26-06-2004 19:33									#91
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Is this symbolism?

	27-06-2004 03:37									#92
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quote: Originally posted by Verto I wouldn't describe it as cruel. It's not as if they are bludgeoned to death.

Generally, most living things prefer to remain that way. Having killed, and having seen things killed across most of the evolutionary spectrum, I've never seen a lack of cruelty in the process of killing, unless the animal (or human) killed was in severe and generally untreatable pain if left alive.

And a lot of shelters still use decompression, which is painful as hell. In San Diego County, they distinguish dogs from other animals, and if you're a dog you get an injuection in the forepaw, whereas with other animals, the practice is to just force the needle directly into the thoracic cavity and inject into the heart area. If you don't think that's painful, try it out. We don't even kill mass murderers that way.

	27-06-2004 03:44									#93
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quote: Originally posted by Ben Kenobi I don't see the problem with this.

quote: Perhaps if dog and cat owners were more responsible to spay or neuter their pets, there would be fewer strays.

A lot of people are dumbasses, especially when it comes to pets. Over the years, I've rescued over 100 strays or injured feral animals, mostly dogs and cats, but an alligator, a lizard and a couple birds thrown in.

	27-06-2004 04:00									#94
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Just a thought, if they combined death row jails with animal shelters the inmates could kill all they want every day and not have a need to look for escape. Save alot of money on prison guard salaries and barbed wire.

Might be a conflict though with death row inmates who are there because of rape instead of murder.. now thats heinous!

	27-06-2004 05:08									#95
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So Diss is a jihadi now?

* Last Conformist calls the crusaders to holy war!

	27-06-2004 05:51									#96
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quote: Originally posted by Geronimo Kucinich for some years I was under the impression that earth would become uninhabitable when our Sun became a red giant of such such size that it would possibly consume the entire earth. This phase of the suns life will be relatively short and indeed best estimates (based on a thorough understanding of the evolution of main sequence stars like our current sun) place it close to 5 billion years in the future when the sun will finally leave the main sequence. However, a couple years back it was determined that the earth would lose its entire oceans within only a few hundred million years and this would lead to lethal surface temperatures *long* before the sun would do it's red giant thing. This wasn't some flaky web based article either but I'm almost certain it was in Science and I may be able to find the issue. I tried googling for the information but it was too much of a pain to find it while excluding irrelevant short term global warming information. If I find it later I'll edit the post and cite it here. Suffice it to say that human beings appear to have evolved not at the middle of Earth's habitable lifespan but rather as close to the tail end of it as aerobic life was to the beginning

Why would the sun get so much bigger and/or hotter within the next hundred million years? It's been going steady for nearly five billion so far.

	27-06-2004 05:53									#97
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quote: Originally posted by Last Conformist So Diss is a jihadi now? * Last Conformist calls the crusaders to holy war!

5 attack doesn't do much against Mech. Infantry.

	27-06-2004 06:59									#98
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It's 4/4/1, 2f/2h.

	27-06-2004 09:57									#99
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quote: Originally posted by Kucinich [q] Why would the sun get so much bigger and/or hotter within the next hundred million years? It's been going steady for nearly five billion so far.

it doesn't it stays on main sequence. Although part of the problem is that the Sun really hasn't been going steady for those 5 billion years it's had steady changes (generally always increasing) in it's luminosity. The early sun was so dim that if we had that level of luminosity today the earth would be gripped by a profound glaciation worse than any of the ice ages. However, the Earth's early atmosphere was far far richer in greenhouse gasses than the modern atmosphere. A fortuitous balance between photosynthesis and a steady increase in the suns luminosity over time kept the earth from either Freezing under a dim sun or becoming a venus under the brighter more modern sun. The sun will be twice as bright due to this steady increase by the time it finally leaves main sequence as it is today. For the future the problem comes from an ongoing logarithmic increase in H2O lost to space over time as an indirect result of this gradual steady increase in solar output. The problem appears to be that the retention of water is very sensitive to total radiation received and there is a feedback effect that accelerates the process further. I think i should not look only for the issue of Science that described these predictions but also the ones right after since there may be the usual objections to these predictions by various readers and I could see if in fact their model had any obvious holes. I hadn't heard that it was a controversial prediction until just now.

	27-06-2004 19:51									#100
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quote: Originally posted by General Ludd They wouldn't be super-rich if they where.

They contribute far more, as a percentage AND in total value, than you do.

	27-06-2004 19:53									#101
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quote: Originally posted by VJ It's 4/4/1, 2f/2h.

Uh, no, Crusaders are 5.3.1, and only spawned by the Knights Templar.

	27-06-2004 20:06									#102
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quote: Originally posted by Kucinich 5 attack doesn't do much against Mech. Infantry.

That's why I'm gonna fight Jihadis, not mech inf.

(VJ was giving the stats for CivII Fanatics.)

	27-06-2004 22:10									#103
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quote: Originally posted by Kucinich They contribute far more, as a percentage AND in total value, than you do.

How does that constitute as a valid counterargument?

	27-06-2004 22:35									#104
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How does it not? They're giving a larger percentage of their total income, not just the same percentage of a larger amount. You can say they're not paying enough of a larger percentage, but that needs to be backed up too. What's your rationale for graduated income tax? Punishment for making too much money?

I'm not a Republican or anything, and I support a graduated income tax, but I think the current range is from ten percent for amounts under six grand a year to thirty-nine for amounts in excess of about $250,000. That's a respectable disparity. Given how many ludicrously rich people there are who make millions each year there's room for another bracket, but thirty-nine percent is pretty high already.

	27-06-2004 23:48									#105
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The brackets have that kind of range, but that doesn't mean that the tax payments are in that range.

Social Security withholding is also a tax, and it's a flat percentage with a cap, so it hits lower income taxpayers harder than it does anyone above the cap.

If you're making enough to be in the highest brackets, you also have available a whole range of options for deductions, credits and deferrals of taxes.

I've made a lot of money per year, and I've made little money per year, and the whole range in between. If you think people who make a lot have a tough time under the current tax structure, they ain't.

	28-06-2004 05:10									#106
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quote: Social Security withholding is also a tax, and it's a flat percentage with a cap, so it hits lower income taxpayers harder than it does anyone above the cap.

Social Security doesn't pay for animal shelters.

	28-06-2004 21:53									#107
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I'm not saying it's tough to be rich, just that Skycinich has a valid argument. Just how many valid deduction loopholes do rich individuals have though, just out of curiosity? Everyone says that celebrities giving money to charity do it for the tax deductions, but five minutes with a bracket table and a calculator shows you how stupid that is...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not questioning your arguments, I'd just like to hear some examples of non-corporate deduction tricks.

	28-06-2004 23:20									#108
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"Skycinich"? That's a new one, I think?