What Did You Change Your Mind About in 2007?

chrisd writes "The Edge 2008 question (with answers) is in. This year, the question is: 'What did you change your mind about and why?'. Answers are featured from scientists as diverse as Richard Dawkins, Simon Baron-Cohen, George Church, David Brin, J. Craig Venter and the Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees, among others. Very interesting to read. For instance, Stewart Brand writes that he now realizes that 'Good old stuff sucks' and Sam Harris has decided that 'Mother Nature is Not Our Friend.' What did Slashdot readers change their minds about in 2007?"

I like Harris' line ...

Mother Nature is not now, nor has she ever been, looking out for us.

I would go further and say that, not only is she not looking out for us, but Mother Nature is a bitch.

Re:I like Harris' line ...

"Mother Nature", AKA the natural laws of the universe, doesn't care about us one way or the other. Mother Nature isn't even aware we exists as Mother Nature is NOT aware of anything. Attributing awareness to 'mother nature' is irrational.

Re:

Attributing awareness to 'mother nature' is irrational.

You must be new around here (humanity), because that's just what we do. Almost everything we do not understand is assigned an identity, a personality, and it almost always wants to hurt you (or burn y

Re:I like Harris' line ...

Monty Burns: Oh, so Mother Nature needs a favor? Well, maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys. Nature started the fight for survival and now she wants to quit because she's losing? Well, I say "hard cheese"!

Re:I like Harris' line ...

Who are you blaming after all? What is mother nature? I just can't wrap my head around the entity that is blamed here? Are you blaming earth for being so imperfect with all the volcanoes and earthquakes? Are you blaming yourself for continuously degrading the environment thus making it harder for you to live?

you... need to go outside more.. mother nature she "loves" you, specifically she loves to attempt to kill you at every chance she gets, that's why we develop technology to enforce the restraining order against her.

Re:I like Harris' line ...

I like the quote from Dawkins: (I forget which book, the wording may not be exactly right)

Nature is neither good nor evil, just completely and utterly indifferent

Ron Paul and the war

I changed my mind about the war in Iraq because of Ron Paul. I was always sympathetic to the idea of bringing liberty to those overseas, but it is clear now that the source of liberty is individual choices not government ones. Ron Paul made it clear and final that the war is not helping the freedom of the people over there, and it is obviously not helping the freedom of people over here, and is directly responsible for the rise of a police state mentality in the USA, and is contributing greatly to our ongoing economic collapse. As Ron Paul once said, if we want wars all over the planet and want the government babying people from cradle to grave - then we must have an IRS and massive debt. But if we want freedom and liberty, then yes we can get rid of them.

What is war good for?

I was always sympathetic to the idea of bringing liberty to those overseas

Which is why that emotionally potent oversimplification was used.
Not because it applied, but because it would make you agree.

Why are they killing people? For liberty! We like liberty, so it makes it okay to kill people: it's for something we like!

I changed my mind on Ron Paul...

In early 2007 I thought I might be able to vote for Ron Paul against certain Democrats if it came down to that (unlikely).
After learning more about Dr. Paul: that he hasn't felt the need to educate himself about the scientific facts about evolution and rejects it, though wasn't willing to raise his hand during the televised debate where the candidates were asked that question; that he calls abortion "Murder"; and, most critically, that he wants to remove the ability of the federal government to intervene in violations of chuch/state separation.
If the founding fathers got nothing else right with our country, they got the separation of church and state right. Integrating religion and state power is a sure path to tyranny.

Re:I changed my mind on Ron Paul...

In Ron Paul's system of philosophy the federal government has no authority over education so he is no threat to the acceptance of Evolution. He also believes that abortion should be decided by the states because he rightly states that the federal government does not have the authority. He will do nothing to stop abortion, all he will do is follow the the tenth amendment ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.").

If you believe the federal government should be involved in abortion law and education then amend the Constitution.

Also, on the separation of church and state, read the first amendment, it addresses congress. My state Constitution has provisions for separation of church and state, and a state violation should be dealt with at the state level. If I wanted the federal government to have the authority to address a state level violation of separation of church and state I would, and if you wanted you should, ask for an amendment to the Constitution to allow such.

P.S.--I'm an atheist.

Re:I changed my mind on Ron Paul...

No educated person could ever vote for Ron Paul, and his knowledge of biology is an embarrassment to all those who hold the title "Doctor." A medical doctor who doesn't understand the most fundamental principle of biology is a shame on his school.

