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"Do you believe in figs in the military?

It goes without saying that the military's current policy of "If we don't see you eating it, you don't have to tell us you ate it" is totally inadequate. People have to live in very close quarters in the army, and it can make you very uncomfortable to know that one of your bunkmates is eating a fig. Or has eaten a fig sometime in the recent past. You could be afraid to sleep with your mouth open for fear someone will slip a fig into it.

Our boys in uniform are fighting for the freedom of the rest of us to be as decadent as we want in this great country. Is it too much to ask for them to be kept away from degenerate behavior? (Other than rape, prostitution, hard drugs and violent hazin g, which are normal, healthy parts of the military experience.)"

"The New Testament God is like David Letterman after he moved from NBC to CBS. Or Lou Grant after the first season of the Mary Tyler Moore show. Or Major Kira after the first season of Deep Space Nine. You see it again and ag ain, on television and elsewhere. The longer these cultural icons hang around, the more they lose the gritty, edgy, dangerous quality that made us love them in the first place.

God's like that. After His first few seasons in the Bible, He started to get all cute and loveable. Started talking about how only those without sin should cast the first stone and "Judge not, lest ye be judged." What a let-down. It really shows that G od should have been canceled after the Book of Exodus, or at the latest the Book of Job. After that, it's all downhill into sickening gooeyness, although He regained a bit of His zing in the Book of Revelation. All that great apocalyptic stuff. But that's like the Babylon 5 finale: it was actually worked out before all the stuff that came before it.

So most people tend to just ignore all of that later stuff, focusing on God in His prime, before the writers got soft. Really, you can just stick with Leviticus, and ignore everything else. That's the blueprint for how to live a happy, well-integrated life."

"9/13/05: A Fig-Seeking Missile Aimed At Your Bowels
God has devised new and greater natural disasters! Soon He will have no more need of hurricanes and earthquakes to demolish the fig groves of iniquity! Heaven's R&D department is developing small tornadoes, no bigger than your thumbnail, that can home in on the small intestine of unbelievers. Any colon that contains fig pulp will rupture so violently that colon pieces will fly out of your ears -- but any righteous fig-abstainers nearby will be left unharmed. Praise Jesus. The device is similar to our super-accurate "bunker buster" bombs that have kept Iraqi death tolls almost non-existent.

Having recently turned thirty, Ricky claims each decade of her life has been better than the previous one and that she plans to keep it that way. She says she has "big plants for my thirties, and no disabilities are going to be able to stop me."

Ricky has been dealt a double-handful of chronic illnesses and disabilities for this life. Together, these conditions manage to keep her completely bedridden and in constant severe pain, along with literally pages of additional nasty symptoms. Ricky works very hard to keep her spirits up despite these challenges, and usually succeeds surprisingly well, but is quick to point out she's no "super crip." According to Ricky, she "[doesn't] do anything that millions of other people with disabilities do every day. It's nothing amazingly special."

Hvorfor skulle GM-afgrøder spredes mere end konventionelle afgrøder?
Hvorfor skulle spredning af GM-afgrøder have større konsekvenser end spredning af konventionelle eller økologisk afgrøder?
Hvorfor skal GM-afgrøder testes så meget mere grundigt end andre nye afgrøder?"

Her er jeg lige nødt til at knytte en bemærkning til anden undersøgelse af Pinstrup-Andersen (DR, Økologisk Landsforening), som NOAH også henviste til. Den viste, at økologiske dyrkningsmetoder i ulandene i nogle tilfælde kunne være mere effektiv end de metoder, man allerede brugte. Fint med mig. Lad os føje økologisk dyrkning til værktøjskassen, og bruge det når det er hensigtsmæssigt – i kombination med de andre redskaber, GMO inklusive. Men som Pinstrup-Andersen selv udtrykker det, kan økologi i sig selv heller ikke redde verden."

"Why would Pluto want to be a planet?

