Terrorist attacks are more multifaceted.

First, they are an opportunity to generate work for the defense industry.

Second, they are usually for a reason. Often some angst over our own actions in foreign countries. For example, the news says AQ is a bunch of crazies that hate freedom, however AQs demands prior to 9/11 were to get our military out of the holyland. While that's not an offense that deserves blowing up buildings, it is definitely not the same as some banal excuse like hating freedom.

Thirdly, they are often perpetrated by some persons/groups that we had a hand in creating. We install the mujahedin in Afghanistan, knowing full well what they'll do to women, and then use their treatment of women as one excuse to later invade. Saddam worked for us, was egged on to fight Iran, was egged on to suppress insurgents (the 'own people he gassed'), and we later used his actions as one excuse to invade.

At the time, the mujaheddin was useful for fighting Russia as a proxy. At the time, Saddam was useful for perpetuating a war where we sold arms to both sides. Afterwards, they were useful for scaremongering so we could perpetuate war when otherwise things got too quiet and folks would ask about why we're spending big $$$ on defense.. (In the mean time hand-waving the much more direct 9/11 Saudi connection).

... Plus if on the off chance things do 'settle down' in areas we invade, that creates new markets for US companies to peddle their wares. You can reopen the Khyber pass for western land trade with Asia, you can build an oil pipeline, and you can prevent a euro based oil exchange from opening in the middle east. All things that benefit our industry.

So in practice, as far as big industry is concerned, there's a utility in 'fighting terrorism' (and perpetuating terrorism) that just doesn't exist with internal shootings. As such, unless another 'evil empire' shows up, the terrorism cow is gonna get milked for the foreseeable future.

Sure, there's a rhetoric about preventing terrorism, but our actions do nothing to that effect. It's just a statement that's useful in manufacturing consent.

There's a particular irony, though. That is, that while such behavior is 'not very nice' (to put it mildly), it does however provide for our security by keeping our armed forces exercised, prepared, and up to date - such that if a real threat were to emerge, our military would be ready at that time. While that seems unlikely, when you look back in history at previous major conflicts, most were precipitated rather quickly, on the order of months (it takes many years to design and build equipment for a military, and the first ~half a year of any major war has been fought with what was on hand). So in a round-about, rather evolutionary way, perpetuating threats actually does make us safer as a whole.

To clarify the word 'evolutionary' : Take 10 microbes. All 10 have no militant nature. None are made for combat. It only takes 1 to mutate and become belligerent in order to erase all the others from existence. If some others also mutate to be combative, they will survive. The non combative are lost, their reproductive lines cut off. As there's always a chance to mutate to anything at any time, eventually, there is a combative mutation. So, all life on earth has a militant nature at some layer of abstraction - those that exist are those that successfully resisted some force (or parried the force to its benefit. Like plants that use a plant eater's dung to fertilize the seeds of the eaten fruit).

The relationship holds true at a biological level, interpersonal, societal, national, and international level. Societies that allow the kind of educational and military development that leads to victory, are those that have dominated the planet socially and economically. For example, Europe's centuries of infighting made it resistant to invasions from the Mongols, Caliphates, etc, and ultimately led to the age of colonialism. For the strengths built with infighting, are later leveraged for expansion. As such, the use of "terrorism" to perpetuate conflict, is ultimately an exercise in developing strength that can later be leveraged.

Our national policy is largely developed in think tanks, and those organizations are planning lifetimes ahead. So these kinds of considerations are very relevant.

TL/DR : Yes, agreed, the terrorism thing is B.S. on many levels.

-scheherazade

The idea is that sex should only be used for reproduction and not for fun. As such, if you're going to have sex, you shouldn't wear protection (as that would undermine your reproductive potential) and if you do get pregnant, you should keep the pregnancy because getting pregnant is the whole point of sex.

