Pope: Gay marriage part of "ideology of evil"

SamFisher · Feb 25, 2005

Originally posted by HayesStreet
Sam, you started in with the insults so don't go all moral high ground. I was curious how big an effect the Pope has vis-a-vis Africa as far as AIDS/HIV goes. If you don't know then why not just say it instead of getting your panties in a wad. And you're really wrong about 'what I usually do.' I quite often provide contravening articles and examples. I NEVER make a claim without a warrant, and you are - generally - a jackass. If you'd like a little more egg on your face, take your BMD example. Go back and look how much information I provided in that thread. Look at ANY of the threads I've posted in lately, North Korea, Bush will fail in Europe. In each I've posted at LEAST one article to further discussion. Try again.
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OK. let's test your hypothesis, just rereading it briefly it looks like you still owe me some back- up to support your assumptions:
http://bbs2.clutchfans.net/showthre...age=30&highlight=Missile defense&pagenumber=4

1. Please tell me how much of that is based off of technology gains from the current iteration of Theater based missile defense? I'm guessing the answer is zero which was my original question

2A. Quantify the welfare gains in GDP from those, and then tell me how or why a smaller straight transfer payment could not have accomplished the same ends? Again, this is a basic precept of economics - you seem to have a hard time accepting basic concepts of efficiency and utility maximization in a world of finite resources.

2B. Please give me an alternative scenario, and demonstrate what GDP gains would have been had Reagan not spend XXX billion on missile defense, and either simply reduced taxes by that amount, or spent it on other programs.

3. PLEASE ADDRESS THE FACT THAT THEATER BASED MISSILE DEFENSE DOES NOT WORK, AND WILL LIKELY NEVER WORK BECAUSE OF INHERENT TECHNOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS. You have posted lots of text and singularly failed in this department. On one side is a bevy of scientists who worked on the program, on the other side is some middle aged dude posting on a rockets BBS. While the Rockets connection gives you a little cache, I need more, please.

4. PLEASE GIVE ME STATISTICAL ODDS ON THE FOLLOWING THREE INCIDENCES

a. an accidental missile launch aimed at the continenal US
b. a cataclysmic asteroid strike, either in a populated area in the US or outside of the US but big enough to cause sufficient aftereffects in the US.
c. a terrorist obtaining a working fission weapon and successfully transporting it to the contental US
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Let me know when you can provide some basis to any of these assumptions other than that you think I'm a jackass.

HayesStreet · Feb 25, 2005

Originally posted by SamFisher
OK. let's test your hypothesis, just rereading it briefly it looks like you still owe me some back- up to support your assumptions:
http://bbs2.clutchfans.net/showthre...age=30&highlight=Missile defense&pagenumber=4

Let me know when you can provide some basis to any of these assumptions other than that you think I'm a jackass.
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Well, first off - your charge was:

Originally posted by SamFisher
Hayes, all you ever seem to do on this message board is ask people to provide information, yet you never are able to provide any of your own. And when you are faced with contravening information, you just dismiss it any way, never providing any counterexamples.
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Clearly the BMD thread proves you wrong. In this first example I provided data that directly refuted YOUR claim that we received NO benefit from BMD. In the second example I posted an article to refute your analysis of which was more dangerous, a bomb coming through our ports or an accidental launch etc from ballistic missles. So it should be apparent that I DO NOT simply make assertions and that I DO in fact provide data for my arguments. Once again, you are just wrong. Allthough it is funny to note that you are asking ME to go find YOU information in that thread, lol.

Originally posted by HayesStreet
What have we got so far? That's seems like a reasonable question, Sam.

We can start with:

"Even though Reagan’s “Star Wars” never led to the deployment of an actual missile shield, it drew the Soviets into a costly effort to mount a response. Many analysts agree that the race drained Soviet coffers and triggered the economic difficulties that sped up the Soviet collapse in 1991."

-the BMD effort has created over 300 commercial products and over 50 new companies. What do these companies look like?

-These technologies range from remote sensors on satellites to biomarkers on the molecular level and cover land, air, and water resources. The private and public sectors need an abundance
of environmental data, using it to determine compliance with regulations, populations of endangered species, and the level of hazardous waste for cleanup activities. Policy makers,
for example, need more accurate methods for collecting atmospheric data to make decisions about global warming. Industries need more accurate particulate monitors to accurately measure amounts emitted from smokestacks. Some of the needs that technology can address include lower cost, portability, reliability, and ability to provide data in real or near-real time.

-Avoidance technologies alter processes to prevent the production of environmentally hazardous substances. These so-called “green technologies” represent a shift from end-of-pipe pollution control to integration of environmental technology into the production process itself. For example, an industry may implement a pulsed power device to eliminate the growth of
zebra mussels on the intake pipes from waterways beside its plant. This “electrotechnology,” or electrically based alternative, avoids the problems associated with chlorine and other chemical
treatments, which adversely affect the water source.

Control technologies treat hazardous substances to make them harmless before they enter the environment. For example, in industrial plants, advanced technology can decompose pollutants,
including emissions such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds. Remediation technologies are similar, but treat pollutants after they have left the process. For example, technologies that treat nuclear waste, after it has been generated, would fall into this category. The ATW project has the potential to deal with our nuclear waste and prevent the cross country journey (and its risks) in the future.

- Here's an example: AstroPower of Newark, DE, first funded by the program in 1987, went public in February 1998 and has become a world leader in high efficiency solar cell array production. Thermacore, in Lancaster, PA, received SBIR funding for its heat pipe technology. This technology can now be found on every IBM and COMPAQ laptop computer to cool processor chips, and in BMDO for similar purposes. The Brimrose Corporation out of Baltimore, MD, started in the basement of a Savings and Loan building and built, with BMDO SBIR seed funds, a multi-million dollar business that develops sensors for manufacturing and chemical processes.

-BMDO research in industrial radiography led directly to a new method of digitizing images for mammography, including computer-aided diagnostic techniques. This can aid early detection with its benefits. Early detection of precancerous or cancerous changes in human tissues is crucial to effective
treatment of malignancies. Optical methods can help to eliminate or reduce the need for surgical biopsy and allow treatment to take place before a cancer is well-established or spreading. Optical biopsy could become an adjunct to mammography for breast cancer screening, helping to further distinguish suspicious or inconclusive images.

-Funding from the BMDO SBIR program advanced the development of expert system software that has gained industry-wide recognition in the field of risk management. It can predict 'adverse cardiac events ' with a 92% success rate.

-Software for Neonatal assessment to predict the probability of spetis development, allowing doctors to intervene before infection is too serious to combat.

- Nichols Research Corporation (NRC; Wakefield, MA) used BMDO funding to develop a neural network system called MLANS, or Maximum Likelihood Adaptive Neural System. Unlike expert
systems that depend on hard-and-fast rules for computational decisions, neural networks can “learn” solutions from data input and speed up problem solving that depends on a large number
of variables. Originally developed for BMDO space-based applications, NRC has adapted MLANS to such areas as fingerprint identification, drug traffic detection, automotive collision avoidance systems, and medical diagnostics.

-BMDO-funded R&D to develop lead-acid bipolar batteries for hybrid electric cars, vans, and trucks.

-BMDO SBIR work with porous materials to good use, helping to clean up the environment by commercializing defense technology. Originally developed as insulator material for small rocket nozzles, the company’s carbon foam can be used in filters in catalytic converters. Ultramet’s filters provide better performance and longer life in high-temperature operation than other filters, making them ideal for use in internal combustion engines.

-(BMDO SBIR) is developing a lead-free solder technology that could alleviate growing environmental concerns over the disposal of lead-bearing printed circuit boards (PCBs).

-Roto-Lok drives were built for BMDO's Laser Communications project to align laser transmitters and receivers. Companies
use a Roto-Lok gimbal to position the camera on remotely controlled (up to one-half mile away) equipment used to clean up hazardous materials. Boom-mounted cameras on back hoes and front-end loaders watch as a robot arm grabs hazardous materials.

-Magnetic field sensing. Compared with the rest of the body’s low current operations, the heart is a highly electric organ. Its faint magnetic field (about 100 picoteslas) can be measured with superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs), the most sensitive magnetic sensors known. When arranged in arrays, SQUIDs can provide an image of the heart ’s magnetic field and yield clues to abnormal conduction patterns that are the basis of some heart arrhythmias (abnormal rhythms). About 3 million persons are treated for arrhythmias each year in the United States.