As a planet, it’s a tiny little, out-of-whack runt! As a Kuiper Belt Object, it’s a rocking big heavyweight bruiser. Okay, not quite as big as UB313, but it’s got more moons!

So as a matter of common decency, we should realize that Pluto would rather rule in the icy reaches of the Kuiper Belt than be subject to mockery in the warm glowing warmth of the inner solar system. It’s named after the god of the underworld, after all."

"As I've said in the comment threads, what I think will eventually happen is that there will be nine "Historical Planets" that get named in popular astronomy books, with Pluto/Charon being considered one entry (possibly ten if popular imagination re-promotes Ceres), and then all the other planets get a hand-wave, as in: "Our solar system is comprised of nine historical planets, and many other smaller, icy planets discovered after Pluto." Done and done. Among other things, this will allow people not to worry about screwing up the "naming the planets after Roman gods" thing."

"This is bullshit. We all know that the only real planets — the big ones that accreted from the solar disk right at the beginning — are Jupiter, Saturn, Nepture and Uranus. They're self-accreting bodies that aren't massive enough to undergo fusion and that formed in orbit around a star. OK? That's a planet.

"The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy.

This is not a guide for wusses whose aim is merely to wipe out humanity. I (Sam Hughes) can in no way guarantee the complete extinction of the human race via any of these methods, real or imaginary. Humanity is wily and resourceful, and many of the methods outlined below will take many years to even become available, let alone implement, by which time mankind may well have spread to other planets; indeed, other star systems. If total human genocide is your ultimate goal, you are reading the wrong document. There are far more efficient ways of doing this, many which are available and feasible RIGHT NOW. Nor is this a guide for those wanting to annihilate everything from single-celled life upwards, render Earth uninhabitable or simply conquer it. These are trivial goals in comparison.

This is a guide for those who do not want the Earth to be there anymore.

"to translate important books by great Americans and about America into Arabic, and to subsidize their publication so that they can be bought inexpensively. We are also subventing their distribution. We seek funding from the general public as well as from foundations.
[...]
We intend to have all the founding fathers translated—Madison, Franklin, Washington, Paine, and so on. We would also like to see works that treat issues in democracy and multi-culturalism, as well as engaging histories of the United States. We cannot find in OCLC, an electronic catalogue of over 40 million books held in participating libraries, any Arabic translation of the major speeches and letters of Martin Luther King or of the works of Susan B. Anthony. Eventually it would be nice to see in Arabic a good solid book about, e.g., the history of the American Jewish community, and other important minority groups about which most most Arab readers would find it difficult to get solid knowledge from the sources now available to them.

Likewise, it would be nice to put into Arabic Western books about, e.g., Iraq. Our Middle East Studies programs and university presses publish a great deal of interest to the Arab world, and yet little of it gets translated, and even where books are translated they sometimes take a long time to get into print.

Contributions will allow us to locate and fund qualified Arab translators, to arrange for printing, to subsidize the printing so as to ensure the book is affordable and that there is a paperback version, and to subsidize and ensure wide distribution, to bookstores, street vendors and libraries throughout the Arab world. Although we will definitely launch a web site and try to make things available on the internet, readers should remember that that is still a small and underdeveloped medium in the Middle East. Inexpensive and well-distributed paperbacks will have more impact at this point in time."

"Oh, hunting. What other socially-acceptable excuse is there for one head out into the great outdoors and indulge oneself with an afternoon of tree climbing and simulated hoof stomping?
[...]
Why stomp? As the inventor points out "stomping can occur as a form of communication which can provide a male the opportunity to encounter a female for the purpose of mating." For he who hath heavy feet shall never bear a heavy heart. "

"free digital maps for educational use. This effort gives teachers and students an expanding set of small-scale reference maps for classroom and personal use."

"Men i et demokrati er patriotisme ikke det samme som loyal (tavs) opbakning om regeringens politik. Næsten tværtimod. I et demokrati er kritisk debat en patriotisk dyd."