Re:Ron Paul and the war

Who said anything about bringing liberty to anyone?

Well, Cheney did say we'd be greeted as liberators. However, I believe he misspoke and meant to say we'd be greeted as obliterators.

Re:Ron Paul and the war

First point: secularism is no guarantee of liberty. Religion is no guarantee of tyranny... I remind you that this country was first settled by Puritans.

I would also like to remind people that Saddam Hussein was a secularist, as was Josef Stalin. It was only our Administration that tried to paint Hussein as being in league with the Islamists, which was obviously untrue, but it doesn't take much to make the morons who vote in America to believe in a lie.

Not that I care much for religiosity either, but let's keep our facts and history straight (after all, the Taliban were highly religious, and Afghanistan under their rule wasn't a fun place to live either).

Re:Ron Paul and the war

Ron Paul being a creationist is completely irrelevant to his ability to be a good president.

Really? To me it says something very relevant about his ability to reason from facts.

Religious views have no bearing on one's ability to run the country.

But creationism isn't just a religious belief, it's also a (fallacious) scientific position. How can a president deal rationally with issues such as biotechnology or global warming when he can't bring himself to accept evolution? It's like hiring an accountant who doesn't believe in negative numbers, and expecting him to do your taxes correctly. Not going to happen.

Re:Ron Paul and the war

First point: secularism is no guarantee of liberty. Religion is no guarantee of tyranny... I remind you that this country was first settled by Puritans.

Your point is valid, but your example is not. Plymouth was the second successful colony settled by the British--the first was Jamestown, Virginia. Jamestown was settled by migrant Englishmen looking to simply settle and conquer the New World. And if "this country" includes Florida, then the Spanish colony at St. Augustine, Florida predates both by half a century. But in a purely geographic sense, "this country" was settled by Native Americans centuries before any white man set foot upon it.

Furthermore, the Puritans were tyrannical--which is why Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and other people who fell out of favor with the Puritans settled Rhode Island. In fact, the Puritans were the perpetrators of the witch hunts.

Re:Ron Paul and the war

The Neo-cons have a rather odd view of the world and of the nature of power. They are the political equivalents of the economists of the 1920s; both essentially asserting that the old rules don't apply. In the 1920s everyone assumed that the Capitalist boom-bust cycle was over for good, that it was going to party days forever. The Neo-cons felt the same way about American power after the fall of the USSR, that the US was a hyperpower that could have nearly unlimited global influence. Iraq has demonstrated that the US is no different than Rome was in its day, a mighty military power, but not so mighty that it can't get overextended or get itself into military fiascos that have very direct political consequences.

The US now faces a 21st century with a rising China (something that clever folks have in fact been predicting for a couple of centuries) and Russia recovering from its wounds and taking back its position as a pre-eminent Old World power. Europe, despite a lot of roadbumps, is making a growing, vibrant political union, and I suspect in the long term it will become a Neo-Rome, controlling the Mediterranean.

The Neo-cons have weakened the United States at the very moment when it should have been mustering its resources to prepare for the new order. They thought they can short-circuit the historical trends, and by flying the American flag on distant lands and bringing democracy that they would retain uncontested pre-eminence. They seriously misread the reconstruction of Japan and thought that it could be a roadmap for the Middle East, to safeguard oil supplies and put in friendly powers.

It's time for Americans to start reading their history, to start understanding that the United States is not some blessed land, but is an empire like any, and that it is just as vulnerable as any in history.

The price of oil is still too cheap

I know everyone is complaining that oil and gas is way too expensive. They are wrong. I used to think the same way. I saw a nice chart showing gasoline prices adjusted for inflation over a period of about eighty years [blogspot.com]. You know what? It really hasn't changed that much. It was still higher in 1981 than it is now. What has changed is a decrease in our earning power.

Proof that gasoline is still too cheap: I still see tons of Hummers, Expeditions, Navigators, Armadas, Sequoias and other mondo SUVs (aka Urban Assault Vehicles) on the road.

Re:The price of oil is still too cheap

To expound on how correct you are, we're not really looking for alternative fuels in the US. It's sad; Europe (as a whole) is a much more agile entity than we are. For some reason, a dozen countries are making economic and social progress faster than a single one that has been an economic powerhouse for the past couple hundred years.

If gasoline were a more appropriate price (e.g., $6/gal), we'd see alternatives popping up. Europe has been paying that much for gas for several years now. At this rate, the US will continue to produce/consume SUV's and trucks until gasoline becomes so expensive that it makes economic sense to switch over to something else. That aside, the US gov't is promoting patent law bullshit instead of realizing that it hinders our economic progress and ties up our courts, just like the war on drugs.

