Oligo

Might I point out that the link posted above is in a commercial page, which intends to sell Doctor Atkins miracle lifestyle products? The person who wrote that milk article has conveniently omitted all references to scientific publications which have claims and results opposite to the official line of the company.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (JOEHADENUF~MOH~ @ Mar. 12 2003,03:17)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Unlike Europe, that brought us Nazism, Hitler, Stalin, and communisum, the American flag is a symbol of a free people, that saved Europes butt. The American flag is a symbol of thousands that fought and died for our freedom, my friend. The American flag is a symbol of freedom in the greatest country on earth. A freedom that wasn't free and didn't come cheap, a freedom that many gave their lives for .<span id='postcolor'> Yes, Europe was the place which sprouted such ideas as Nazism. But Europe is also the place which gave birth to the United States of Freedom. Europe is the source of the best and the worst.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Shrike @ Mar. 11 2003,13:39)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf<span id='postcolor'> Pax Americana, eh? It remains to be seen what will happen after Iraq, Iran and North Korea have been wiped out. Who will be the new threat?

During cold war, russians used to intercept U.S. spy planes over international waters. They maneuvered their fighters in front of the spy plane and hit the afterburner. Fried some U.S. brows. But they did nothing wrong. Every country is perfectly free to send their planes to fly over international waters and turn on the afterburners whenever they please. You just got to love the international waters. Almost anything goes there.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Tex [uSMC] @ Feb. 26 2003,10:19)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">At an objective level, this is accurate. However, to allow the base concept of life to be assigned a value no greater than a computer program opens up a Pandora's Box of abuses that would otherwise be prevented by maintaining, for lack of a better term, the sanctity of life. To maintain the viewpoint that life is not special and therefore not valuable, you slip into a form of nihilism that at first seems reasonable and very fashionably post-modern, but is ultimately an incredibly dangerous outlook. Why is it dangerous? Well, it's pretty simple: what if everybody thought the same way you do? I mean, everyone. Suddenly, there's no reason to be decent to your fellow human beings. Why should we? They're just carbon-based robots running on a genetic program enforced by chemical balances; fuck 'em. And that's just at the very basic day to day level. Think about the consequences at the national or world level. Hell, it's bad enough as it is, when leaders still try to maintain a veneer of righteousness. So, whether your statement is correct or not, it is not a thought to be nurtured. I know it sounds a bit fascist to deny the truth, but in this one case, it is the smart thing to do. By believing that life is special and something that shouldn't be messed with, we then have the moral option to hold ourselves to a higher standard.<span id='postcolor'> Come on, do you really think that decent behaviour should rise from some kind of inherent "value" and "speciality" of human life? If you look at things in their base level, all life indeed is just carbon-based robots running their genetic program. But we are still free to believe that it is wrong to kill and harm other life. We do not need a magic sanctity of life to justify our behaviour, all we need is the skill of empathy: "I'm a carbon-robot but I nevertheless don't want to die or endure pain, therefore those similar carbon-robots next to me probably don't want to die or be in pain either, thus I should not harm them." If we move our moral basis from sanctity of life to empathy, we'll never again need to adjust it again. I'd be happy to think that if we ever create true artificial intelligence, we would be able to treat it as an equal, not as a slave, a mere silicon-robot. What comes to "messing" with life: It's not messing, it's improving. Our cultural evolution is lifting us above natural evolution. We are soon free to improve upon what nature has accidentally given us. What's so wrong with that?

