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I'm way too tired to give it much thought, but this is just a facet of the bigger problem that is food prices in general, and how those prices are manipulated artificially for profit (futures exchanges) or political purposes (wheat prices and the fall of good ol' USSR). But there IS also a real problem with the availability and sustainability of certain food sources -I'm thinking fisheries in particular- which means low supply and, consequently, a rise in prices. So, can we really have everyone eating healthy, or is it just wishful thinking, in light of current and expected population growth? All those iCraps aren't going to pay themselves.

I say tax away. All those bypasses aren't going to pay themselves. Yeah, ban all animal fats, steak, mince, milk, butter, the lot. Everyone can get over it by popping some newly legalised tabs.

Such an inspiring attitude. Not solved yet, therefore, unsolvable. You'd make a great Senator. Hilarious. Chances are I'm healthier than you. I don't smoke, don't drink, don't do drugs. Hit the gym 5x/week. I make sure to get at least eight hours of continuous sleep each day. I've calculated my daily calorie intake, etc. As you can see I'm kind of an Ayatollah of healthy living (cue for Wals' comment). I'm arguing out of principle here, so keep your assumptions to yourself. As for the solution, it's really pretty simple - accountability in the form of increased taxing, be it a sort of VAT on the finished product, special taxes to apply as a result of tests, or whatever. I'm sure you could come up with more effective ways, if you weren't so busy producing fallacies to support your initial stance. Agreed. I don't like UHC much, either. Adults should be accountable, alright. Starting to see a pattern here? (; This whole paternalist approach to some harmful things with a clear negative effect for the collective is both stupid and inconsistent. I extended the argument for regulation of personal conducts based on societal costs to its logical next step based on mathematical "evidence", in my last post. I noticed nobody except Krez wants to touch it with a ten foot pole, and even the best he could come up with was a rebuttal with 2nd-hand smoke - which is, by the way, a pretty poor job as it doesn't adress the societal costs of obesity. How come? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. So, you are actually pro-legalization? As in, anti-prohibition? What, you got high before posting that or it's just a flip-flop? Either you failed to make your stance clear, or I completely misunderstood your meaning. If the latter, I apologize. I still maintain what I said about your inclination for regulating people's lives, especially in light of your stance about a total ban on smoking. No hard feelings, huh?

You won't see me arguing against a ban on smoking in public places. So, if you make up an absurd hypothetical way of going about it, then point out how absurd that solution is, that clearly means the problem has no solution, right? You've made two posts in this thread and both contain really moving stories... which are not really relevant. Loss of productivity and social security costs are a problem for sure. How about getting users to pay the difference? Clearly it's "not practical". Not practical like driving licenses, not practical like progressive taxes, not practical like trials, not practical like pretty much everything else that makes a difference between individuals. It's all about your penchant for telling people how they should live, and then suggesting that the gov't throw in jail anyone who doesn't do as you say - or declare war if there's just too many of them. See, the problem is that you simply don't understand that no evidence, no matter how strong, is grounds for infringing upon individual freedoms. Nobody, as I don't smoke. You would, however, if you had it your way. No, it most certainly is not viable to make such a case, unless you can prove that the societal harm you speak of can only be fought with measures that are unjust, abusive and, most importantly, ineffective. When you're done proving that, you can easily make a case for banning fatty foods, sedentary lifestyles, inadequate sleep routines, and any number of other things with similar or higher "societal costs" than drug consumption. Whose problem it is if you don't understand key concepts?

Yep. I could explain why, but it's not like you're new around these parts and you've made it abundantly clear that trying to reason with you is pointless. Funny, that's a trait shared by true fascists, too, as is hypocrisy. Aren't you quite the prolific drunken poster? Yeah, it's the same because neither of them has the ability to throw me in jail if I buy some smokes or get caught in flagrante delicto with Bubba. They both have their reasons, but ultimately it's my call. And let's not turn this into a scientific evidence v. religion debate, please? Criminalization is what we're discussing here, and the absurd notion that some people apparently have that they can tell me how to live when it doesn't directly affect them at all.

And this, kids, is what 21st century fascism looks like.

Maybe to any number of other countries where the drug industry doesn't represent a sizable % of their economic activity? The real problem isn't the gangs, but the corruption that is necessary to keep such a huge illegal business running. It's a necessary consequence of outlawing such a widespread and profitable activity whose products are in perpetual high demand.

Consumer states need something to waste tax money on. Otherwise corruption might get out of hand and people would start getting grumpy about the status quo. Funny how this has the effect of maintaining endemic corruption in producer countries, though. And if the cost is a few thousand casualties every year in some backwater country that most people wouldn't even be able to find on a map, who cares.