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I thought maybe it was a language translation thing. 47 hours does seem awfully long. The whole process seemed a bit off. With that much tar, I would think that shaving the dog and then cleaning the tar residue off the bare skin would be a better way to go. The dog wouldn't look good for a long while after that, but it would get that nasty stuff off him (her) faster.

I have a friend who's volunteered time in an animal rescue organization in Thailand that takes in all sorts of animals including dogs, cats, elephants, monkeys, and rabbits, and probably more. She was part of the dog Team and from what I understand, they snip them to stop reproduction, nurse them back to health, don't release them, and don't have much success in finding foster families. The animals get their health back and have a place to stay and people who care about them, but I think it would be better if they could find permanent homes. I think part of the reason that they sometimes can't is that a lot of the dogs become too 'wild' and wouldn't do well out of a pack setting. Can't say that the group in this video follows any of the same routines, but I'm guessing they probably get neutered even if they can't provide ongoing care. That seems pretty common and a good practice with rescue organizations.

We've been on a bunch of dates
I weigh debates that this creates
And hate that state of forced introspection
We traded wit, we swapped some spit,
You fingered me a little bit
But we never really had a connection

You did nothing wrong, I have no excuse
Just my intuition telling me we shouldn't reproduce

I know I have to end it
But pretend to just suspend it
By contending that I'm busy all week
I let the foregone linger on
Text back with an emoticon
Withdraw from you by being oblique

Inside I know my tactics just delay it
But I'd do anything so I don't have to say it

I'll draw this out forever like it's Vietnam
Then one day I'll be gone like Bambi's mom Awww

Cause there's the right thing to do
Then there's what I'm gonna do
There's so much I should say
But instead... I do the fade away

Now I'm fading like chalk on a sidewalk
Or the polio virus after Jonas Salk
Like a Jewish guy at Sizzler on Yom Kippur
The Whig party post Millard Fillmore

The erection of a man on antidepressants
The cast of Diff'rent Strokes after adolescence
Reproductive rights below the Mason Dixon
Native Americans after the barter systems
Your thyroid gland after Hashimoto
The family in the Back to the Future photo
Yeah I fade away

We say that men are asshole who don't communicate
We revel in our victimhood and amplify our hate
We find ways to be indignant like it's a sport
Then dissect their malignance with the views we distort

The way men break up may be sloppy and terse
What they do is bad, but what we do is worse

We pretend to ourselves it's the nice thing to do
To let you down gently by just not ever telling you
And deep down we know it's the worst way to play it
But we are what we have... huge pussies

And women are hypocrites
Especially ones in comedy bands
We see your faults but not our own
Then we wonder why we're all alone

We fill you up with maybe's, excuses and stalls
But like a baby in China... it's better to have balls

Not the Good Wife type like Christine Baranski
So I'll pull out and leave like I'm Roman Polanski

Cause there's the right thing to do
Then there's what I'm gonna do
There's so much I should say
But instead... I do the fade away

Like Verbal Kint fading into Kaiser Soze
The rights in Arizona for a guy named Jose
Opportunities for a college grad
The love between your mom and dad
Gonna Peter out like a gay Cetera
Iranian relations since the Regan era
Black Nike sales after Heaven's Gate
Summer Camp attendance at Penn State
The name Adolph after World War Two
Like Debbie Gibson's pop career, Out of the Blue
Yeah I fade away

Cause I don't wanna get to know you
I just want to blow you... off

What makes you think the instinctive part of our brains that are related to those things is going to change?

The only way it would actually change is if there were conditions where being a dominant male and being a submissive female were both looked down upon until there were less reproduction being carried out by said group. I don't have any hard data, but I doubt those hard wirings are going away any time soon.