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (IceFire @ Feb. 26 2003,00:59)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">The love between a man and woman is only possible between humans. Â And is a perfect reason why our humanity should not be recreated or imitated by mankind.<span id='postcolor'> What you're saying is that we should not make anything as our own image. You are afraid that it would somehow reduce the value of "humanity" if mere machines could be just like we are. I have seen "humanity" reduced to code of four different letters, neatly stored on a hard-disk of a computer. That was called the human genome project and it is now more or less complete (accessible at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mapview....f&query). The essence of humanity is the information coded in the biological storage medium of DNA. Like it or not, humans and computers are both essentially just machines running a program.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (denoir @ Feb. 25 2003,11:51)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">The Mayas died out which shows that their civilization wasn't all that successful.<span id='postcolor'> Yeah, we killed them and took their gold.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (IceFire @ Feb. 25 2003,04:19)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">WHAT'S it all FOR??   I don't see the need for any of this  "technology", machines, cellphones, and gadgets.  They're all the same.<span id='postcolor'> What's it all for, you ask. If we just laid back and stopped all technological advancement i.e. cultural evolution, we would be just like any other species on Earth, since our capability for cultural evolution is the sole factor that makes us different from the other animals. And guess what, typical animal species has only a limited lifespan, before extinction of the whole species caused by the lack of capacity to adapt to new environmental circumstances through biological evolution alone. So if you say that we should stop cultural evolution, you're also saying that we should go extinct at some point. I, however, hope that human species will exist as long as at all possible (so that there will be somebody to remember me after I die) and therefore I will strive to advance technology, which is the only thing that can prolong our existence. God is anybody who takes control of their own destiny.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (brgnorway @ Feb. 24 2003,11:24)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Oh come on Oligo - we are not killing whales for the hell of it!<span id='postcolor'> Well, we do not have AP mines for the hell of it either. We have them because we have such a big and unpredictable neighbour, which ocassionally has invaded us in the past. We're very good friends with this neighbour nowadays, but you never know about the future.

IceFire, I'm just curious, but what do you think about those weird genetic engineers, who meddle with the very essence of life in their secret, dimly lit labs? Those people that think they know everything about what makes us tick?

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (denoir @ Feb. 23 2003,23:19)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Bullets are made for killing, not mutilating. They are not designed to produce unnecessary suffering. Some types of ammunition are and they are bannd (hollow points for instance). That's the whole point. AP mines are designed not to kill the enemy but to mutilate him and indeed cause unnecessary suffering.<span id='postcolor'> Come on, Denoir. We Finns have to have SOME thing to cling on to against the opposition of the rest of the world, just like the Norwegians who just keep on killing whales and so on. So let us have AP mines in warehouses, it's not like we're going to use them anytime soon, Russia willing.

News item. Ok, so in order to design, build and test new nukes, U.S. has to pull out of all the approppriate international agreements. They'll also set up a nice excuse for everybody else to build new nukes. The world will definitely not be a better place afterwards. How can the world go to hell so fast, just when people were talking about "the end of history"?

OMFG! That sarcasm [by the monty python guy] was so witty, sharp and such a low blow that I had to use Internet acronyms for the first time in my life! LOL! SAS! ROTFLMAO! CIA! Â Â

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Balschoiw @ Feb. 21 2003,13:41)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"> Are you seriouse ?<span id='postcolor'> No I was not. I was being sarcastic. I'm one of those eurowimps.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (FallenPaladin @ Feb. 21 2003,10:51)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Depends only on your point of view. It`s a fact that after Ground Zero the US military bases are spreading like cancer all over the world. And there are indeed paralleles to the roman empiric policy when you watch the US foreign policy nowadays. The only problem is that half of the world just doesn`t like the way of McDonalds. Coming back to US troops helping the phillipine fighting the Abu Sayyaf. Sounds nice, but it will end up as follows: It won`t be possible to defeat all of the guerillas and the ambushs and rebell assaults will go on. Permanent US military bases will be the result. Of course this bases need resources and supplies flown in, so there`ll be military air bases and so on. And finally there`s another jump point for a swift US military strike wherever in this region "needed".<span id='postcolor'> I think it is sad how some people always criticize U.S. without having the slightest understanding of the realities of this world. Comparing U.S. to Rome (except in movies like the Gladiator) is simply outrageous. Do I need to remind you that U.S. is a republic, where the leaders are the ones who get most votes in democratic elections? In Rome, the power was wielded by the senate consisting of rich citizens looking after their own interests (totally unlike U.S. where the senators are chosen democratically to represent the people) and the emperor, who was a practical dictator. U.S. does not have an emperor, but a president, who is chosen by the people, not by genealogy! There are no dynasties in U.S.! The world today is a dark place, where evil men seek to harm others in order to advance their own interests. But in U.S. people have managed to develop the best democratic system (first in the world) which maintains it's unpartial integrity despite the efforts of the evil men. Internal issues are handled by the exemplary and unbiased police and court -system, which assures that only evildoers found guilty beyond reasonably doubt go to jails or are executed, depending of the grade of their evilness! This assures that the society stays fresh, tidy and functional. In handling the external threats, U.S. is the sole hope of the world. Which other country has the military capability and the sheer altruistic drive to sacrifice their soldiers and tax dollars to help people all around the globe to mop up the evildoers? How else could these efforts be managed but with the aid of logistical bases on the soil of willing host countries? Maybe U.S. should just pull their soldiers home! Let's see how the rest of the world manages without the altruistic intervention by U.S. troops! You eurowimps make me sick. You're always whining, looking the gift-horse into the mouth. Â

