Quote concerning Michele Bachman's Homophobic Attitude

It is people like her that give straights a bad name. 

She is a charter member of the gang that couldn't lie straight.
--
FRISH

Wanna know why there are so many of us?

This report details ways human health has improved over the last 100 years!

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6024a4.htm?s_cid=mm6024a4_w

More children born without complication, longer lives, better health care leading to more kids reaching childbearing age, it's a vicious cycle!

--
FRISH

Re: [atheists-614] Re: Birthright Israel

Gary,

I have always maintained that rationalism in regards to the supernatural

and rationalism concerning human future are quite related.

Consider, all 9Bn scheduled to be on board in 2050, are descended from about 2000 people who lived about 70,000 years ago...so, even if only a few of us survive, it's likely to happen again!

EVEN IF WE ALL BECAME VEGAN STOPPED DRIVING OR BURNING PETROLEUM ATE LOCALLY AND SOMEHOW FOUND A PLACE TO PUT OUR "EXHAUST" WE'LL SIMPLE CONTINUE HAVING KIDS UNTIL WE EAT ALL THE PLANTS ON THE PLANET.

That's just another reason I'm a volunteer in the www.vhemt.org.  

I vehement AND no offspring can blame me!

To change human behavior to allow us to continue in a SUSTAINABLE fashion (no other course is valid) will take some true social engineering.

Witness the graphic pictures going onto cigarette packs.  

That's SOCIETY encouraging moral behavior.  

It's moral because the cost of smoking is a societal wide cost, not just a cost to the individual.

So, it doesn't serve societal goals of "continuance" (which all societies share).  

Smoking has been legislated immoral!

Society first needs to agree there is a problem (too many of us, too much pollution, too little sustainability, etc.)

Then society must act, with as much direction and dedication as we did with cigarettes (but not waiting 47 years to be most graphic!).

Don't know if I shared this here, but enjoy again if I have.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Morals-are-the-genes-of-so-by-Frish-Frishberg-110515-957.html

It's how societies evolve.  If we have any chance (my vote is in already, but many wouldn't consider human extinction a close in possibility) to overcome our follies, we have to change our behavior, and what was moral maybe isn't anymore.

Like having children!

SINCE THE RELIGIOUS AMONGST US ARE THE SUPPOSED PURVEYORS OF MORALITY, WE OUGHT TO BE CHALLENGING THEM TO STOP BEING DOMINIONISTS AND START SHEPARDING THE EARTH.

(Had to cool my diatribe with an easy to implement action item, challenge your favorite faithful today!)

Frish

On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 7:07 PM, Gary H <gary100dm@yahoo.com> wrote:

Frish, et. al.

following your link about dying oceans...
I've heard some programs or interviews about this on KPFK radio and I  think also on NPR (which is doing a series on water).

I felt the same way you do.
Humans can't seem to stop squabbling over ethnicity, culture and territory ("God is not a real estate agent." - Hanan Ashrawi) and arguing supernatural-isms and faith over facts. So I felt the same pangs of despair wondering if humans can save the planet for themselves. And given that a vast population of anti-intellectuals, nationalists, and the  culturally hubristic won't pay attention to the balance of the planets eco-system, it appears we humans may be doomed. The prospects appear  horrible even if we do survive.

Gary



--- On Sun, 6/26/11, frish

From:
Subject: Re: [atheists-614] Birthright Israel
To: atheists-614@meetup.com
Date: Sunday, June 26, 2011, 2:57 PM

A niece just returned from her birthright experience, I'll see what she thinks of the article.  (And any before/after reactions to the experience, which was quite an interesting tour of Israel...)

To Gary's point, nationalism was a great way to organize, right up until now, because if we don't start THINKING AND ACTING GLOBALLY ain't no one going to be around to care.