The incentives for the US to stop sucking eggs aren't in place. It feels like there's nothing we can do to stop idiots like Ted Stevens from getting elected. Congress doesn't enact laws that are in our best interests and the president's a moron.

I changed my mind about wanting to live in the US in 2007. It seems worth seriously considering a move to another country or even another continent. I'm thinking about vacationing in London. Canada and the UK don't seem like bad ideas right now. There's more wrong with this country than its president.

Re:The price of oil is still too cheap

A couple interesting observations about those charts.

1. From 1947-1977 (the first half covered) the mean household income (adjusted for inflation) goes from $26,322 to $51,925. That's almost double the household income. From 1978-2005 (the second half), it goes from $54,764 to $73,304. That's a little more than a 1/3 increase. So the rate at which our income is increasing has dropped drastically.
2. The further back along the time-line you go, the fewer two income households there are. So the doubling of earning power in the first 30 years of the chart was decreasingly accomplished by single individuals making more. The lesser increase in earning power in the second half is increasingly accomplished by pairs.

Re:The price of oil is still too cheap

I predict it will hit 5/gal by the end of 2008.

I've been wrong almost every time in guessing how much gasoline will rise. I think the prices will depend on the political situation going into November. Did you notice how gas prices stabilized and remained relatively low during the 2006 election? I know people say the prices weren't manipulated, but it sure seemed to me the oil companies did what they could to help the Republicans win in 06. It didn't help. So unless there is some kind of major disruption I suspect we may see a repeat of the Fall 2006 pricing.

I've no doubt it'll hit $5 USD/gal at some point in the future, but I don't think it'll be 2008. Supply and availability are going to be the real determining factors. Until there are shortages and long lines people will grumble but they won't be up in arms.

I predict gasoline will eventually be sold per liter as prices go up and that car mileage will be listed in kilometers per gallon. It won't change anything but it'll be an attempt to obfuscate the real costs.

Linux

I switched from XP to openSuSE in March, and decided it was too hard to work with, to the point that I pined for Window's familiarity. Temporarily lacking an XP CD, I downloaded Ubuntu as a stopgap. And decided I didn't need that XP CD after all.

Windows XP

it's not *all* that bad, actually

Flying cars

I finally realized that I was never going to have a flying car.

That politicians / legislative bodies ...

can effect any type of meaningful change.

Healthcare reform, acting on global warming, tax reform, ending a meaningless war, supporting the middle class, fighting terrorism at its roots ( in the Madrases ) and local Muslim populations (versus invading random countries like Iraq or Iran), energy independence ........ on and on

Since a teenager I've been at least tuned into the issues / politics - and would get wrapped up with one candidate or another .... now in my 50's I see that this just a bunch of horse-shit. I'll still vote (as I have since I turned 18) .... but to invest any time, money, or emotion in the political process ----- fuck that shit.

religion

I changed my mind about religion, ironically it was because I started going back to church that I realized I didn't believe any of it.

I changed my mind about the music business

At the start of the year I still thought the big labels hadn't figured out to work with the internet and were going to litigate my favourite websites into submission, but they've finally got it and made deals instead of suing potential business partners. At the start of the year I was steadfast in my opinion that music labels were going to collapse, by the end of the year I've got the feeling that they might just make it through.

Impeachment.

At the start of 2007 and after a Democratically controlled Congress was sworn into office I was of the opinion that impeachment should be off the table while Congress got down to some real business with a President that recognized the winds of change. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Environmentalist and VideoGame Nuts and Linux Fans

1. O.K. I believe in global warming now. I heard a lot of dissenting evidence but it appears to be tainted.

2. Video Games do affect behavior in many children. Studies and family members in the field of education with years of observational experience have made me switch my opinion. I'm still not a big fan of government intervention on the subject, though.

3. Linux is ready for the desktop thanks to the EeePC. In fact, much of open source appears to be ready to eliminate the needs or even desire for a commercial alternative. Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox. I no longer feel like I'm having to settle for second rate in order to save money. I'd actually choose them even if the alternatives were free.

4. Slashdot is moderated largely by hypocritical children who will mod up popular opinion and mod down unpopular posts regardless of accuracy. I predict the slow demise of Slashdot as the comments area, a once fertile land of discussion and intelligent observation becomes a members only arena linux/mac fanboys and video gamers who can't envision anyone else's opinion being right other than theirs. It will be a place where where speaking ill of religion, republicans or windows will be given an automatic +2 informative while speaking ill social web sites, video games, or modding practices will be an auto -2 troll.