So Morgy's mediocre trolling has, against all odds, managed to turn yet another decent thread into a discussion about the evil US? What a shame. Please, let's go back to discussing Euro hypocrisy and herd mentality. We don't get nearly as many threads about that. Reminder: France is, at least nominally, a democracy. In a democracy, governments reflect -for the most part- the prevailing popular sentiment. Or do they?

Since there's no actual evolution thread, I'm just going to take the chance and start off this. Not sure how much people in these boards know about the inner workings -as far as cutting edge science goes, anyway- of evolution, but from what I've read, there's still a lot of gaps to fill. Much as with climate modeling, it's an incredibly difficult and complex problem, and calling it "proven science" can be both premature and misleading. http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od172/schutz172.htm (fun read, undoubtedly lacking sufficient rigour and likely already debunked, but still)

Heh. I remember reading that being a super genius is often about as much about huge egos as it is about raw brainpower. I mean, one needs to believe he can succeed where everyone else has, so far, failed. And then there's Henry Cavendish... so I guess jerks come in all varieties, not just stupid.

Seriously? Nobody more senior than a corporal? Are corporals leading platoons in the British army now? Where I come from, there's something called "duty to aid" (don't know the proper English legalese), which will land you in jail if it can be proven in court that you failed to observe. This is without even considering how far direct responsibility for the actions while on duty of subordinates might extend. I did some reading and at least some Lt.s were aware of what was going on and did jack about it. I don't want the army to disband but I'd like some proper example setting, and NCOs just won't do. They'll still be in uniform, right? That's your message right there.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405...=world_newsreel Airstrikes NATO plz! Good luck with that. And also, good luck with getting the colonel ultimately responsible for the unit under whose care the poor bastard died to answer for it before a court-martial. Not even platoon commanders were tried... heh. We simply don't much care what happens to them towelheads and monkeys, and it's high time we admitted it.

Wrong. (as usual) Funny how the rebels merely "suspect" those blacks of being pro-Q mercenaries -though apparently mere suspicion is enough to get you a bullet to the back of the skull in brave new Libya- yet you can give us assurances that they were. How's the weather inside your colon? edit: as for the "no racism" idiocy: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405...3328336026.html

@Wals: no, can't help you. We went back and forth in the original thread, it should be around somewhere. I can give you an example off the top of my head: Q absolutely HAD to be stopped from committing atrocities on civilians, but if it's the good rebels rounding up people and executing them just for being black, no biggie. I'm sure that you can find more examples on your own. Not on Stratfor, though. Just for kicks: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...ated-Libya.html http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/31/...E7JV2CF20110831 Yep, I'm sure things will be way better with these guys in charge.

Those are babies, clearly.

Interesting theory, but I'd like to see some evidence that this will actually be the case. Unless "eventually" in this context is to be taken to mean "at a completely unspecified point in the future". Which then begs the question why Q's removal at this point was so critical, and how it is going to be the inflection point in Libyan history. What with precedents not being exactly comforting and all. I'm not too convinced that removing Q will benefit us that much, either. Even disregarding the fact that that wasn't the rationale behind the UN mandate for bombing the bejeezus out of them, there's the issue that Q was basically without friends internationally and hard pressed to keep his own house clean and tidy. In spite of Krez's prosaic attempts to prove what an active terrorist Q was by linking to something that happened even before he was born, there's little actual evidence that Q was a threat that demanded such expeditious action. Is this going to benefit the West? Perhaps, but I doubt it'll be as you suggested. Oh, nice. I know it looks like I'm actively trying to get under your skin, but I think he couldn't have put it better. If we're going to go back to this tutelage of nations where it appears they can't handle their own affairs without a bloodbath -and only if it's economically profitable, as you admitted previously- can we at least be open about it and drop the propaganda and perversion of language? If it's the right thing to do -and frankly I have no idea if it is- why are all the bull**** and double standards necessary? What are we so ashamed of?

Those aren't really worst-case scenarios, we've seen them elsewhere so it's not much of a stretch to imagine that Libya could see a repetition of any number of those. As for Q's connections to terrorism and the notion that removing him will lead to less terrorism as opposed to more... that was then and this is now. Funny, too, because depending on who you listen to, the rebels are in fact connected to Al-Qaeda. We'll see if this revolution eventually amounts to anything in terms of real change for the people -much less what was advertised as- which shouldn't be too difficult as Q really sucked as far as statebuilding goes, but if things go wrong down the road, who is going to take the blame? Heh. Oh, my. I must have hit pretty close to home to get such a rise out of you. Yeah, I'm deeply ashamed that my compatriots reacted both cowardly and stupidly in the wake of the 2004 attacks, but we're paying the price for that and will continue to do so for a few more years at best. That's neither here nor there, though. The reference is in poor taste by comparison. WWII, and the North African campaign in particular only share with the present conflict the geographic location. They aren't comparable in motives and they are most certainly not comparable in intensity. If you want to draw parallels between standing up to the aggressions of Hitler and Tojo and going to some backwater dictator's turf to burn it down with guided munitions without even bothering to put in the legwork ourselves, be my guest. But this whole "fight for freedom" has a really rancid stench about it so I'm not buying into it, not this time.