Today' Headline: Fish in worse shape than previously thought 

MULTIPLE OCEAN STRESSES THREATEN "GLOBALLY SIGNIFICANT" MARINE EXTINCTION

http://www.stateoftheocean.org/

--
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--
FRISH

Re: [atheists-614] Birthright Israel

A niece just returned from her birthright experience, I'll see what she thinks of the article.  

(And any before/after reactions to the experience, which was quite an interesting tour of Israel...)

To Gary's point, nationalism was a great way to organize, right up until now, 

because if we don't start THINKING AND ACTING GLOBALLY ain't no one going to be around to care.

Today' Headline: Fish in worse shape than previously thought 

2 billion more people are expect to arrive by the same time the fisheries are extinguished, about 2050!

Won't much matter who believes or doesn't believe much when that occurs...

Frish

On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Gary H <gary100dm@yahoo.com> wrote:

[A Secular Humanist Concern. - Gary]
"I believe that what 'poisons everything' is tribalism, machismo and greed."
 -- Jennifer Michael Hecht

The Romance of Birthright Israel

Birthright Israel, the American Zionist organization that has, since its founding in 1999, spent almost $600 million to send more than 260,000 young diaspora Jews on free vacations to the Holy Land.
by Kiera Feldman

http://www.thenation.com/article/161460/romance-birthright-israel

the selling of Jewishness to Jews

"My liberal arts education taught me that any distinct concept or ideal will crumble under the scrutiny of too many questions," laments a recent college grad writing on her Birthright experience, which taught her "it was okay and even honorable to believe in the state of Israel, to adopt, so to speak, the settlers' original dream."

posted by Gary

Reads like a scary novel.. but, it's real.

"With just centimeters remaining before the radioactive water overtops its storage, however, another release of contaminated water into the ocean looks ever more likely. Already, pools of this water burned at least two workers at the plant when they stepped in the puddles, and TEPCO was forced to dump more than 11,000 metric tons of such contaminated water in early April."
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fukushima-meltdown-radioactive-flood

11,000 metric tons of water...11 000 000 kilograms = 24,250,848.84 pounds 

At 8.35 gal/lb = 2,904,293.27 gallons/660,000 gallons = 4.5 OLYMPIC SWIMMING POOLS.

Water hot enough to burn...A cubic mile is one trillion gallons.  

If this water is, say, 1000ppm radioactive, that would be an additional .001 radioactive stuff per gallon.

The radiation in one gallon will be spread to 1,000,000 gallons, still sounds like a lot to me!

HazMat folk say: "The solution to pollution is dilution" and, unfortunately we may find out if that's true in this case...

They will be spraying coolant on these reactors for several decades, minimum...

FRISH

Even tho' he says nothing, and even tho' he's channeling one of the best songs of all time...

I still can't stand Craig Ferguson.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwkK5-ibYcw&NR=1

"Look out there's a Monster Coming" Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band

From the album:

The Bonzo Dog Band - The Intro

Dec 1969

The album also includes the song:

11 Mustachioed Daughters

It Rhymes:

11 Mustaschioed Daughters, running in a field of Fat,

the full moon high, the mandrake shrieked: "please come to our sabbat!"

--
FRISH

Ocean extinctions

My friend Thinkenstein shared the following.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/ipso-2011-ocean-report-mass-extinction_n_880656.html

People used to think we could dump anything into the ocean because it was so big it could take care of itself?   Turns out we were wrong. 

Personally, and on an individually accessible contribution basis, I think not having kids is about the best thing anybody can do for the planet.    As the great Pogo used to say, "We have found the enemy, and he is us!"

--  Thinkenstein

--
FRISH

Sometimes news is just weird. Dog judged to be stoned to death...by religious court.

Dog while inhabited by a reincarnated soul must be stoned to death!

New word for me...Lapidation.  Nice.  

And, uh, this isn't in Putsomesyllableshere-istan...It's in Israel!

--
FRISH

The Answer: PETROLEUM, OR WOMEN

The question: What will be the hardest fought Resource Wars?