All four are great discoveries and lifestyle changes for me.

Happy New Year.

Re:Environmentalist and VideoGame Nuts and Linux F

Happy New Year 2002!

Emotion

This will probably be out of place here amongst the /. crowd. But I met the absolutely most beautiful woman on the planet, inside much more so than outside this year. And the whole experience changed me and my mind on the value of emotion in general. I am still dealing with the fallout from realizing I have been an emotional equivalent to a black hole up until now.

It used to be hard to say stuff like that, even to myself. But not any more, personal growth is always a good thing to achieve. And no she wasn't a girlfriend or anything like that either before anyone asks.

Oh and tv. It is now almost entirely out of my life, to be replaced by real life things like skydiving and adrenaline rushes. :)

Re:Emotion

I am still dealing with the fallout from realizing I have been an emotional equivalent to a black hole up until now.

This is happening to a lot of people these days, men in particular. --My own version of it, (and I always thought I had a solid connection with my emotional side), happened during the Katrina disaster. I was utterly and unexpectedly overwhelmed with emotion for several days to the point of not being able to function socially at all; it was like I could feel the fear and pain of all those people all at once. --In the past, I would easily have been able to observe such a massive tragedy with detached interest. I was really stunned by the whole episode. Something was blasted open inside me, and it took most of six months to figure out how to live with the new awareness. I don't doubt that it was a good thing, but it was a very difficult process to go through!

-FL

Changing Minds?

The following are my personal notes on the article, written and organized as I read it:

This is a really good article, though like past years, you can know the general lean (political, philosophical and scientific) of the participants before you begin. However, there are always answers that go up against the grain, and these are the ones I find most interesting. Some of the answers are pretty fascinating, like this one from Joseph Ledoux:

Like many scientists in the field of memory, I used to think that a memory is something stored in the brain and then accessed when used. Then, in 2000, a researcher in my lab, Karim Nader, did an experiment that convinced me, and many others, that our usual way of thinking was wrong. In a nutshell, what Karim showed was that each time a memory is used, it has to be restored as a new memory in order to be accessible later. The old memory is either not there or is inaccessible. In short, your memory about something is only as good as your last memory about it. This is why people who witness crimes testify about what they read in the paper rather than what they witnessed.

What's so fascinating about this answer to me is that it is something that's been clear to me, upon reflection, for many years. I have a clear "memory" of my second birthday, even though this is a time from which most persons don't have memories. Now, it's known that that being able to form sentences early (which I was able to do) helps in the creation of memory; being able to "narrate" thought allows us to construct some sort of record of events better. However, around the age of 11 or so, I began to realize that I was not remembering the event so much as my prior recollection of it. This meant I began to be very careful about my use of memory and how much I trusted my own mind, which I know to play tricks on me at times. It's known that, even for a mentally well person, a long-held falsehood can become true for the person simply because they create a memory of the false event. Also, philosophy has been aware of the importance of this sort of trick of the mind for some time. It's interesting to see science just now approach it, and it is instructive in how scientific paradigm (e.g., that memory functions like a hard drive) can override the obvious conclusions of self-reflection.

A lot of the answers touch on classic issues in the philosophy of science, a field some scientists love (most geologists, theoretical physicists) and others hate (most biologists). Karl Sabbagh's answer about expertise is right and wrong in equally interesting measures (yes, one should not trust experts unguarded, but, no, your judgement is not as good as an expert's in an area of their expertise, per se). Piet Hut's answer about explanations is sort of trivial for anyone who knows philosophy of science, but a good example of the problem (or explanation--hah!) for the neophyte. Colin Tudge's answer about the limits of science is simillarly instructive and worth repeating (in part):

I have changed my mind about the omniscience and omnipotence of science. I now realize that science is strictly limited, and that it is extremely dangerous not to appreciate this.

Science proceeds in general by being reductionist. This term is used in different ways in different contexts but here I take it to mean that scientists begin by observing a world that seems infinitely complex and inchoate, and in order to make sense of it they first "reduce" it to a series of bite-sized problems, each of which can then be made the subject of testable hypotheses which, as far as possible, take mathematical form.

Fair enough. The approach is obviously powerful, and it is hard to see how solid progress of a factual kind could be made in any other way. It produces answers of the kind known as "robust". "Robust" does not of course mean "unequivocally true" and still less does it meet the lawyers' criteria -- "the whole truth, and nothing but the truth". But robustness is pretty good;

Re:I married!

