me that I have been losing weight, I was afraid to jump on the scales today. I was terrified and came close to opting out of the experience. For me this bizness of a weigh-in is not only a question of learning about personal weight loss facts but about conquering complicated personal neuroses. Oof! You have no idea how afraid I have been to deal with all this scary stuff of getting weighed and knowing just how fat a grrl might be. Why, I've been avoiding all of this crap for decades. I still don't know whether I am happier about weighing in at 170 lbs or having the courage to allow myself to be weighed in the first place. Weird, eh?????????

Oof! Green wishes she was there with you, grrl.......... It would have been very much fun to see an important part of the globe with someone fun, eh. Green has also got to admit that she has attempted to travel in the polar regions a number of times now but has found this to be very difficult and very expensive. It is much easier and cheaper for Canuck Grrl to go to India or Turkey than to travel to the polar regions.:phanvan Colour this grrl green with envy, eh............

This was not true. As I have previously posted in other threads, Hans Blix was the head of an international team placed in Iraq; his team was sponsored by the UN with the mandate to search out any and all weapons of mass destruction. They found none and Blix made a report to this effect to the American Congress prior to the invasion of Iraq. It is important to note that Blix had previously headed up a team of international WMD hunters in Iraq after the Desert Storm-Iraq-Kuwait skirmish in the early 1990s. He and his team spent some years in Iraq at this time. He was recalled by the UN to do further further research in Iraq with a team of his choosing post 9/11. He and his team of international WMD hunters found nothing in the country and did report this to Congress before the invasion of Iraq. As to Cusano's allegations that these weapons were shipped to Syria at this point, this is questionable. It is my understanding that our space recognisance technology is so sophisticated that the movement of this materiel could not have passed unspotted.

Canada is a polar nation as are Russia, Greenland, Iceland, and Antartica. The polar nations are the first to be affected by global warming and this is because the chain of life in these rude environments is both ungenerous and short; there are few animals, insects, and plants which make up the chain of life in polar regions and thus any changes in the environment are more quickly and easily registered than they are in the lush and fertile tropics. Word has it that the polar zones are changing. As to whether earth-loving environmentalists can successfully engage in this global climatic shift or not is a separate issue.

Thanks, kiddo.

I am reposting my own post and hi-jacking this thread because I wish to respond to Cusano's response to the above. He was outraged that I was seeking to protect terrorists who "behead" other individuals. Of course I am not, and this is certainly not the point of this post. The issue is one of due process and of following international laws and conventions. No one likes a terrorist just as no one likes a murderer or a rapist or a child abuser but, nevertheless, all criminals do have the right to due process and access to the civil liberties which are not only enshrined in the American legal process but which are its pride and joy. Indeed, I would argue that among the many fine gifts which the United States has contributed to modern civilisation there is exactly this: meticulous attention to the rights of the accused as balanced against those of society. Viewed under this lens this covert practice of extraordinary rendition is anti-American. And now, post Arar, it is only going to give a fine nation more bad PR on the international stage. This is not a good thing.:cry

Yep, I agree! Bravo!

I just came back from having a fill - only .5cc - and a weigh-in. I now weigh 170 lbs! I am very, very happy! :scared: :confused: