Secular Caf�

Offshot from PtP Thread - This is Leicestershire Article

neilstone40 — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 09:47:29 GMT

This is an offshoot from an article raised on the Protest the Pope Thread which I've started as a new thread as it seems to be "growing legs" by itself.

The article was written by a Fr Leon Pereira and was postulating whether the Pope could potentially be martyred during his visit to the UK.

FR Pereira also uses some wonderfully emotive and self absorbed language such as "the geopolitical centre of the culture of death".

I responded on the comments section stating my views on the article. I was soon joined by "Keith A., Leicester" who really should be invited to join this forum as a new chewtoy as his ill-informed, archaic and dogmatic views would make for many fun discussions. I think we might make him cry if he did...

Anyways, a little dialogue has being developing with our Keith making increasingly ridiculous statements for me to dismantle.

If anyone wishes to comment, they will need to register. If you already have a registration for the Daily Mail website, this should also work (I already have one as arguing with Daily Mail readers is a hobby of mine)

He clearly has the hots for Mother Theresa as well as an interesting theory about "Natural Family Planning" (I was going to make a truly vulgar and explicit comment but will refrain at the moment)

The newest comments are at the top so it may be easier to start at the first comment at the bottom of the page and scroll up.

http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.u...true#community

dont ask dont tell unconstitutional

Aca — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 08:04:30 GMT

Quote:

A federal judge in Riverside declared the U.S. military�s ban on openly gay service members unconstitutional Thursday, saying the �don't ask, don't tell� policy violates the 1st Amendment rights of lesbians and gay men.

U.S. District Court Judge Virginia A. Phillips said the policy banning gays did not preserve military readiness, contrary to what many supporters have argued, saying evidence shows that the policy in fact had a �direct and deleterious effect�� on the military.

Phillips said she would issue an injunction barring the government from enforcing the policy. However, the U.S. Department of Justice, which defended �don�t ask, don�t tell� during a two-week trial in Riverside, will have an opportunity to appeal that decision.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lano...tutional-.html

:clap:

It seems that ant gay crowd is having hard time convincing federal judges about anything lately.....

Disillusionment with Obama

DMB — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 07:52:08 GMT

Given all the initial hype, I suppose it was inevitable.

http://www.economist.com/node/169906...hig|09-09-2010

Quote:

To Muslim eyes, the formerly exotic Mr Obama has metamorphosed in office into just another American president, doing the things American presidents do to defend America�s interests.

In the meantime, however, a funny thing is happening on the home front. Where the Muslim world sees just another president, Mr Obama is somehow becoming more exotic to Americans. In August a Pew survey found that nearly one in five, and a third of conservative Republicans, think that he is a Muslim himself. Only about a third of all Americans say he is a Christian and 43% say they do not know what religion he practises. Moreover, both the number who think he is a Muslim and the number who do not think he is a Christian have risen sharply since March 2009.

Making it to the top

DMB — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 07:47:51 GMT

http://www.economist.com/node/169906...hig|09-09-2010

Quote:

Mr Pfeffer starts by rubbishing the notion that the world is just—that the best way to win power is to be good at your job. The relationship between rewards and competence is loose at best. Bob Nardelli was a disastrous CEO of Home Depot. But he was paid nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to leave and quickly moved to the top slot at Chrysler, which then went bankrupt. Mr Pfeffer points out that CEOs who presided over three years of poor earnings and led their firms into bankruptcy only faced a 50% chance of losing their jobs (and perfectly successful senior managers are routinely cleaned out when new CEOs take over). There are plenty of things that matter more than competence, such as the ability to project drive and self-confidence.

The best way to increase your chances of reaching the top is to choose the right department to join. The most powerful departments are the ones that have produced the current big-wigs (R&D in Germany, finance in America), and the ones that pay the most. But the trick is to find the department that is on the rise. Robert McNamara and his fellow whizz kids flourished in post-war America because they realised that power was shifting to finance. . .

. . . Once you have chosen the right department three things matter more than anything else. The first is the ability to “manage upwards”. This means turning yourself into a supplicant: Barack Obama asked about a third of his fellow senators for help when he first arrived in the institution. It also means mastering the art of flattery: Jennifer Chatman, of the University of California, Berkeley, conducted experiments in which she tried to find a point at which flattery became ineffective. It turned out there wasn’t one.

The Damian Hirst market

DMB — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 07:43:10 GMT

http://www.economist.com/node/169908...hig|09-09-2010

I don't think I'd give his stuff houseroom if it were free.

