Where do they get those stats?
I can't see top visited pages on http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page

There are many subjective theories of why it's so famous -- because of the mysterious smile, because of mathematical perfection of the ratios of lengths in the painting, and so on

Personally I like the theory that the main reason Mona Lisa's fame is because Leonardo was especially fond of it, and promoted it heavily, taking it to many exhibitions during his time

The guy told everyone he was going to crash his bike, this is more a Jackass imitation than an accident

Pretty much over, or literally over, ie Louis Conradt who committed suicide because of them (according to his sister)

Here's more about it
http://www.videosift.com/video/2020-investigates-To-Catch-a-Predator

Here are the steps they do

1.a=b
2.a^2=ab
3.a^2-b^2=ab-b^2
4.(a+b)(a-b)=b(a-b)
5.a+b=b
6.b+b=b
7.2b=b
8.2=1

Notice that going from 4 to 5 requires dividing by a-b. But because a=b, that's division by 0. Most of 1=2 proofs divide by 0. There are a few that use queer behavior of square roots (-2!=2, square both sides you get 4!=4). You can also create a contradiction by implicitly subtracting "infinity" from both sides. For instance consider the "proof" below


1.a=b
2.a^2=ab
3.a^2-b^2=ab-b^2
4.(a-b)(a+b)=b(a-b)
5.log((a-b)(a+b))=log(b(a-b))
6.log(a-b)+log(a+b)=log(b)+log(a-b)
7.log(a+b)=log(b)
8.a+b=b
9.a=0

To avoid pitfalls like this, you have to keep track of assumptions. IE, you shouldn't write ba=bc implies a=c, but instead "ba=bc implies a=c if b!=0" etc

This reminds of an article I read about this show earlier, apparently they are not above using conventional explosives to spice up the act
http://www.badscience.net/?p=270

reason -- the issue is fairly simple -- baby boomers make up 20% of the population. Since social security is not paid for by investments, as that 20% move into retirement, the burden of supporting them falls on the current work-force.

Notice that the baseball has no shadow

"You also said that adults aren't responsible enough to make their own decisions concerning drugs. So who is responsible enough to make decisions concerning drugs?"

People themselves. Adults are not responsible enough to resist temptation when it presents itself, but they can still realize this failing and make laws to prevent themselves from coming across this temptation. Essentially it's a larger version of an alcoholic locking the liquor cabinet and throwing away the key.

Oregon has initiative system where voters can enact laws directly. The initiative to legalize marijuana has failed three times. Given that pot is considered the "mildest drug", certainly same fate would follow any proposal to legalize the harder drugs like cocaine. So it's the people themselves making the decision to keep drugs illegal, not some nebulous "government".

Keeping drug addicts in jail doesn't help drug addicts. The point of jail-time is to send a message to the rest of the people and hopefully provide a deterrent.

As far as effects of legalization go, consider what happened in Netherlands between 1984 and today as cannabis policy became more and more permissive. In 1984, only 4.4% of Dutch adolescents had ever used pot. By 1996, it was 10.6%. In the 18-to-20 age group, lifetime use rose from 15 percent to 44 percent.

Imagine the impact of hard drug usage following a similar trend after legalization.

drattus -- an often cited argument for drug legalization is that it would lower prices significantly, hence preventing property crime. This implies that prices with drug prohibition would be higher than prices with legalization. Basic economic principles tell us that unless the market is completely inelastic, higher prices imply lower usage. You can view this as a main objective of drug war -- keeping prices higher than they would've been if the drugs were legal, an objective that even drug-legalization advocates admit it fulfills.

cybrbeast -- I find utilitarianism more coherent than philosophy of "freedom at any cost." Suppose a child demands to eat ice-cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner, should we abridge his freedom to spare his health?

The argument against complete freedom for children is that they are often unable to make rational decisions. The same holds for adults. A drug addict may know that drugs are bad for him, but will continue to seek a hit. Or consider a person on a diet that keeps breaking his promise to lose weight.

You can view this myopic irrationality as a side-effect of humans evolving in a different environment. Small reward now is preferred over large reward later because future has been inherently uncertain. Life-spans were short and you could easily die before getting to that large reward.

People can live much longer nowadays, so this mechanism is no longer inappropriate. In addition, artificial chemicals can hijack the natural reward pathways, and that's another vulnerability. People coming together
to outlaw drugs are essentially making an effort to protect themselves from their own weaknesses.

The prices may have dropped, but is that because of enforcement? The cop is saying that anti-drug enforcement increases availability, but that claim is unsupported at best.

Prices can go down for other reasons. Enforcement will increase the money that has to be spent on evading enforcement so it will tend to increase prices, not decrease them. In other words, the factors that made drug prices decrease under current drug war policy, would make the prices drop even further if the drug producers didn't have to deal with the costs of confiscated equipment, jailed runners, ruined crops, etc.

The claim that "drug prohibition increases availability of drugs" is somewhat nonsensical. Basic economic principles tell us that drugs under prohibition will be more expensive and less available because of the extra effort that has to be spent evading police.

One advantage of drug prohibition is that it lets you jail potential law breakers before they have a chance to commit a "real" crime. For instance, for Oregon, Portland police reports 85% of property crimes being associated with meth abuse. Hence, by jailing meth users on sight, you would create more benefit to the society by preventing thefts, than the cost incurred by keeping them in jail.

Her lawyer argued that she was ignorant of the law. However, he did not argue that tax non-payment was legal,
and in fact, told the jury to listen to the judge on that issue. Many tax protesters have lost their cases, the only exceptions seem to be when they plead ignorance. However, they can only plead ignorance once, and if Kuglin gets sued again, she'll very likely lose since the "I didn't know it was illegal" defense won't work after she was told it was illegal by the judge. Do you have any evidence that she continues to not pay taxes?

"As for what makes it illegal for her to pay Federal Income Taxes - well, that's quite evident in the Constitution - the Federal government was given no power of taxation over the people. That is what her lawyer argued for her during the case that she won"

That is not what her lawyer argued.


The complete court transcripts are available so you can see for yourself (especially her lawyer's closing remarks starting at p.700) http://www.constitution.org/tax/us-ic/kuglin/kuglin.htm

Kuglin's lawyer told jury "you're to get the law from the court rather than me, you're to get the facts from [Kuglin]." In other words, the lawyer never tried to argue what the law was, leaving it to the judge, but instead focused on the facts (whether Kuglin intentionally broke the law)

This is why tax protesters taking their case to court are so misguided -- they don't realize that it's the judge who decides what the law is, not the jury. Kuglin didn't win freedom from taxes, she just got a jail reprieve for proving her ignorance. If she continues to avoid paying taxes, and is sued again, she'll very likely go to jail because she can no longer plead ignorance.