-Laserthrombosis: C u rre n t l y, there are several ways to treat a blocked coro n a ry art e ry, which can cause angina (pain)
and infarction (heart attack). In balloon angioplasty, a catheter is inserted through an artery near the hip and threaded up into the major cardiac vessels. Once inserted, a balloon at the tip of the
catheter is inflated, and the clot is displaced. Another treatment is enzymatic: a tissue-derived drug such as tissue plasminogen activator, (tPA), or a bacterial product called streptokinase is used to dissolve the clot. A third treatment, coronary artery bypass surgery, is performed when the previous treatments fail. All treatments have potentially significant drawbacks, and blockage frequently recurs within a year. In laser thrombolysis, researchers hypothesize that the hemoglobin of the clot absorbs the laser light much more efficiently than the arterial wall, which means that the clot can be heated and dissolved without damaging adjacent structures. The platelets in the clot are also eliminated, which reduces the chance of a new clot forming from the released debris. Avoiding damage to the arterial wall is also important to the prevention of perforations (holes), dissection (splitting), or restenosis (renarrowing) of the artery. Since the radio-opaque dye used in these pro c e d u res is also
transparent to the laser beam’s wavelength, the laser method is compatible with existing catheterization protocols.

Really there is too much to go over, but that's a good sampling for those who claim there's no benefits from the program, or that its a complete drain on the economy.
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Originally posted by HayesStreet You cost/benefit is simply skewed. From the Nov/Dec issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

It's likely that nuclear-bent terrorists would take the path of least resistance, which makes theft or purchase of an intact nuke or self-fabrication of fissile material very unlikely. A dirty bomb would be perhaps the easiest, and least harmful, "nuclear" attack...

There are too many different ways in which terrorists could perpetrate some kind of nuclear attack to mention in this limited space. But keep this in mind: There have been zero cases of nuclear terrorism--neither nuclear nor radiological. There are no known cases of theft or purchase of an intact nuclear weapon, so a terrorist attack with one is more than unlikely. There has not been any documented theft of enough fissile material for a crude nuke--although there have been attempts. There has never been a dirty bomb attack. There has never been a case of nuclear plant sabotage. If there were, it would be awful--but not the end of humanity.

The sum of all fears?
So far these nuclear doomsday scenarios have focused on terrorism. But the most destructive of all nuclear threats is nuclear war. After all, eight nations have nuclear arsenals, but a terrorist group would have to work feverishly to get their hands on a single warhead, or enough material to make one.

Is an incoming nuclear missile attack plausible? Yes, but unlikely. The Cold War is over, and the ballistic missile threat from nuclear-capable nations is extremely minor. In February 2001, the Defense Intelligence Agency listed Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as "countries of concern" that might someday field long-range, WMD-capable missiles, and Russia and China as nations expanding their long-range missile programs. One presumes Iraq is now off the list. As to Iran and North Korea, both nations have decent missile capabilities, but Iran cannot strike the United States, and most analysts believe the same about North Korea, despite its boasts. On the other hand, North Korea has nuclear material, and Iran is believed to be working toward a nuclear weapons capability. China has a whopping 20 Dong Feng missiles that can reach America. (The United States has close to 6,000 operational strategic nuclear weapons, as the Bulletin's May/June "Nuclear Notebook" reported.) Russia's capabilities are more comparable to America's, and Russia is expanding its capabilities, according to the July/August "Nuclear Notebook," but a planned attack from Moscow is extremely improbable.

Boo-boo nukes
What's more likely is an accidental nuclear attack. Both Russia and the United States still maintain nuclear-armed ICBMs on high alert and adhere to "launch-on-warning" policies, as Alan Phillips and Steven Starr wrote in the May/June Bulletin. Launch-on-warning means that if either Washington or Moscow thinks it is under attack from the other, it will launch a retaliatory strike before the supposed incoming missiles can do any damage. A false warning could mean the start of an accidental nuclear war. Keeping launch-on-warning policies alive is "inexcusably dangerous," Phillips and Starr wrote. "Launch-on-warning has exposed the world, for at least 30 years, to the danger of a nuclear war caused by nothing but a coincidence of radar, satellite sensor, or computer glitch, and a temporary human failure to appreciate that the message signaling attack is false."

So far, there have been no false launches--but there have been many false warnings.

Nuclear terrorism would be horrific, but nuclear war would be far worse. As Lynn Eden reported in "City on Fire," fire damage from nuclear explosions has been vastly and systematically underestimated--a move that allowed early U.S. war planners to demand a much larger nuclear arsenal. As Eden wrote, a single 300-kiloton nuclear weapon detonated above the Pentagon on a clear day would engulf the surrounding 65 square miles in firestorms that would "extinguish all life and destroy almost everything else." And that's a conservative estimate.