Ok guys, Genetically Modified Organism refers to both "artificial selection" and "genetic engineering". But both are not the same. Artificial selection has gone on for millennia while genetic engineering has been going on for only a few decades. Genetic engineering comes in many forms: gamma ray bombardments for chaotic mutations, splicing and dicing genes, implanting and hormonal reproduction of clones can indeed create many monsters both visible and invisible. The invisible monsters and the toxins they can create with their genes are the threat here. The manufacture of biological warfare, virus engineering and playing with the elements that make up life without understanding the consequences is the threat here. The bullying of corporations playing God and patenting their spreading genes are the threat here. Not the fact that apples or cows are bred to be bigger and juicier. Give me a fucking naive simpleton break, gawd that was disappointing.

I think this is both right and wrong...natural selection CAN be even faster (but is not always) at forcing evolutionary change than 'breeding for traits' is, because breeders are not perfect and may allow unwanted traits or incomplete but wanted traits to continue, but nature is a horrible bitch goddess and if your traits really don't work for her, you simply die. That's certainly not always the case, but when it is nature is better at 'selecting' than humans. The rate of reproduction makes either process move faster.
It's true that humans have artificially created more breeds than nature would likely create alone, because we sometimes like traits that would hinder survival and through breeding amplify them to create a 'new breed'.
Nature forces the one's most suited for their environment to thrive, while humans often allow those less suited to live in their environment to survive for human reasons, erasing natural selection from the equation. Without our 'guiding hand' in their evolution, I think it's likely they would likely have even MORE change in some areas (and less in others) because environments are drastically different and different traits would evolve in different places, creating different 'dogs' such as wild dogs in Africa and/or dingos in Australia, which I think (but may be wrong) have evolved so separately that they can't breed with non-"wild dogs". It may lead to less variation in specific areas/populations, but more variation between those from different areas.

This is kind of an aside, but I thought dogs vary so wildly in physical characteristic and behavior (over such a small period) not because of their rate of reproduction, but because favorable traits were selected for/unfavorable traits selected against artificially, by people.

Yes, they breed faster than us which helps the process along and, yes, the desired traits will vary geographically depending on a whole host of cultural and practical concerns, but without our guiding hand there'd be little outside impetus for such seemingly drastic change at all, right?

I can't say I'm too concerned with those women who can't control their libido or reproductive systems.

I can say no one is overly concerned about the men who can't control their libido or reproductive systems.
And that's sort of the point.

Oh I don't know, reproduction is overrated.

Only a #DiNozzo would think you could legislate reproductive rights...

you can make a non-tea party case for fiscal conservatism.

but you really can't make a huge case these days for social conservatism and that's where they really lose. You can't tell gays to go back into the closet, you can't tell minorities to be quiet, you can't tell women to accept lower pay and forfeit reproductive rights and health. You can't tell poor people to fuck off and die in an alley.

I don't know this guy, so I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and suggest that he might even agree with all these things. This illustrates the problem with using vague binary terms like liberal and conservative to describe political views. Depending on the person "conservative" can mean completely different things.

This is the problem with the two party system. You can't sum up nuanced , complex political views into two parties. It's stupid.

Republicans have a huge perception problem they need to solve. Many people view them as old, white, racist, plutocrats. I know for a fact that they are not all this way. But the problem is, there are plenty of people who identify as Republican who DO fall completely into that view.

Fortunately, old people do have a habit of dying. so that solves part of the problem. But some people have to be dragged into the future kicking and screaming the entire way. If the Republican party wishes to survive, they need to decide pretty quick how they're going to deal with that.

I think there are too many people who identify as Republican for romantic reasons only. They're obsessed with the idea that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican even though the Republican party of then is completely different from the way it is now and it is due largely to racism. (google Southern Strategy)

As i've said before. All parties and lobbying need to be abolished. You can't stop people from assembling into voting blocs, but at the very least we can refuse to officially acknowledge them and do away with the RNC and DNC and remove money from our elections and force the person, not the party to run for office.

the graphs go in opposite ways, in terms of reproductive success vs. number of mates, for men and women. .. guess who is supposed to fuck more and who needs to be more of a gatekeeper hehe