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (theavonlady @ Feb. 21 2003,10:35)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Yes. Dumb is what I am hearing.<span id='postcolor'> But of course.

Where have I heard the phrase "defending through pre-emptive strikes" before? Denoir, I salute your immense capability for sarcasm.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Tex [uSMC] @ Feb. 21 2003,08:05)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">You mean a nuclear secondary explosion? I can't say I'm well versed at all in the vagaries of nuclear physics, but it seems reasonable enough to me. I mean, other than the fact that the original nuclear blast will -if it penetrates correctly- always be sufficient to destroy the target without needing a secondary explosion to finish the job.<span id='postcolor'> Yes, a nuclear secondary explosion. But what I meant is that if you erase one of Saddam's nuclear storage bunkers with a deep-penetrating nuke you might get considerably more bang for your buck than expected = more fallout = more deaths and deformed children = more flak from the press.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Renagade @ Feb. 21 2003,05:06)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">ps,if matter can be converted into energy how do u get energy back into matter?<span id='postcolor'> Black holes radiate particles by an energy to matter conversion according to Hawkings.

From the look of it, I'm pretty sure that Sony SDR-X4 and Asimo both have big gyroscopes to maintain their balance. There is still a long way to go to a TRULY bipedal robot (no gyros).

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Badgerboy @ Feb. 20 2003,16:48)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Nah, it doesn't work like that. Nuclear weapons are very delicate things to detonate. It would either have to trigger the detonation system (Unlikely, as it'll vapourise it!, or perfectly compress the core from all directions at the same time. (Also very unlikely)<span id='postcolor'> Nuclear weapons are a very delicate thing to detonate, because starting the chain reaction from scratch is very hard (you have to compress fissile material adequately so that there are enough free neutrons produced to start a chain reaction). However, detonating a nuke produces an intense burst of neutrons (the peak of the chain reaction) and there are no cooling rods or reactor shielding to absorb the bombardment. What's to stop these neutrols starting up all kinds of shit if there is more fissible material (e.g. other nukes) in close proximity?

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (RalphWiggum @ Feb. 20 2003,09:38)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">if NK developes one, why not US? <span id='postcolor'> U.S. already has enougn nukes to destroy the world ten times over. NK does not. Why would US need to build new nukes to compete with NK?

It would be interesting to know what happens if you try to destroy nuclear weapons in a storage bunker with nuclear weapons. I wonder whether the chain reaction could carry on to the fissile material of the stored bombs.

I hope you have all seen this: Gulf War Simulation If you have, nevermind.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Warin @ Feb. 07 2003,00:32)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Though, if you asked some cancer suferers if they would be willing to take a 1.76% chance of death versus being cured... how many do you think would risk it? Â Oligo...if you are out there... you've been involved in medical research. Can you give us an idea of percentages in experimental medicine??<span id='postcolor'> In medical research the new drugs have always been so extensively tested on animals (required by law, not by the scientists involved) that fatalities very very rarely happen in human testing. And if they happen, lawsuits are filed almost always, even when the test subjects are always volunteers. Actually the drug approval process is so slow and legislated that there have actually been demonstrations by for example HIV patients demanding access to experimental drugs not yet extensively tested. Their slogans were along the line of: "Let us take our chances with the new drug, we're dying here." If you ask me, society has become way too protective. Voluntary risk taking is no longer acceptable as it used to be.