Identifying sick babies before they were born, instead of casual use by parents interested in what color to paint the nursery, 

(or, whether or not to abort a baby of unwanted gender) was the original goal of ultrasound...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-ultrasound-changed-human-sex-ratio

"It didn't matter that the early ultrasound machines yielded fuzzy images, however, or that they only proved helpful in a small proportion of pregnancies. To the 1960s public the technology looked positively futuristic. Around the time pregnancy became a choice rather than an inevitability and the business of having children became about more than generating labor for the farm, we began seeking ways to bond with our babies before birth. An image on which to pin parental hopes made that task a whole lot easier, and so it was a breakthrough to have a preview, however muddled, of the baby growing inside a mother's uterus. Coming at a time of technological optimism when Americans were enamored of outer space and kitchen appliances alike, an era some were calling the Biological Revolution, ultrasound captured the public imagination."

This article speaks to how technology speeds up implementation of existing societal goals, even when doing so creates bigger problems than the technology was trying to solve to begin with.  (Think "drift nets", "nuclear power",  "internal combustion engine", "TV", "facebook"  (lol)...)

From the Amazon Blurb:

Lianyungang, a booming port city, has China's most extreme gender ratio for children under four: 163 boys for every 100 girls. These numbers don't seem terribly grim, but in ten years, the skewed sex ratio will pose a colossal challenge. By the time those children reach adulthood, their generation will have twenty-four million more men than women.

The prognosis for China's neighbors is no less bleak: Asia now has 163 million females "missing" from its population. Gender imbalance reaches far beyond Asia, affecting Georgia, Eastern Europe, and cities in the U.S. where there are significant immigrant populations. The world, therefore, is becoming increasingly male, and this mismatch is likely to create profound social upheaval.

Historically, eras in which there have been an excess of men have produced periods of violent conflict and instability. Mara Hvistendahl has written a stunning, impeccably-researched book that does not flinch from examining not only the consequences of the misbegotten policies of sex selection but Western complicity with them."

Will it be Mars Needs Women  or, Being Gay is Okay...

FRISH

CityVille addiction: A friend's cry for help (For Real...thanks for helping)

A normally Hyper-Rational friend writes:

"I think I may need Cityville therapy.  

I don't know how it happened.  

I was on Facebook minding my own business.  

I have never done anything like this before.  

But I think I need medication.  

I simply can't stop.  

And I am ashamed to admit they have my credit card information.  

What do I do?  I may need an intervention."

First, know any resources for breaking internet-gaming-facebook addiction beyond this:

http://www.wikihow.com/Defeat-a-Facebook-Addiction

Second, any indication that this is a common malady?

Seems like a Wired article anyway...or a foundation waiting to happen...
--
FRISH

A vision...

A friend took this shot in the bathroom of a hotel.

Seems somehow weird to me. 

Like, where's the TV? 

-- 

FRISH

"We don't see this often" (PIO's Understatement of the Year nomination!)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110608/wl_canada_nm/canada_us_bear
"We don't see (this) often, even if we live in the country. Lots of deer, but collisions with a bear and two people died? That's really rare," local police spokesman Martin Fournel told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
--
FRISH

Headstones go interactive...QR TO Web Presence of Deceased...leave messages...

THE 'LIVING HEADSTONE' (You cannot make this stuff up!)
They sell a subscription service...

"...snip...Quiring Monuments can add a link onto the memorial which enables users of smart phones to scan and automatically connect to a personalized website...snip....This link can be applied to new or existing cemetery headstones, mausoleum shutters, cremation urns, garden benches or as an addition to a public memorial.  In situations where cremated remains were previously scattered, a miniature memorial plaque with the digital link is available for display in your home or garden or even on a field stone in a Green Burial Cemetery."

One summer I almost worked as a "pre-need" salesperson at a large mortuary in San Diego.  

Decided against.  

Another opportunity lost!!

--
FRISH