What is going on in Iran?

DMB — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 07:34:45 GMT

See this:

http://www.economist.com/node/169946...hig|09-09-2010

Bio: My life so far

David M Payne — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 03:28:53 GMT

Some of you know me, some don't. So I thought I would post this here even though I'm not a new guy really. You'll know and understand me better if you read this.

My life so far

You know those stories that are upbeat stories of people's lives, full of witty tales of how good their life was/is? They grew up in a loving household, had great parents, lots of friends, maybe a sibling or two that they got along with for the most part. Then they went to high school, followed by a good university where they met and married their university sweetheart, got a good job, bought a house and had some kids who they treated just as well as their parents treated them. The happy couple lived and loved together, and when you finished reading the story it left you with a warm fuzzy feeling?

This isn't one of those stories. No this tale is more like watching a slow motion train wreck. This is a story about a life that started out as a mistake, and for the most part went downhill from there. So if you're looking for upbeat you need to find a story like that. The best spin I can put on this story is that it is a cautionary tale, a life that had a few good moments, but in the end the minuses heavily outnumber the positives. My life was filled with a series of mistakes, made first by my parents and later by me. So what was the first mistake? Me. Unplanned, unwanted, deserted by my sperm donor dad after 3 years and sent to live in semi foster care by my mom who being young wanted to hang with her friends after her swing shift at Harold's Club. She wasn't ready to be a mother and had abortion been legal then, you wouldn't be reading this now.

What is your first memory? Mine was of me with a little leather pouch that I had some money in, less than a dollar, but candy bars were a nickel then to, and a quarter got you into a movie, so it was a small fortune for a 4 year old boy. I cleverly buried it by a small ditch close to where my mother lived. She would usually spend a day a week with me, if it worked out with her busy schedule. This was one of those days. The next week I went to dig up my buried treasure, and found that someone had filled in the ditch, cut down all the willows and my fortune was lost forever. I didn't know it then, but my life would mirror this small disaster to this day.

The first foster family I lived with was a bit of a nightmare. My memory is a funny thing, I can remember all of the bad things and only a few of the good things in my life. I guess bad memories are generally more powerful and easier to remember than good ones were, and I never had many good memories anyway. My best memory of living there is I learned to ride a bike, sort of. I remember finally getting it going and around the block I went, until I came upon a parked car and I panicked. I didn't know how to use the brakes or steer the bike very well, so into the back end of the car I went. I laugh about it now, but at the time I had bruises and scrapes and was hurting pretty bad, at least from a 4 year old perspective.

My "foster" mom and her son were OK, the father was a bastard who resented that they had to take me in for the extra money. He was abusive to me every chance he got. I tried to be a good boy, I wanted a loving father figure, but he wasn't it. Every chance he got he would be cruel to me in subtle ways, always reminding me of how stupid I was and how lucky I was to live with them. There were chores to do, and his favorite one for me was to send me down into the basement to get coal for the heater, at night. He had one of the last coal heaters in town. I hated this because as a small boy I was afraid of black widows and rats, both of which were in there, and being in the dark made it that much more scary. Another time there were some grapes left on the kitchen table and the next morning a lot of them were missing. The father knew immediately who the guilty party was, me. The problem was I didn't do it, but he didn't believe me and spanked the crap out of me for "stealing" those grapes. A few days later his son admitted that he had done it. So I got an apology right? Wrong. He acted like he had done nothing wrong to me.

One day my mother came by unexpectedly and I was trying to help the father fix the drain on the sink in the kitchen. As usual he was yelling at me, calling me stupid when I gave him the wrong tool. (I guess he thought that tool knowledge came automatically to 4 year olds.) My mom happened to come to visit just then and when she saw just how mean and abusive this guy was to me she went out and found another semi foster family for me to live with.

So, it was off to the new family for me. I wasn't there long, but I did learn to really ride a bike there, so that was a good thing. The family wasn't as bad as the first one, but again I got ignored for the most part as they made it clear I was a boarder, not family. I was love starved pretty bad by then, I just wanted to have a loving family like the few friends I had, had with their families. I was a bit shy and with all the moving around it was hard to make friends. I learned to be a loner, which has done me no good as I still have trouble making friends. Lots of trust issues, more on that later.