Even if they are only replaced by nominal democracies that work for all intents and purposes like the regimes they toppled? Even if they are plunged into an intermittent state of civil war? Even if living standards take a hit for all but the leading "revolutionaries"? Even if it leads to an anti-Western sentiment across the board? Okay, so then, other than the obvious lucrative reconstruction, weapons and raw materials contracts, how exactly is that a success? A success for whom, anyway? That's the Desert Rats shoulder patch from, you know, way back when Brits actually fought fascism. I think the reference is in kinda poor taste...

And because I'm such a huge nerd:

MSNBC disagrees. Great summary, though.

Wals, in general you are a fairly sensible chap and not at all suspect of distorting facts, which makes your stance in this all the stranger. You say Boo's points are arse, however: 1) In fact, intervention went lightning fast - less than one month after Q had started bombing towns; things were rushed when it looked like he would indeed succeed in using his airforce and armor to crush the rebels in Benghazi. I wouldn't exactly call depleting the ordnance stocks of some coalition members "understrength bombing", either.2) We both know that allied special forces are operating on Libyan soil... the question is only the depth of their involvement. 3) Sure... decapitation of his forces and insta-airstrikes on anything heavier than a technical. The difference in the amount of heavy weapons controlled by each side was one of the biggest problems in the early days of the war, remember? That has somehow ceased to be a problem... So how about we all stop with the bollocks, old boy?

Other than the obvious fact that the game failed to attract your attention, you mean? Heh. @Ros: DX is a great game, if you can get past the terribly dated graphics, even worse animations and lackluster gunplay. The plot and characters are what the game is all about, so if for whatever reason they aren't up your alley, you'll find playing it a chore. You should at least give it a shot.

Fascinating. Do you remember your first time fondly?

I very much doubt it. Unmanned may be fine for the drone's current role of cheap and cheerful ground attack but the idea of some sort of centralised control for air to air combat fighters? Too prone to ECM, too little situational awareness/ more ephemeral 'feel' and instinct aspects, too much latency. Not to mention that the idea of having aircraft basically stop working if their control centre is destroyed strikes me as a terrible idea- damage a carrier and all its aircraft drop out of the sky/ go into some sort of holding pattern/ nuke a chunk of the Nevada desert and suddenly a third of the airforce is unusable/ take out the satellites and effectively ground the entire airforce. And there's no realistic prospect of wholly independent combat robots in the near future (or pretty much ever, imo) as you simply cannot program for all the vagaries of combat. part o' the problem is that the aircraft has finally reached a performance level whereby the pilots is a limit on their efficacy. am not thinking we is talking 'bout wholly unmanned aircraft anytime in the new future, but is more likely than coming up with a new generation o' fighters... is no more great leap in fighter craft design 'cause the pilots simply cannot handle another serious leap in performance; you cannot improve the planes without also improving the pilots. major refinements o' avionics and weapons is gonna continue, but most indicators suggest that this is the last generation o' manned fighters. I'm also thinking that it's possible to come up with systems to circumvent the vulnerabilities arising from remote, centralized C3 setups, but unless genetics and drugs make a quantum leap in the next ten years, there's just no way to have human pilots come closer to the performance of machines. Also, considering the costs of pilot training and the risk of loss in combat, it stands to reason that officials would seek ways to make sure that as much of the investment as possible isn't directly in the line of fire. This seems to be one of those instances where technology does away with hard human limits and substitutes with a management question that can be solved easily by the Harvard crowd. Also, doctrines evolve, though not at the same pace as tech does. Air superiority as a role for specialized aircraft may be on its way to obsolescence, as happened to heavy and night fighters and, to a lesser extent, interceptors. Drones armed with guided munitions seem to have also phased out dedicated ground attack aircraft such as the A-10... but who knows what war against someone with credible AA would look like, today. At any rate, the Raptor and especially the F-35 look to me like the bloated, wasteful proof that US officials and brass are, as usual, "fighting the last war". And of course <rant about the MIC>