Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

Here's a thought, go ahead and rip it up all you want, just tossing a bone.

How about only allowing people either paying or currently receiving social security to vote?

Secondly, why don't corporations get one vote each, since any "Inc." is viewed as an individual under the law?

I think that's not exactly the case, Timber.....as I understand it there are some other factors.......the example I heard was something having to do with caterpillars and birds and birth rates.......... There are factors that cause certain mutants to survive better than the others, but they are not necessarily those that have to do with being the most "fit." Chance plays a role. For instance if a caterpillar is a certain color and the birds are attracted to this color for eating....this has nothing to do with which caterpillar is the smartest or the wisest, just what color they are. Darwin was onto something, but the concept of natural selection is not as simple as many people believe it to be. And I certainly don't understand it in all it's complexity. It just impresses me that so many people talk about certain concepts or ideas as if they know what they are, when really they haven't studied them or researched them enough to lay any claim to understanding them.

This reminds me of a story. One of my relatives, a big ole Evangelical Fundamentalist leader, said to me one morning at breakfast. "Darwin couldn't have been right, if you think about it, where would the female come from?" (this is what this great leader really said) When I mentioned to him that in my limited understanding, the male was the mutant, he looked confused and changed the subject.

To quote Bart Simpson:
"Ouch...my ovaries!"

LOL................. good ole Bart. The voice of the people.

I gave up on correcting folks misunderstanding of the evolutionary process long ago. I tend to be leery of correcting people's assumptions about the middle ages or Church History outside of class, or these forums. Ah, well.

I'd consider a coloration that got one and one's progeny eaten disproportionately to otherly-arrayed critters of one's kind a major fitness shortcoming ... and I'd expect a more or less self-limiting, self-correcting one. Some moths and butterflies immitate the Monarch just for that reason: the Monarch tastes so bad few critters try more than one.

Without looking at all the possible variables of survival which includes intelligence, biology, geology, environment, and other natural and man-made occurances, it's impossible to understand the total picture.

Then explain Bush, should have been dead long ago!

cjhsa, I know you are being silly -- coporations are made up of individual voters. That would be essentially voting twice, especially since the corporate officers run the company and can only suggest to their employees who to vote for (if they dare).

Cooking the books is done in nearly every company in the U.S. -- it's just done cleverly enough to not be detected and it's called "creative accounting." Those CEO's who signed off on their books are banking (sic) on no oversight official or committee to be smart enough to ever detect where or how much the books are cooked. One of my friends in the 70's was a Secretary Treasurer and then a President of a Savings and Loan (just before that all went down the drain). He bragged about how he was able to cook the books and when the government auditors would come in, they would be so confused that they would throw up their hands and leave in a total perfunctory state.

LW, lately - it has been the case the the investment bankers, stock brokers and auditors have been collecting on the misadventurers. One person can get caught, collusion can not!

BillW, I'm not so sure about that! A squealer can end up with big bucks in squealer rewards.

That only happens when the squealer is not benifitting adaquately. It will breakdown the scam but it has to happen first. Something we haven't been seeing in the last 15 years (if ever).

At 9:45 am Tartarin excoriates what he calls the "self-Congratulation" of Timber who, as Tartarin says "reads his Barron" but is ignorant of people who may not have had opportunity, people down on their luck, etc.etc.

Tartarin may have a point, but it is a limited one.

By the very nature of statistics, there will always be people who are below the average.

Be it in income, education, etc.

Now, we can try to raise the average thus raising everyone but there will, by definition, always be people who are below the average and there will always be people who are below the average who will complain that 'It's not their fault, it's the fault of the greedy people at the top"


Thomas Sowell, in his marvelous book- Race and Culture, points out that the Chinese in the Far East who live in countries outside of China are often discriminated against not only DE FACTO but also DEJURE, and, nevertheless, in many countries are the most prosperous entrepreneurs in those countries.

Sowell credits the Chinese culture for this phenomenon.

I believe that Tartarin may not understand that Many of the people who fall below the average in this country filled with opportunity for all, not because of the malice of the"rich" but rather, sometimes because of the absence of the kind of culture exhibited by the Chinese.