Then when I was about 5 my mom moved me into a large Mormon family with lots of kids. Those people were nice but I tended to get lost in the shuffle there. At least the atmosphere was more positive. Also my mom took a room there, so we were in the same house but just like before she had trouble finding time for me. I would see her going to work, get a few minuets of contact, a hug now and then, and out the door she went. So there we were in the same house but with the same old problems, not much contact and not much in the way of love being shown to me by her or anyone else. I had to go to the Mormon temple and bible class. I learned to start reading the bible there. In one way I was a bit unusual for my age as I could already read, mostly comics but I did read the newspaper and Time even though sometimes I didn't understand what I was reading. Back to the bible, I started with the first page and after a few reading sessions I realized that the bible was a scary book full of anger and violent stories, just the opposite of what the minister preached it was. So at a very early age religion didn't look all that good to me. Besides the comic books were more fun and not as violent.

To be as fair as I can to my mom, she was raised the same way to an extent that I was. My grandparents had a lot of kids and at an early age she was sent to Reno to live with her oldest sister, who was twenty years her senior. I don't think she got tons of love and affection by her older sister, but I know she got way more than I did. I think she just passed along her upbringing to me, but I wasn't sent to live with family, but with strangers who took care of my physical needs but I was on my own emotionally. Young children have a very hard time learning how to love when they aren�t getting much to learn from. So I did a bad job teaching myself the positive emotional things all children need. (Now my mom grudgingly regrets what she did, as we don't have much of a relationship.)

Let me give anyone who has made it this far into my life a warning. Don't have children if you are not ready for them. Or if you have no time to spend with them, or you can't teach them what love is. Watch the verbal and physical abuse, it does more damage to a young psyche than you can imagine. So I was emotionally stunted and had no real idea of what a loving family, or love for that matter, was. These problems are still with me to a certain extent, more on that later.

We moved again when I was about 7 to Reno from Sparks to live with a new family. They were Catholic with two daughters around my age. I learned what Sunday Catholics were from them. All holy on Sunday and lots of booze and other prohibited behaviors the rest of the week. I went to Catholic Church, finished reading the bible there and still had little faith in religious faith. So there we were in a new house, I had a bedroom upstairs and my mom had one in the basement. She might as well have been in a different part of town for all the contact we had. By then I was past the age where children should have bonded to their parents. She was my mom, but she wasn't really a mom, more like the lady living in the basement. My emotional state was such that I started to develop asthma from the emotional stress, or so the doctors said. This was in the days before asthma meds were developed so you could die from a bad attack, which I came close to for several years. I can remember lying in the basement struggling to breath and feeling like I was dying. If you have never experienced it, it is very scary. (You can still die from asthma if you don't get treatment very quickly when you are having an asthma attack.)

Then my mom bought a small house when I was 8 and I was so happy. Now I would have her to myself. Wrong. She replaced my semi foster care with babysitters. But I did see her more than I had in the past, which turned out to be not as good as I thought it would be. Mom had a temper which I hadn't seen all that much before, because I didn't see her all that much. I wasn't the most perfect kid but the worst thing I did there was taking her car for joy rides a few years later when I could reach all the controls. Got grounded for the longest summer of my life for that one. When I did something that my mom didn't like she would punish me by slapping me in the face and calling me stupid. That happened a lot because I didn't have to do much to set her off. She had no idea how much damage the verbal and physical abuse she was doing to me would affect me for the rest of my life. (She does now, but it�s a bit to late to fix things.)

We had a neighbor Frank Hart who is dead now but who used to be somewhat of a foster dad to me. He was very religious, a deacon in his church and eventually a 33-degree Mason. I wanted my mom to marry him, but she wasn't interested in him. He was a cop, in fact he headed what we now call the crime lab these days. He was very nice to me and would take me places and buy me things. As I grew older I started running track and Frank would give me massages to loosen my muscles, or so he said. He never touched my genitals so I didn't think it was anything more than what he said it was. Frank bought a trailer and moved, so I only saw him once and a while after then.

When I was 15 my mom met a guy who had a son and they got married. I was in heaven! I was going to have a real family and a real dad for the first time in my life! So we moved into his house and things went south as they say. His son was very possessive of his dad and didn't like us. But being a bit of a psycho he hid it well and started picking fights with me. I was older by a couple of years so every time he started one of these conflicts, his dad took his side, which is understandable as blood is thicker than stepchildren. So I had to move at 15 years of age. But I had a place to go, Frank's house. Well the massages got real personal then, he had control of me by now. He never raped me, but he touched me everywhere. I was uncomfortable with that, but given my choices, Frank or the streets, I picked Frank. To be fair he did take pretty good care of me, massages not withstanding. (I'm using his real name here because I don't think any pedophile dead or not should EVER get away scot free from what they have done. Also I found out later that there were a string of boys after me who got the Frank treatment.)

