Sherwood

while your face is pressed in the arm of the sofa?

I thought the TV was the roomie's responsibility?

No pics of your wood, plz.

I'll most likely be working very, very late this evening, but I'll hit it fresh tomorrow morning at about 10 to start setting up, getting acquainted, etc. Looking forward to seeing old faces and new faces alike, and of course to all the awesome gear.

He can play them, but they will all sound the same.

Tickets to Friday's Denver Dream lingerie football game. Team Colorado was in need of a little wheel-greasing, wink wink nudge nudge.

Chili's will also make you the nacho burger if you ask nice. It's wonderful.

Also, stick to the thin ones. The thick ones are generally more "brothy". I made that mistake my first go-round.

I spun out into a ditch this morning in honor of your birthday!

Flat earth and all that, roit roit.

That guy can blow my fillings out, man. That's one of the top ten tests.

Evidently the intended meaning didn't come across, so I'll try to restate my purpose. DreamWhisper was asserting that his small contribution to making the world better was eating organic food. I was arguing that his small contribution could, hypothetically, make the world worse. Of course things aren't so simple, on either side. I just think it's important to acknowledge the fact that certain things that are currently hailed as universal goods, in this case organic food, are not so universal, nor always so good. I earnestly believe there are real universal goods, however they're not so close to home as what we eat and how we commute. For instance, a true saint named Norman Borlaug recently passed away, and I once had the privilege of meeting him, though I was too young at the time to understand the gravity of what he did with his life. He was, and is, inspiring to me, and I hope to do something so great as he did. Read about it further here, if you're so inclined. There are still opportunities like this. I linked a worthy charity here some time ago, and I like them even more now than I did then -- Kiva.org does phenomenal work, and requires nothing more than money from us. Please do check them out. I'm currently in the very early stages of trying to implement a program like this in the State Department, and while it will take many years of my time, I earnestly believe it is something that will help the world to suffer less, as Dan alluded to. As to the debated "can one man make a difference" assertion, I hold my ground and am delighted to discuss it further with you fine gentlemen.

The question wasn't really clear to me. What did you want me to provide in the way of a source, John? Something showing the effectiveness of DDT against other pesticides? None of can answer as to what *might* have happened had DDT not been an option. That's an argument that goes nowhere. As to Glenn Beck, I would not imagine someone of a more left-leaning bend to enjoy him, but you do yourself a disservice by dismissing what he brings to the table out of hand. In my business I fact check *everything*, regardless of source. There are fewer than 5 organizations I trust without checking, and I still check them. I don't know if I can say that Beck is a particularly grievous example of someone who brings questionable sources to the front. He does it, yeah, without a doubt. The organizers are free to disagree, but it would not have happened without them. Movements have leaders, almost without exception. Depends on what particular period of deregulation you refer to. The most recent period under Reagan corresponded to America assuming hegemony of world affairs formally, which is pretty monumental. It also corresponded to Thatcherism in the UK, which came about from crisis, and was a crisis itself, according to many. Roe V. Wade was not radical, to my eyes. It was an incremental change, like prohibition and its eventual repeal. Moreover, it was a change that seems to have occurred from the inside out. Sure, of course it does, but the individual makes no more difference by himself than he does in a large group. There's a fundamental difference between my producing free market leaflets in my kitchen and a libertarian being elected president, but if I did nothing more than make leaflets I'm not responsible for it.

Very true. It was intended as gross hyperbole, and it is decidedly such. UN regulations on DDT post "Silent Spring" did far, far more to negatively affect Malaria than we as an heirloom-tomato-loving people ever will.

Apologies, should apologies should be necessary, before we continue this further. I've spent considerable time in Middle Eastern cultures where discussing politics is friendly, if extremely heated, and where political culture is very different from America, let alone the bastard America that is the internet. I greatly respect the vast majority of you, and value your friendships. Please take my inevitable badgering as the good-natured discussion that it is.

Go ahead, call bullshit. If you can find me a study that argues that organic pesticides are more affordable or more effective than DDT, I'd be happy to read it. DDT does have limited effectiveness, granted, but it's still superior effectiveness to the alternatives. If there's something better and I missed it, I'm all ears. Also, it's not up to you to decide which news sources are valid, any more than it is up to me. Glenn Beck links to the research of others, just like Kos and Huffington. I would hope you would evaluate anything I linked you to by its content, not its URL. You're building a straw man, here. I never argued against personal responsibility, I argued that there is nothing praiseworthy about incremental change in your own life, about switching from paper to plastic. You seem to feel that this is exceptional because it will cause a change if thousands of people do it. If you want a change, organize thousands of people. The organizer is the one responsible, not the organized. As far as the status quo is concerned, it is the way the American system was designed to operate. Radical change is undesirable under the system we have built, and it only comes about through earnest crisis. Ergo, beware anyone telling you there is a crisis.

Are you arguing that Nelson mandella and Gandhi were average? Clearly they were not, as they are exceptional enough for everyone here to know who they were. Average people do not make a difference -- exceptional people do. I think a lot of the milquetoast "make a difference with the little things" initiatives are ways for average people to feel better about not being exceptional.

I'm pretty sure the actions of the individual "average person" do almost nothing to affect the larger picture. By buying organic food, you incrementally raise the price of non-organic pesticides (as opposed to organic pesticides) which are the most effective means of curtailing the spread of malaria in Africa. Eat enough of it, and perhaps you'll be responsible for the death of an entire African person over your lifetime, but I don't think it's likely. All the things you're talking about aren't proactively influencing anything but yourself. If you enjoy it more power to you, but you're not saving the world. If everyone did it, everyone would not be saving the world either. There are real things real individual people can do to change the way the world works, but I assure you none of them are so simple as what you eat or how much you refrain from using fossil fuels. My crisis, if I have one, is how to be in a position to do those things right, rather than just stamp passports and set out bottled water.

^^ Well how about that... it appears I just swallowed a bug.

Gixen has a similar feature, Pars, though I've never fully grasped it until your explanation above. As an aside, I've never tried auction sniper, so I can't evaluate it. Anything anyone here uses to good effect is probably worth it.

I've used gixen.com to good effect.

Sweet. I imagine I'll take you up on that, as I only need one as well.

I make my man take his watch off, Al. You're worth the time.

Makes sense, seeing as he no doubt rubbed it out in truck stops all over Alaska.