[carini]

Nothing is safe, nothing is sacred. If you have the money to purchase an item, mineral, natural resource of any kind, someone will sell it to you.

What we have created in america and the rest of the world in the past 50-100 years is a society with the perception that nothing we do today will have any affect tomorrow.

We have created a society that uses an item once then never uses it again. The amount of trash we produce clearly reflects this fact. The amount of waste we produce is ridiculous, especially our plastic waste.

The plastics we have produced in the past 50 years will be here for another million years, yet we produce millions more pounds every year. It costs less to produce a new item than to reuse or recycle an old one, which speaks volumes on the state of our world.

We dont not care about whether a species which has been around for billions of years, we are here to procreate and do that at any cost, even if it means out childrens children never see a whale, tiger, lion, elephant, or pretty much any large mammal.

Tigers, rhinos, gorillas, chimps, bonobos will all be extinct in the wild in 30 years. We will dispose of them quickly enough. Those that remain will be worth millions to collectors.

In China I am certain its already happening. People are stockpiling tons of rhino parts, tiger parts, bear parts for the day when the animals are extinct and those parts values multiply by the thousands.

The earth will have its revenge on us, hopefully. Massive droughts that kill all plant life off, glaciers melting to the point that they no longer sustain river flow. Rising sea levels that inundate all major coastal cities in the world. Global population collapse will occur at some point, its just a matter of time.

[wisconsin_cur]

Nice sermon

So are you going to follow up with an altar call or by passing the plate?

[Narz]

That was cheery.

Didn't you mother ever tell you, if you don't have anything good to say, etc.

Solution oriented people get more respect. And someone, "hopefully Earth will kill us all" isn't very proactive. If you're serious about this at least form a suicide cult or became a jihadist or something.

[pounamu]

I suppose if we were to change places with any of the species mentioned, they would drive humans to extinction just as we drive them to extinction. Morality is a scarce commodity on this planet. A few social animals possess it but they usually only share it amongst themselves, if it's shared at all.

It seems that some men could exhibit self-control and make allowance for the future but most men are common beasts and will try to maximize their enjoyment while they're here with no thought for the future. Fossil fuels will have only unlocked the tools for our own destruction after the banquet table at the great orgy of consumption no longer serves man's cornucopian dreams.

You might want to find a good rock to hide under with the scorpions and roaches and worms as they may be all that's left after the great omnivore man destroys what remains in a tantrum of hunger and rage.

Man will decide to do the right thing only after he feels the pain of doing the wrong thing. When he feels the pain of doing the wrong thing it will be to late to do the right thing.

[TheTurtle]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pounamu', 'I') suppose if we were to change places with any of the species mentioned, they would drive humans to extinction just as we drive them to extinction. Morality is a scarce commodity on this planet. A few social animals possess it but they usually only share it amongst themselves, if it's shared at all.

[pounamu]

The Turtle wrote:

"Actually, most species do NOT drive other species to extinction. A lion, for example, kills a wildebeest for food. The lion does not kill off the entire herd. "

It's true that they cannot kill each other off becuase in the genetic arms race no species can gain a decisive advantage over the other. I meant that if they were in our position of gaining a decisive advantage through the use of fossil fuels or technology, they would eat us for breakfast, lunch and dinner until we were no more. Or perhaps they would breed us like we do cattle to be extra fat and juicy and then eat us. Keep us around in a condition of genetic slavery.

The beasts of the land would show us no more compassion than we show them. Often we don't even have compassion for those within our own species. Nazis exterminating the Jews comes to mind. IMO, if the Nazis had prevailed in WWII, the Jews would have approached extinction. But this is a different behavior than those involved in gaining nutrition. Man seems to like to destroy genetically/phonetically distinct tribes that are seen as competitive and outside their own gene pool.

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pounamu', 'T')he Turtle wrote:

"Actually, most species do NOT drive other species to extinction. A lion, for example, kills a wildebeest for food. The lion does not kill off the entire herd. "

It's true that they cannot kill each other off becuase in the genetic arms race no species can gain a decisive advantage over the other. I meant that if they were in our position of gaining a decisive advantage through the use of fossil fuels or technology, they would eat us for breakfast, lunch and dinner until we were no more. Or perhaps they would breed us like we do cattle to be extra fat and juicy and then eat us. Keep us around in a condition of genetic slavery.

The beasts of the land would show us no more compassion than we show them. Often we don't even have compassion for those within our own species. Nazis exterminating the Jews comes to mind. IMO, if the Nazis had prevailed in WWII, the Jews would have approached extinction. But this is a different behavior than those involved in gaining nutrition. Man seems to like to destroy genetically/phonetically distinct tribes that are seen as competitive and outside their own gene pool.