I couldn't wait until I was out of high school so I could be on my own. After graduation I spent part of the summer in town and then went into the Marines in 1967. A major factor in my decision to go into the Marines involved my first real love. I won't use her name here, but I was crazy about her. And the sex was great, so great she got pregnant. I loved her as strongly as I could love anyone and wanted to get married. But I wasn't of age in those days and my mom wouldn't give me permission to marry her. I had some money in the bank from an accident I was in, so I paid all the medical bills and we had a son, which we were forced to put up for adoption. I didn't know it then, but this would be the only child I would ever father. We broke up under the strain of it all, and I only saw her one time after that. My mother said it was for the best, but quite frankly I hated her for it. She could have a family, but I couldn't. So broken hearted I planned my next move for after high school, the Marines.

The Marines promised me they would make me a badass and to some extent they were right. Bootcamp was as promised, the hardest thing I had ever done in my life. It was hard, but it was great too. When I graduated I was a man, and I was on my own in a family called the Marines. I went to Millington Naval Air Station out side of Memphis Tenn., for school and learned how to take care of and repair ground support equipment for aircraft. I was there when Martin Luther King was shot and killed and we had something that had never happened at that base before, race riots. I also joined the rifle drill team there. Not the big one in Washington, but we went a few places and I really learned to handle a rifle. After school I was sent to the New River Marine air base in North Carolina, which had helicopters. I didn't like it there, the people in town treated us like we were some kind of infestation. I was ready for bigger and better things, like Vietnam. I had a few reasons for volunteering to go to Vietnam. First and foremost my mother didn't want me to join the Marines or go to Vietnam, so it was payback for my childhood and teenage years with her, especially for denying me the right to get married. Also I bought into the whole Marine thing and thought if I went to war I would come back a war vet and get the same treatment the guys in WW II got. I should have paid attention to how the men who went to Korea were treated when they only got a draw in their war. Also there was the whole mystique of war and adventure thing that was going around. Plus lets face it at that age you think you are invincible.

So off to Vietnam I went, or thought I went. First they sent me to Iwakuni Japan where I spent a few months until the transfer to Vietnam I'd been seeking came through. Oh boy I was going to have the adventure of my life, right. Uh, no I was about to step into a place that would make my childhood and teenage years look like a stint in heaven. (Pop quiz, do you know how old the Vietnam war was, for the Vietnamese? It started in 111BC when China invaded. They spent 1600 years trying to turn Vietnam into another province, only to meet the same fate that the French and later the US met. So the next time you hear someone say; "we could have won in Vietnam if we had just hung in there" tell them when that war really started and see if they still think we could have won that war. Iraq was looking like Vietnam to me, but perhaps Obama has learned the lessons of history. Bush sure didn't have a clue about history as it pertains to that part of the world.)

On my first day in country I was in the receiving barracks in Da Nang and I was talking to a young Marine about what to expect. One of the first things he asked me was how I slept. All my life sleep had been my one refuge from the problems I faced. I could sleep for 10-12 hours when in crisis and it really helped. So I told him that. He told me that I didn't want to do that because it could get you killed. Best to sleep with one eye open he said. Now he was trying to help me get prepared for what was to come, but that moment changed my life forever. That night I didn't sleep. In fact I didn't sleep for about three days. By then I was in Phu Bi up by the DMZ and I was a wreck. Luckily I met another Marine who had something that finally helped me get some sleep, pot. Pot was the only thing strong enough to help us sleep that was available to lower ranking Marines. The old standby, booze wasn't available to us lower enlisted guys except for 3/2 beer, which had such a low alcohol level that if you drank enough to get buzzed, you would spend the night in the can peeing it out. So I was able to get some sleep every night, but it was never enough to make up for the 12-14 hour days we put in, 7 days a week.

