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Interesting story. I recall hearing that a certain settled island (I believe in the area of Iceland) was more habitable back during the 16th Century due to a warmer climate which allowed for easier survival. This all changed over the course of some years as the climate became colder and the settlers died off.
I don't think that is correct. Certainly, our nation is one of morality. The law says that you may not murder; that you may not steal; that you may not trespass; etc. These laws dictate what is good and what is bad, and these concepts are embodied in our Constitution. They make value judgments, and they are laws of morality. Likewise, by the government's punishment of a person who violates these laws, morality is “forced” on people, including those who disagree with the laws. I can try to argue with someone that murder is wrong, and if the person still does not listen and murders someone, he will be punished by the state as a result.
You should check out some of the other threads we have going on here about similar topics – they address your point about African Americans. I think that our view is that slavery would have died out as an institution because of technological advancements in other areas. This might have happened in waves, though, with pockets of slavery existing in the South for longer periods of time than in other areas. I imagine there would have been more successful slave rebellions as well….man has had an innate desire to break the bonds of slavery since Spartacus or before. Also, the world was tiring of slavery during the 19th Century and likely seeing it as a dehumanizing institution. I also think that the Civil Rights movement would have proceeded in some form or another, though perhaps not in the 1960s. Discrimination would have continued anyway since I think that this is based at least in part on social/economic status.
Yeah I remember seeing your note about it. I don't think it's as big of a deal when the forum is not commercial, but the copyright holders could still try to force you to take down their articles. I think that your problem is largely caused by BH, isn't it?
I think you're right. Massadah would be very interesting to visit. Amazing what happened there, in terms of the stand-off, the sad end of the Jews there, and the Roman engineering feat of building the ramp leading up to the fortress.
Well, as one of those who belongs to an “entrenched hierarchical” church, I differ greatly in my opinion of the role and activities of churches. Churches respond to attacks on their dogma just as anyone else with an idea would respond to an attack. I don't see anything wrong with that. Churches have moral authority – sometimes this may seem strict – but they do not have political authority; that is, churches cannot force you to act in a particular way the same that governments can. If you act against a governmental statute, you can be locked up. Just as a person can move out of a country, a person has the free will to leave a particular church (although this can be difficult if we recall the recent case of a Christian convert in Afghanistan).The point you raise about Hezbollah and Hamas hits on a good point - that the religious person can be the most loving or have the best heart in the world, but he can also be the most dangerous person in the world. However, non-religious people can be just as dangerous. The people reportedly killed under Stalin could exceed those killed under Hitler by tens of milllions.
True, I think an argument could be made between 1955 and 2005, or perhaps 1925 and 1975…but what about 1850 to 1900? The adoption of the car really changed things around….the adoption of machine guns, etc.
Donnie, the advatage of Firefox is that you can add “extensions” that are really quite cool. I didn't like it at first and I uninstalled it. Later I reinstalled in because I was designing a site and needed to make sure that things would appear well in Firefox, and also I had heard about the web developer's toolbar…..simply an awesome helper if you're designing sites. Trust me, you'll come to like it if you unleash its power. It will help you while designing sites.
Alright, I fixed the forum header, except for a sliver shaved off the right side of it when viewing with IE. There's a pixel or two difference when viewing in IE compared to Firefox. Without changing the underlying graphic, it's hard to make it look exactly the same in both browsers. I may make some changes to it down the road anyway.
I think what Donnie is referring to is CAPTCHA – a code that you have to enter to prevent robots from signing up. Actually, I thought I was the one who let Donnie know about that a while back, but maybe he already knew on his own. I had CAPTCHA installed when my forum was using phpbb. I like to make it as easy as possible to let people sign up, and only when spammers catch on will I make it more difficult. Today I changed the registration format to self-authorization so that anyone who signs up has to click on a link within an e-mail that is sent to them before they can post. So far today it seems to have quieted things down a bit.And Stumpfoot, if you know of any others who are interested in history, please let them know that we would value additional input here. I recently noticed that the number of links from this site in Google doubled to over 1000, which means things are picking up on that end - hopefully for the better.
Smart, and unscrupulous, people know how to exploit this. Joe McCarthy, Hitler, FDR, the current administration, all of them knew how to create a resonance between their policies and the fear of people, whether it was Communism or terrorists and WMD. The only difference between these individuals is their motive.
I can argue that reasoned people are also ones who can preserve the status quo. Injecting uncertain concepts into policies or strategy can be a recipe for disaster. But likening leaders together like you did - three decent American politicians and one of the world's most despised mass murderers - isn't all that accurate to begin with, except in a rather tenuous way. I don't think that the way Hitler did things - to revive the glory of the German nation and the Aryan race - can be neatly categorized into the "status quo" since he also intended on breaking down religious belief by going into the churches and replacing the crucifixes therein with swastikas. In other words, Hitler called upon the past while departing from it and bringing in his new Fascist ideals. All leaders of any ilk are bound to call upon some "tradition" as a means of pushing their thoughts or agendas, whether for good or for bad.
Funny….I just noticed what you're seeing. I had been viewing it only through Firefox, where it was a perfect fit, but when looking with IE just now I see that it's cropped. I'll have to fix it. Thanks for the heads up.
Well, don't click on any of the links that are posted in such a message. You can look at the message, and I don't think that responding would be bad per se….but it's like responding to a manequin on the sidewalk set up by con artists who are working the rest of the people in the crowd.Looks like the spammers keep coming. I'm still banning accounts.
Well, I say that as a speculation. The MannoFr account was signed up a week or so ago and posted a message without links, and we responded to it. Today I did a search and I find the exact same message on another forum – a sign that it was a spammer, probably today. Then a few days ago we get another account signed up, but without obvious spammer links, so I let it go. Then today we get about 5 spam accounts signed up and they all seem to post their links in their messages. I wonder if they find that if a first account is not deleted right away that the coast is clear for more spammers (i.e. “the infantry”) to enter.