I hope that all understand the true meaning of the word culture in the context above.

But Timber................coloration has nothing to do with intelligence or strength. "Fitness" in coloration alone is hardly a criteria of what it takes to do something well. And if one and one's progeny are eaten quickly, there is no time for self correction. Who is to say that there wouldn't be a superior butterfly to the Monarch, save for tastiness and color? And please don't take my point as an explanation of natural selection. I was simply saying it's more complicated than the undereducated (in natural selection theory)--- of which I am one--- believe. I truly don't know how the process of natural selection is complicated, I just know that it is. I was just offering a possibility.

I've noticed in this a2k forum, many have a tendency to speak as if they understand the concepts that are a part of some highly sophisticated disciplines. And these same "many" seem to forget that a2k is an information exchange, or at least that's my understanding. They don't think to ask those who know about such things for information before making huge assumptions about it and speaking as if their opinion were fact. It's like the old fart I heard at the MOMA in New York once (actually more than once I've heard this in many museums). He said, in a really loud voice, looking at an abstract painting, "wool, a monkey coulda done that." Thus revealing his extreme ignorance, which is excusable, even expected, but his stupidity is not.

I surely hope, however that I'm not the color your eagle eye would find tasty. If so, I better run hide.

Italgato, Have you ever played a sociology game popular in the late 60s and early 70s called SimSoc?

First we admit that, in a society which thinks of itself as free and prosperous, there are many too many people who are not free and who are shackled by ignorance and poverty.

Then we talk about their opportunities vs. our own -- did they have the same opportunities and slipped (or were pushed by Darwin) down? Or is it perhaps that they didn't have the same opportunities -- that we, in our self-absorption and comfort, have mislabelled in our own minds our own opportunities: our educated parents or our parents' abilities to insure a good education for their kids; our part of town, access to good water and clean air and fresh vegetables; our trips to MOMA or the library with return carfare in our pockets; etc. etc. etc. So many of these things we have had without a whole lot of struggle have not been available to those at the bottom. And those of us who say we have struggled for them should be even more sympathetic to those left behind, not less sympathetic.

If we say America is free and prosperous and we find (as we do) that many many at the bottom have not had the same opportunities, then, damn it, we need to join together to remedy this even if it means taking something of what we have and making sure they have a share. If we then find that some of those who are comfortable, who wish to continue to think they live in a prosperous and free society without actually ensuring that it's prosperous and free for everyone, then I think we have a right to get mad. Playing the blame game doesn't help, but it's completely understandable when so many have had to put up with deliberate self-delusion.

If those who are unwilling to do their part to make sure everyone does indeed have the same opportunities, then I think we have to fight for the moral high ground, for those at the bottom against the unwilling at the top. Communists!! Socialists!! No, Americans who want what we think about ourselves and who we really are be one and the same thing.

For me -- consistently, throughout A2K and since I returned to the US -- what has bothered me most has been the enormous discrepancy between what the country really is doing and what it says it's doing. I'm not sympathetic at all with those who just don't want to acknowledge the problems. I bristle when I hear an acknowledgement of the facts of nature applied by humans who would be horrified if someone came along and told them that they themselves had been marked for the cull, along with their kids.

I guess I didn't clearly make my point. The "Self Correction" I mentioned refers to the fact that if a particular genetic trait, such as coloration (taking just one trait among any number of others) results in decreased viability for that particular subset of the species which exhibits that trait, that subset will not prosper, and in fact will decline if not disappear. Conversely, an otherwise tasty moth or butterfly which resembles the incredibly nasty-tasting Monarch enjoys greater probability of successfully passing on that trait, and all the other traits of that subset. That's how "Natural Selection" works, and why some critters find advantage in emulating, even if not possessing, certain traits of other successful species.

timber said... "The redistribution of wealth is not democratic, it is communist"

timber...that's just wrong. A democratic state, take Norway, can, as a community, decide to set up any sort of redistribution system they think may be beneficial.

A communistic system essentially means the ownership of capital by the government. I doubt very much Norway is even close to becoming a state economy.

I know what you meant, Timber. But evidently I've failed to explain my point, but never mind anyway.