Phu Bi was an interesting place. We had built an airbase there on an old cemetery, which gave the Vietnamese another reason to hate us. The Marine base was on one side of the airfield, the 101 airborne was on the other. Phu Bi had another name, rocket city. Now I have to tell you that the rocket attacks were very noisy, and pretty exciting too, as long as you got to the bunker before you got killed. Of course if a rocket hit your bunker you got killed anyway. We even had an early warning system that would sound off an alarm when it detected rockets coming our way. There was just one problem with the warning system, it didn't go off until after the first rocket hit. So it was useless to us, as we already knew when a rocket barrage was coming thanks to the first rocket that hit the base. The VC also liked to sneak up as close to the perimeter as they could to drop mortars on us or just shoot at us. I finally understood why they say war is hell, and there I was in the middle of it. So sleep had become what it is to this day, fitful torment. By the time I left Phu Bi for the USS Iwo Jima, a helicopter carrier, I was saddled with insomnia, which never left me. My mind had done a 180 and now stress triggered insomnia instead of sleep. (A common problem for many troops there I found out years later.)

But I was out to sea now and things would get better, right? Nope, they got worse. You see the Iwo Jima was also the first stage medivac for the men who were wounded and killed in the operations we were involved in. I had seen some wounded and killed in Phu Bi, but nothing like the steady stream of casualties we got. It was hard not to see this carnage, as the stage one medivac area was also the seating area for the nightly movies. So we would clear out the seating on a regular basis and set up for the incoming wounded/killed. Some people get used to this, but I wasn't one of them. We saw gunshot victims, men who had lost a limb or their heads. It was gruesome.

I remember one night in particular when we had a company of Marines who had walked into a minefield and didn't know it until the first mine went off. I remember it like it was yesterday, to this day. I can close my eyes and still see it like I'm still there. One Marine sergeant in particular really got my attention. He had stepped on a bouncing Betty and it went off in his crotch and blew both of his legs off. They tried to save him but it was too late, he was dead. At the same time this was going on a few sailors and Marines were complaining that they didn't get to finish the movie. I snapped and had to be held back by a couple of my friends from going after them. You would think that nothing like this could happen, but it does from time to time. Some guys get so used to the carnage that they become callous to the pain and suffering of others. That is part of the "war is hell" that doesn't get talked about too much.

That night I lost a few things. I lost any belief in God, as no good God would allow this kind of violence to go on for centuries without doing something about it. I lost any belief that we were doing something good in Vietnam. All we were doing was prolonging a war that we were going to loose anyway. I lost faith in the righteousness of my country to do no wrong. I became somewhat of a psychological zombie just going through the motions and hoping I made it back to the world in one piece. So I did my job and waited until I was out and then my life would return to normal, what ever that was. Eventually after what seemed like a decade I got out and went home. Only home wasn't there any more. It had been replaced by my demons that had taken over my mind. I was paranoid. I carried a gun around with me, but I didn't have a concealed weapons permit, like I do now. I had major trust issues and most all of the symptoms of PTSD. (Fortunately I didn't have the propensity for violence that many other vets had.) Worst of all I didn't realize that I was so damaged that a normal life wasn't possible for me. I had never heard of PTSD and thought all my mental problems were my fault. I had trouble holding a job, a relationship with a good woman, my life together. (At 23 I met and lived with the best woman I ever met, and I drove her off with my problems. I can't tell you how sad that makes me even to this day.) I was racked with guilt because I lived while so many of my friends died there. I know that isn't rational, but that is where I was at the time. I went through the motions of living but I felt dead inside. The depressions got so bad that even when I was working I would find myself with my 38 in my lap, ready to eat my gun. (Cop speak for suicide.) Somehow I always found enough positives to stop me from ending it all.

In 1979 when the hostages from Iran were freed and the big parades were held to welcome them home, things changed. It started with protests from Vietnam vets and vet groups who protested that we had not been welcomed home, we were in fact thrown under the bus and forgotten about. Then the media picked up on PTSD and its effects on the Vietnam vets who had it. I read the symptoms and realized I wasn't alone with my problems. I had almost all of them, except the violence thankfully. Even then I didn't go get help until 4-5 years later. You see I wasn't a combat vet, just an air wing vet who experienced more than my psyche could handle. I felt that I had no business taking a spot that a combat vet might need. But the PTSD problems wouldn't go away and I finally went to the vet center to get some help. The first thing my counselor said was "welcome home Marine". It brought tears to my eyes, it was the first time I had heard someone say that to me.