[JJ]

on FOX news, how patriotic...

[3aidlillahi]

The only thing more patriotic is watching Fox News. Seriously, why do you watch that?

[PrestonSturges]

Obama ate chicken instead of pulled pork on the Fourth, which proves he is muslim. The end o the world is here.

So run out an buy one of those grills pronto. Put a couple inches of the water in your bathtub, put the grill in there, light it. Go tidy up the house while it gets going, drink a pint of liquor, take two Ambions. Then go into the bathroom and close the door. The carbon monoxide will esentially kill you in two minutes. You might want to take a gun with you so that someone will have to pry it from your cold dead fingers. Save yourselves from the mongrelized nonwhite hordes who are taking America away from its original white inhabitants.

[JJ]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('3aidlillahi', 'T')he only thing more patriotic is watching Fox News. Seriously, why do you watch that?

[Jotapay]

All the silliness aside, this brings up an interesting question. Has Obama ever eaten pork or shellfish before?

[JJ]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jotapay', 'A')ll the silliness aside, this brings up an interesting question. Has Obama ever eaten pork or shellfish before?

[JJ]

oh, correction. My wife says they are only Jewish when its convenient.

[3aidlillahi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')bama ate chicken instead of pulled pork on the Fourth, which proves he is muslim. The end o the world is here.

[PrestonSturges]

Short version of an old joke:

Priest asks Rabi if he ever ate pork. Rabi admits that while traveling abroad he ate pork to not offend his host. Rabi asks a priest if he's ever slept with a woman. Priest admist that as a young man he did. Rabi says "Beats the hell out eating pork, doesn't it?"

[frankthetank]

I've been watching episodes all day of BBQU on PBS... Steve Raichlen is a stud! The guy can invite me over any time he wants.

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GASMON', 'S')od religion - Nothing tastier than a chunk of roast pig. ... My mate was visiting friends in the USA couple of years ago. Went to a 4th July party wearing a Union jack tee-shirt.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]The Disposable Worker

Pay is falling, benefits are vanishing, and no one's job is secure. How companies are making the era of the temp more than temporary.


On a recent Tuesday morning, single mom Tammy DePew Smith woke up in her tidy Florida townhouse in time to shuttle her oldest daughter, a high school freshman, to the 6:11 a.m. bus. At 6:40 she was at the desk in her bedroom, starting her first shift of the day with LiveOps, a Santa Clara (Calif.) provider of call-center workers for everyone from Eastman Kodak (EK) and Pizza Hut (YUM) to infomercial behemoth Tristar Products. She's paid by the minute—25 cents—but only for the time she's actually on the phone with customers.

By 7:40, Smith had grossed $15. But there wasn't much time to reflect on her early morning productivity; the next child had to be roused from bed, fed, and put onto the school bus. Somehow she managed to squeeze three more shifts into her day, pausing only to homeschool her 7-year-old son, make dinner, and do the bedtime routine. "I tell my kids, unless somebody is bleeding or dying, don't mess with me."

As an independent agent, Smith has no health insurance, no retirement benefits, no sick days, no vacation, no severance, and no access to unemployment insurance. But in recession-ravaged Ormond Beach, she's considered lucky. She has had more or less steady work since she signed on with LiveOps in October 2006. "LiveOps was a lifesaver for me," she says.

You know American workers are in bad shape when a low-paying, no-benefits job is considered a sweet deal. Their situation isn't likely to improve soon; some economists predict it will be years, not months, before employees regain any semblance of bargaining power. That's because this recession's unusual ferocity has accelerated trends—including offshoring, automation, the decline of labor unions' influence, new management techniques, and regulatory changes—that already had been eroding workers' economic standing.

The forecast for the next five to 10 years: more of the same, with paltry pay gains, worsening working conditions, and little job security. Right on up to the C-suite, more jobs will be freelance and temporary, and even seemingly permanent positions will be at greater risk. "When I hear people talk about temp vs. permanent jobs, I laugh," says Barry Asin, chief analyst at the Los Altos (Calif.) labor-analysis firm Staffing Industry Analysts. "The idea that any job is permanent has been well proven not to be true." As Kelly Services (KELYA) CEO Carl Camden puts it: "We're all temps now."

Peter Cappelli, director of the Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, says the brutal recession has prompted more companies to create just-in-time labor forces that can be turned on and off like a spigot. "Employers are trying to get rid of all fixed costs," Cappelli says. "First they did it with employment benefits. Now they're doing it with the jobs themselves. Everything is variable." That means companies hold all the power, and "all the risks are pushed on to employees."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_03/b4163032935448.htm