In a simple ceremony I married my sweet heart with whom we'd been together for 8 years.

Okay, and to keep this on topic, you've now changed your mind? Well, happy new year :)

Re:

That sounds like you and someone else had been together with your sweetheart for 8 years. What does the 3rd person think about your marriage?

Re:Outsourcing actually isn't to bad

Congratulations on your promotion to management.

Offshoring is a non-solution to a non-problem.

An additional benefit is that it has a rather sobering effect on local know-it-all's when they see that their work is in fact inferior to what we can get from a third world sourcing partner.

Exception, not rule. The locals will end up cleaning after the large amounts of mistakes.

It has a disciplining effect on the entire organization since the punishment for immaturity is harsh and tangible.

After this sort of ego bruising they are more ready to accept modern and mature practices.

Play $DEITY somewhere else, not with workers. If one has to add fear (by offshoring) over their heads to drive a point, something is terribly wrong.

You're part of what makes people hate offshoring, you use it for fear, and not productivity.

Re:Offshoring is a non-solution to a non-problem.

If one has to add fear (by offshoring) over their heads to drive a point, something is terribly wrong.

You're more likely to get shot as well. Someone here once recommended Going Postal [popmatters.com] to me, and it covers such intentional marginalization of the working class, iirc.

And of course.. theyre also willing to accept..

well, not willing to, more like "forced to" accept triple the workload they used to, resulting in fatigue around which an entire industry of pharmaceuticals arose to keep them up with stims rather than labor regulations to keep offshoring down so they can live healthy lives which involve rest and the possibility of actually speaking with and raising their kids.

and of course they have to accept the erosion of their middle class status to the point they will never ever retire and can't ever afford a house.. "as the rents go up, and job opportunities go down"

yes i'm sure our descent into third world status will "only" harm the "immature"

and where do you get off declaring what is and is not mature? did it ever occur to you that you may be the one who isn't mature. Usually the ones who believe themselves far enough above others to pronounce judgment are themselves the fools.

But yeah, go ahead and support the destruction of the middle class for your twisted sense of self righteousness regarding other people's maturity.

Re:And of course.. theyre also willing to accept..

But yeah, go ahead and support the destruction of the middle class for your twisted sense of self righteousness regarding other people's maturity.

I would argue it is not destroying the middle class, so much as moving the middle class.
Welcome to the global economy.
There is going to be a painful transition period while the former third world achieves what they have not had for so long.
Blame the old status-quo on imperialism, blame it on racism, blame it on whatever you want. Regardless, the world is becoming an increasingly level playing field - finally.

Re:And of course.. theyre also willing to accept..

They might not gain "our standard of living" but they (as a whole, I'm not going to argue individual cases) a better standard of living.
Without an influx of money and the growth of leisure, there never will be political reform, IMHO.

Re:And of course.. theyre also willing to accept..

Someone with nearly 2000 comments on a newer (900,000) era /. account is claiming they don't have any leisure time?

Re:And of course.. theyre also willing to accept..

"compare this with 50 years ago when people could come home and kick back, now we are expected to work 18 hour days, 6 of them off the clock thanks to obscene deadlines and quotas."

No, SOME people could comehome and kick back - the upper-middle and upper class. Lower middle and lower class folks have ALWAYS had to work their asses off, mainly at shit jobs, for long hours and low pay.

You are pissed because jobs that USED to produce an upper-middle class lifestyle don't do that anymore. Guess what - that kind of stuff happens all the time. Everyone here rails against the **AA's for not recognizing a failing business model, but somehow thinks individuals should be immune from those same rules. Why?

IT jobs used to be a good path to the upper middle class; now they are not. Same with factory jobs. Welcome to reality.

Re:And of course.. theyre also willing to accept..

I'm an academic, and the single biggest reason is that I'm a workaholic and if the place didn't almost shut down for 4 months of the year, I'd work myself to an early grave. As it is now, though, I work my ass off 8 months of the year, and 4 months of the year I'm blessed and cursed to be able to get almost nothing done (well, nothing that requires the organization). It's been very good for my health and mental well-being, if not necessarily for my wallet.