My life improved from a disaster to something manageable. Though I still had job and relationship problems at least I was learning to manage them. (Though at this time I fell in love with one of my cousins, which turned out to be another bad move by me. It didn't work out and I was devastated in love, again.) The one thing I couldn't change at all was the insomnia problem. Every time I got stressed I went sleepless. After a few years the vet center psychologist sent me to the VA for help. I got more intensive counseling there and some medicinal help with my sleep problems. But pot was the only real thing that would let me sleep when I was stressed out. Insomnia is a bit insidious, as it gets worse as you get older. So I went from big problems causing it to almost any stress causing it. I put in for some disability because my psychiatrist said I was a classic case of PTSD. The VA had another thought, they would grant me some disability, if I could "Prove" that my problem were from Vietnam. Well I hadn't taken notes 20 years ago in Vietnam so I had no "Proof" of my claim of PTSD. The VA had/has this little game I like to call the three "D" game. The first "D" is deny the claim. As their own psychiatrists were backing me up, that didn't work after a few years. So the second "D" came into play, delay the claim, hoping for the third "D" my death making the whole case moot. While I was playing in that circus something happened that made the whole VA effort that much harder to stick to. I developed Agent Orange diabetes. (Little known fact, diabetes is in about 10% of the general population, which is considered an epidemic. But among us in country Vietnam vets it was/is around 40%, which made it a massive medical disaster.) That made hash out of their claim that I didn't really suffer any damage in Vietnam. By law they had to put me at 20% disability. The years went on and some of my PTSD symptoms got worse again, especially the insomnia. The fact that my country had poisoned me did massive damage to my ability to trust it, or anyone unfortunately.

I got a good job at the post office where my personal problems couldn't get me fired unless I shot a few supervisors, or stole a stamp. I managed to get 21 years in before I was forced to retire medically. By them my insomnia had gotten so bad that I was sleepwalking at work, so to speak. I was so tired that I had become a danger to myself and my fellow workers given the equipment we used and drove. I have to tell you that the first year was very scary for me. All I had income wise was my retirement fund and my stipend for diabetes. I thought for sure I was about to become a homeless vet. If that happened I would have eaten my gun, as there was no way I was going to live on the streets.

Well this is the part of the story where I finally see a glimmer of light, so to speak. The post office finely did what they said they would do and gave me full medical retirement, minus anything I got from social security. When social security approved my claim after the usual first denial, it put the VA in a no win position. It became impossible for them to say that I didn't really have PTSD after their own psychiatrists had diagnosed me with it and the post office and SS retired me for it. So the VA finally gave me my medical retirement due to the trauma I had been through. I actually was making more than when I worked and thanks to the PO and the VA backdating I got a good cash settlement from both of them. Of course I had to agree to a partial backdating of the claim from the VA because if they went back to when I was first diagnosed with it, the money would have been around a million dollars. I took the deal, at least I would not lose my home and my life.

So it's all good now right? Well not really. Financially I'm fine but the emotional damage had left my personal life a mess. I've had 5 marriages, all failures. The one thing I wanted the most out of life, a wife and a family never happened. After having a few failed relationships I thought that when I met a woman who was a professor at a local college I had finally met my perfect match. Our intellectual and sexual lives were almost a perfect match. But she turned out to be a liar, a cheat and a nymphomaniac. She was the last woman that I can say I really fell in love with. But I was seeing what I wanted, not who she really was. She broke my heart and made it almost impossible to really trust a woman again. I was still at the PO then, and that relationship was a big part of my problems.

I have no children and at 62 I'm sure there are no ladies willing to have a baby for me. And to add insult to injury, my last wife gave me herpes on her way out of our marriage. She is bi polar and that doesn't work with someone with PTSD. My psychiatrist warned me that I was making a mistake marrying her. But being a hopeless romantic I hoped I could make it work. I couldn't, we were both too damaged to have a successful marriage.

So here I sit writing my mini biography and counting the days until I'm no more. It's sad really because the women I know in the herpes group I hang out with say I'm a really good person. Of course they are in their thirties and forties so even though I am very comfortable financially, I'm too old for them. It also doesn't help being a strong agnostic with herpes in the west end of the Bible belt, which makes the pickings slim and it's very hard to find a woman who can deal with me.

So to end this torturous story, money wise I'm in great shape. But money will not buy happiness they say and that is true. At this point with my problems with trust, the foundation of any good relationship well be very difficult to achieve. I'll most likely live alone with my dogs, which are my children, and my house, which I will never live long enough to pay off, until I die. But hey, I'm not on the streets or in prison like so many of my fellow Vietnam vets are. So in the end I volunteer money and help to the local SPCA, and I keep putting one foot in front of the other. I hate to say this but I look forward to death. All my personal problems stop the day I die, and I'll finally not have to worry about them. No more loneliness, no more of any of the large and small suffering's I've had most of my life. I also will not have to worry about not getting enough sleep, as I will be in the sleep you never wake up from.

