From here and from there - 12
Thought provoking article by Dr. Dalrymple about the benefits of sin and unhealthy life style:
When Leys, therefore, sees those terrible warnings that now appear on cigarette packets all over the world, he says that he is tempted, for strictly metaphysical reasons, to take up smoking again. He does not claim, of course, that an early death will make us all Mozarts; that is scarcely possible. But it probably is the case that an excessive interest in the rational means by which we can avoid premature death will prevent a Mozart from ever arising again, perhaps in any field of human endeavour (I know people who know more about music than I who say that in any case, serious music in the west died with Schonberg, that a tradition was killed once and for all, beyond any hope of resurrection, by him and his followers).
Leys is saying that the 36 years of Mozart’s life are not to be regarded as half as valuable as that of someone else who achieved little and who lived to be 72: that is to say that the value of life is not to be estimated by its length or by any other mechanical measure beloved of rationalists.
So, as a doctor, I deplore it when you smoke or otherwise disobey the dictates of good sense; but as a man, I rejoice and am glad that you are incalculable.
I had my doubts about Ethanol and its effects, on the environment and other issues - such as food production, for awhile. It is good to see that the NY Times join the skeptics:
Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.
The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.
These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.
The destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America — not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces.
What the NY Times “forgets” is the importance of Ethanol subsidies on the chances to win the IW caucuses…
Secession is a very interesting idea - how federal is the US, and how independent should the states be are still questions that drive political agendas. Therefore it is interesting to follow the calls of different organizations and movements to secede from the US.
On October 3, 2007, delegates to the second North American Secessionist Convention met for two days in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to discuss how to crack the United States into manageable parts. They came representing 11 rebel groups in 36 states, under banners such as the Republic of Cascadia (wedding Oregon and Washington), Independent California (forging the world’s fifth-largest economy), the United Republic of Texas (returning the Lone Star State to its lonesomeness), the League of the South (uniting the states of old Dixie), and, spearhead of the effort, the Second Vermont Republic (separating Vermont from the United States). The dominant thought among the delegates was that what they call "the U.S. experiment" had failed. "What we have today in the combination of big business and big government is nothing less than fascism," Thomas Moore, the delegate from the Southern National Congress Committee, told the assembled. Dexter Clark, the white-bearded vice chair of the Alaskan Independence Party, was less cerebral: "No one ever fought a war for dependence," Clark said. "The people of Alaska are fed up–if ever there was a time ripe for change, this is it." The United States, the message in sum went, must end. It would have to be reborn smaller if the American dream was to have a hope in hell.
If this sounded extreme, the secessionists had an answer in the calm of American opinion. In an October, 2006, poll broadcast on CNN, 71 percent of Americans agree that "our system of government is broken and cannot be fixed." A Daily Kos poll in April, 2007, asked, "Should states be allowed to secede from the union peaceably?" Sixty-nine percent of respondents answered in the affirmative. All in all, this was, in the words of the chief impresario of the Chattanooga convention, an impish 70-year-old author and activist named Kirkpatrick Sale, "extremely fertile ground into which secessionists can plant their seeds."
What happened in Chattanooga was an American moment, certainly, and not the least of its charms was the irony of the old Left of the North and the old Right of the South standing united in their opposition to the Union. The Associated Press, The New York Times, New York Newsday, The Washington Post, and USA Today carried the story, which traveled to newsrooms in Canada, England, Ireland, New Zealand, Belgium, and India, and thence to the ubiquity of eyes on YouTube, and across the airwaves of at least 50 radio stations that ran interviews with the leaders of the convention. By the evening of October 4, the convention had settled on a list of principles they called the Chattanooga Declaration. "The deepest questions of human liberty and government facing our time go beyond right and left, and in fact have made the old left-right split meaningless and dead," said the declaration. "The privileges, monopolies, and powers that private corporations have won from government threaten everyone’s health, prosperity, and liberty, and have already killed American self-government by the people." The answer, it went on, was that the American states ought to be "free and self-governing." Two hundred and fifty years earlier, the Declaration of Independence asked for a similar dedication to self-governance: "Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive," wrote Thomas Jefferson, "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government."
Indeed, it could be argued that secession is the primal American act, the founding event as old as the concept of the states themselves. What else did our founders accomplish in 1776 but secession from the tyranny of England?
And the last link for today is a surprising recommendation for the noble peace prize:
Tags: Ethanol, Health, Nobel Peace Prize, Succession, The Free Market, Wall-MartRecall that the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize went to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, started in Bangladesh and now established in many developing countries, for their innovative efforts to create economic and social development from the ground up by providing credit to those whom mainline banks would not lend to.
And let’s not forget Jimmy Carter, the former president of the United States, who received the peace prize for his efforts to advance democracy and human rights and to promote economic and social development in the Third World.
On the basis of the evidence, it is impossible to argue that Yunus or Carter have done more than Wal-Mart to alleviate poverty.
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