Let's recap. An attack from a weapons state is highly unlikely; an accidental nuclear launch is far more worrisome. As remote as the possibility is, all-out nuclear war has the potential to end human life on the planet--still the true doomsday scenario.
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arno_ed · Feb 28, 2005

am i the only one who thinks it is bad that the Catholic church is saying that a condom cannot stop Aids. That is just a lie. I thought lying was not allowed by the Catholic faith. strange that the highest member of the church does lie.
(not trying to offend Catholic people)

SamFisher · Feb 28, 2005

Originally posted by HayesStreet
Allthough it is funny to note that you are asking ME to go find YOU information in that thread, lol.
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Ha ha ha, that is funny, now find me an answer or any basis for your bullsh-t assumptions about missile defense -- or save us the trouble and admit that you can't.

Or otherwise you can tell us why you are opposed to Africans using condoms to stop HIV, or why it is cool for African bishops denounce condom use in AIDS ravaged regions.

HayesStreet · Feb 28, 2005

Originally posted by SamFisher
Ha ha ha, that is funny, now find me an answer or any basis for your bullsh-t assumptions about missile defense -- or save us the trouble and admit that you can't.
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Dude, I just REPOSTED examples of support for my arguments about BMD. I guess you're more like Bush than you think, you see what you want to see.

Originally posted by SamFisher
Or otherwise you can tell us why you are opposed to Africans using condoms to stop HIV, or why it is cool for African bishops denounce condom use in AIDS ravaged regions.
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Where did I say that? I only asked for clarification about the scope of the problem. Saying the pope opposes condoms, then that AIDS is ravaging Africa - sounds like the Pope is to blame for AIDS ravaging Africa. Hence the question about scope. I already said in principle it is an undesirable position for him to take.

SamFisher · Feb 28, 2005

Originally posted by HayesStreet
Dude, I just REPOSTED examples of support for my arguments about BMD. I guess you're more like Bush than you think, you see what you want to see.

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And I REPOSTED why you need to tell us your examples are relevant, which means you need to show why your assumptions are valid in the specific case - which you RE-FAILED to do.

Where did I say that? I only asked for clarification about the scope of the problem. Saying the pope opposes condoms, then that AIDS is ravaging Africa - sounds like the Pope is to blame for AIDS ravaging Africa. Hence the question about scope. I already said in principle it is an undesirable position for him to take.
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I never said that it was just the pope - read:

Interesting side question: How morally culpable are the Pope & his bishops, etc, who inveigh against the evils of condom use in areas like Africa, which feature cripplingly high HIV rates
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though since he's the one who give the orders, and they're the ones who say that condoms are immoral and dangerous, see below:

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?hint=1&DR_ID=27847

you can go ahead and debate whether or not they are absolved by "just following orders".

HayesStreet · Feb 28, 2005

Originally posted by SamFisher
And I REPOSTED why you need to tell us your examples are relevant, which means you need to show why your assumptions are valid in the specific case - which you RE-FAILED to do.
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Sam, this is what you claimed:

Originally posted by SamFisher
Originally posted by SamFisher
Hayes, all you ever seem to do on this message board is ask people to provide information, yet you never are able to provide any of your own. And when you are faced with contravening information, you just dismiss it any way, never providing any counterexamples.
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The repost above clearly proves you are wrong - I both posted my own information AND provided countravening information to your arguments. You can regress to 'no you're not' I guess, but i'm sure it is now obvious to everyone else that you are wrong.

Originally posted by SamFisher
I never said that it was just the pope - read:
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And? Again I asked what the scope of the problem was - you failed to provide us any more information on that. I already granted that the position was wrong - my question is how big is the impact? Get a grip.

No Worries · Mar 2, 2005

More Christian Family Values ...

I guess I miss that part of the bible where Jesus taught us to hate.

MadMax · Mar 2, 2005

that is beyond ridiculous.

thegary · Mar 2, 2005

funny how dem and lib protesters were called freaks for their activities during the campaign. wow, look at the conservative extremists.

MadMax · Mar 2, 2005

is this the same "church" pastored by that guy who's been very vocal in the media about God hating homosexuals???

it would be nice if that guy would actually read the Bible.

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