Over the last summer break, I spent about a week staying with my friends who work at a major IT company as developers. I saw their lives, and was envious. They make a lot more money, they come home earlier, and it is virtually impossible for them to work at home, so they don't. "Damn," I thought, "I really did pick the wrong career." But then I noticed something: I was staying at their house in a different country from where I live for a week, and that was just one week out of about 7 or 8 in a row that I didn't have to report to work. I was still getting some things done on the laptop, but that had much more to do with my workaholic nature than necessity. "Damn," I thought, "maybe I picked the right career after all."

The point I'm trying to make is that you are ultimately in control of your time. You are. Really. It's your time. Your life. If you feel that you are losing it to a company, and the money isn't worth it, you need to change gears. It's not their fault. It's your fault for doing it.

Now, this decision will most certainly result in a decrease in income. It may mean you aren't buying a house (if you're in the US, this is a terrible time to buy anyway--wait for the market to really crash first--and if you already bought, you have my sympathy), it may mean that vacation is usually spent on the couch instead of on the beach. It may mean you will be hanging on to your old car and just keeping it going until it dies. It means you don't get the "American Dream" kind of life people in my generation seem to somehow feel is necessary. BUT, you will get your life back.

Depending on who you are as a person--whether you value money or time more--this may or may not be a viable lifestyle choice. But the choice is there.

Finally, however, I want to address this idea that we work harder than our elders. I think that is really only the case on Leave it to Beaver. In talking to my parents, both of their parents worked. Mom got home earlier than Dad (schoolteachers in both cases), but Dad (a lawyer on one side and a shopkeeper on the other) got home late. Anecdotal evidence, I know, but I really think that we have too rosy a view of our elders' lives. In my own parents' case, they run a business that is attached to the house, so they were around a lot, but were also usually working. When my dad had to go out, which was/is almost every day, he didn't come home until late (8-9). He also gets called out to truck wrecks (independent insurance adjuster specializing in the hard stuff that companies hire a third party to handle) in the middle of the night fairly regularly, and might not come shuffling back home for 18 hours, after dealing with cops, insurance companies, grief-ridden truck drivers, and the survivors of the family they just killed. That being said, there are down periods with little work and no money, and I grew up being pulled out of school during those periods to drive around the country and learn things. My parents basically made the same choice I did. Time is more important than money.

Further, think of the Depression generation! They didn't work because there wasn't any. Lots of time, but absolutely no money. If they did work, it was long hours in a dusty field. And before that? The agriculture- and manufacturing-based economy. The ag business is still crazy hours (grew up in a little town--had lots of friends who were farm kids and grew up working), and the only reason manufacturing went to 8 hours a day is that in the 20s factories were literally working people to deat

Re:Outsourcing actually isn't to bad

Yeah, cos people work best with the threat of losing their jobs hanging over them.

Re:Outsourcing actually isn't to bad

"I learned that offshore outsourcing isn't to bad after all."

And next year you'll have learned that offshore outsourcing isnt so cheap after all.

Well, maybe not next year, but the writing's on the wall; between the lackluster performance of the dollar and the (almost) pan-asian economic overheating and inflationary meltdown, as well as the young sourcing partners growing up and aquiring their own managerial fat and rigidity, you'll find the balance shifting once again.

Personally I've been overjoyed to have some foreign colleagues; suddenly there are actually people I can send work to when we are far too overloaded to do anywhere near all that needs to be done.

"After this sort of ego bruising they are more ready to accept modern and mature practices."

Yes, well, what goes around comes around. Dont expect temporary phenomena to last forever; you may find yourself in the position to have to kiss and polish those egos once again, so if I were you I'd concentrate a bit more on the positive aspects rather than gloating and fostering discontent.

Re:

They are in fact cousins.

Re:Changed my mind about the future of the US.

Ron Paul is a dangerous fad. He does not believe in evolution and he wants to scrap what little healthcare the poor in the US have access to (bear in mind that the US already has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than European countries that spend less per capita on healthcare). His platform is yanking away what little social protections exist in the US so that the middle classes can pay less tax, and considering that the US isn't nearly as far from mass famine as you would think a developed country would be - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/7148880.stm [bbc.co.uk] - its a recipe for a Katrina-like failure on a far bigger scale.

Third Party

Now I don't know how to lean.

Why not third party?

I'm a Government conservative and a social liberal (I think we should stop violating the Constitution, get rid of the IRS, stop these stupid wars, religion doesn't belong in Government, I don't give a rat's

Re:

Same time the Democrats did.

Re:Republicans

Barack's a Muslim

No he isn't. A quick search reveals that he is a member of something called the United Church of Christ. This does not appear to be a Muslim denomination: the clue's in the word 'Christ'.