David

Really BAD Sex!

MattShizzle — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 02:58:05 GMT

I love this video. A bit dated as it has GWB as president but the message still rings true.

(Not loaded: _hjyJfnaLvI)

Surprising if true

David B — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:33:09 GMT

According to Stephen Fry, who is rarely wrong, who do you think he quoted as saying that all religious wars are people arguing about who has the biggest invisible friend?

Hidden Text:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaQxu...eature=related

David

Circumstance expiration

Scholar — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:29:11 GMT

Sorry, it seemd like the best title I could come up with. I wonder, is a moral conflict subject only the immediate environment or to a larger aggregation?For instance, there are three men, to live, each man is handed three bags of food per day, two of them eat their bags of food early in the day, the third man saves his bags for end of the day. The friends who have already ate run into their friend with the momentary surplus of food. Is he morally obligated to share. In the circumstance alone, one man has three bags of food and the other two men have none, they are his friends, he should share. However there circumstances of alrager perespective entail the other men having originally the same amount. I don't want the discussion to be on the sole premise of this example. I would rather try to decipher whether or not a situation of morality should be looked at more closely in it's immediate environment to determine the most approriate course of action, or in a larger perspective. And if the larger perspective is the choice, what if the decision based on that would be an ultimately selfish one?

Hello

anduil99 — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 22:40:55 GMT

My name is Derrick and I'm nearly a high school graduate and only recently in my life have I been intrigued to learn about philosophy, especially existentialism. I hope I can develope my knowledge on this subject with the help from the Cafe.

Hello thepill

Silly Sausage — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:35:14 GMT

Welcome to our newest member, thepill.

Pull up a pew and tell us something about yourself. How did you find us?

:wave:

God the Malthusian

DMB — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 20:27:43 GMT

I was just reading a book published a few years before OoS, and I cam across this passage:

Quote:

In Mr. Charles Fothergill's Essay on the Philosophy , Study, and Use of Natural History
(181 3), we find some reflections . .. We shall extract a few paragraphs which relate to the subject in hand. "Nothing can afford a finer illustration of the beautiful order and simplicity of the laws which govern the creation, than the certainty, precision, and regularity with which the natural checks in the superabundant increase of each tribe of animals are managed; and every family is subject to the operation of checks peculiar to the species—whatever it may he—and established by a wise law of the Most High, to counteract the fatal effects that might arise from an ever-active populative principle. It is by the admirable disposition of these checks, the contemplation of which is alone sufficient to astonish the loftiest and most comprehensive soul of man, that the whole system of animal life, in all its various forms,
is kept in due strength and equilibrium.

"This subject is worthy of the naturalist’s most serious consideration." "This great law," Mr. F. proceeds," pervades and affects the whole animal creation, and so active, unwearied, and rapid is the principle of increase over the means of subsistence amongst the inferior animals, that it is evident whole genera of carnivorous beings amongst beasts, birds, fish, reptiles, and insects, have been created for the express purpose of suppressing the redundancy of others, and restraining their numbers within proper limits.

So as I understand it, it is saying that God created a whole lot of species expressly to control the numbers of other species.

Qur'an burning

Ray Moscow — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:46:53 GMT

This issue has really taken off, unfortunately.

Cretins provoke morons

h/t to WEIT

Blackberries and weedkiller - advice neede please

Cath B — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:29:43 GMT

I picked a basket of blackberries today, in part from an area of wasteland near my house.

While I was finishing off some senior pupils walked past on there way home from school and warned me,very politely, that I shouldn't eat them as the council puts weedkiller down.

I thanked them and the question is, should I heed this warning or not?

I'm almost certain that they are safe. The council does spray weeds around verges which is not something I'm far from happy about (that's another story) but they seem to only come for a few days once a year, this was months ago and it seems unlikely that any residue will have affected the blackberries which emerged a lot later.

But a niggle remains.

I phoned the council and was asked to phone back tomorrow when the relevant person will be around.

My thoughts are that I should ask said person:-

Whether the brambles have been sprayed
If so, when were they last sprayed
What were they sprayed with

and take it from there.

Expert opinion from folk here would be greatly appreciated.