lovempls

No offense but how can you see that it doesn't have anything to do with the Puritans? I'm a huge American History buff. Our Puritan heritage has a lot more influence than you think. IMO it's unfair to teach Creationism in schools because it's just one religion's view on creation. If we teach Creationism, then to be fair, we should be teaching the Muslim creation story and the Native American creation story and so on. Evolution is scientific and has been agreed upon by the majority of people and scientists for years and years around the world. I hope you didn't get the impression that I'm anti-religion. I'm not. We were founded by Puritans and Christian morals are part of the general American ideology, yes. But what makes America wonderful is that the religion isn't forced onto people by the government. That's what the first amendment says. The government doesn't endorse a certain religion and we can worship whatever we want (Flying Spaghetti Monster ). A big contrast to, say, the period I just studied in English history where the monarchy forced everyone to be a certain religion. And then a different King would take over and force everyone to be a different religion. And then a different Queen would take over and force everyone to be a different religion. We've never had that, obviously. Ah, Manifest Destiny. The belief, which came from our religious background, that we had not only the right but the duty to take over and "civilize" cultures like the Native Americans. As Americans, we were destined by God to spread freedom and democracy. This was first used in Western Expansion. Hmmm... spreading freedom and democracy? Sounds like it's still a huge part of our ideology today Also, on The Simpsons, when Springfield becomes "Libertyville" and everyone turns super patriotic, Apu renames his kids Freedom, Lincoln, Condoleeza, Coke, Pepsi, Apple Pie, Superman, and Manifest Destiny.

That's cool, I didn't know that!

I understand we're not as strict as the Puritans. But believe me, I study this sort of thing. We're much less tolerant of public nudity in America. You don't see any on TV (or really anywhere in public) besides people's backsides. Our American ideology comes partly from the Puritans, among other things. I also just watched another documentary today about the Religious Right in the US. It's the biggest voting block in our country - which is kinda scary to me. I do not want Creationism taught in our schools Trust me, we are conservative in the USA compared to other countries. ---And I said broadcast TV. Cable is another story.

In Wisconsin (whoo! my neighbor! ) recently, at the U of Madison I think, they discovered a way to change specialized cells - I think epithelial cells? but I could be wrong, don't quote me - back to stem cells. They haven't been able to convert those stem cells back into differentiated cells yet, however, this is a HUGE breakthrough. If we can use our own differentiated cells as stem cells, we can replace neurons (which is impossible for our body to do on its own) and things like that. Also, it replaces our need for embryonic stem cells. Just throwing it out there.

You're right. If something's complicated, then it's not worth doing.

I think the idea of a government controlling who does and doesn't get to procreate is terrifying and extremely Orwellian.

Yes. This is what I believe.

No joke, that's really interesting to me. I love learning about like differences in culture and ideology. Nerd? Yes.

Do it!

Ha, I learned about this in a class I took. America was founded by Puritans. Those morals helped to shape the ideology we have here. It's why talking about sex in public is like taboo and nudity isn't allowed on broadcast TV and stuff like that. Americans and American culture IN GENERAL, not always, is more uptight about nudity and sex. Yay for the Puritans.

Weird I've seriously never heard anyone say that, is that bad?

I'm interested too

All I know is that global warming doesn't sound like such a bad thing where I live It hasn't gone above 20 F in weeks and there's like 2 feet of snow on the ground.

Where's the fun in that?

Well, it is true. The Constitution was put into practice in 1787 (after the Articles of the Confederation didn't really work out ). The First Amendment reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

If you're talking about abortion, then it's not the person - the woman's life. It's a completely different person's life.

It's a very interesting book I don't even really like economics that much and I hate math but this book is addictive, it's awesome.

Freakonomics p.144 "There are roughly 1.5 million abortions in the United States every year. For a person who believes that 1 newborn is worth 100 fetuses, those 1.5 million abortions would translate - dividing 1.5 million by 100 - into the equivalent of a loss of 15,000 human lives. Fifteen thousand lives: that happens to be about the same number of people who die in homicides in the United States every year. And it is far more than the number of homicides eliminated each year due to legalized abortion. So even for someone who considers a fetus to be worth only one one-hundreth of a human being, the trade-off between higher abortion and lower crime is, by an economist's reckoning, terribly inefficient."

Have you read the book? Because very clearly, at the end of the chapter, he calculates the number of people saved from homicide through legalization of abortion versus the number of babies killed through legalization of abortion. The number of babies killed was higher. He makes that very clear that this isn't supposed to be a "+ for abortion", because more lives were actually lost. EDIT: To add to that, when he compares babies aborted to people saved from homicide, he doesn't even count each baby as one person. As a compromise, he calculates that 1 person equals 100 fetuses. And even then, the difference between fetuses and homicide victims is extremely high.

well when did people start showing up?

Well I get out of school at 2:10 I've never lined up for one of his gigs before, so I don't have any idea when to get there.

So what time are we all getting there?

Not trying to be mean at all because I love you but I think that's easy to say when Mika has played tons of gigs in your country around where you live... I mean for the first time he's coming somewhere close to me, it's hard to describe how amazing that feels . And think of all the countries he's never been to... I think it's perfectly fine for people to show their appreciation that he's coming to their countries and stuff.

'cause Mika's trying to be naughty and get at them look, you can see his hand!!!

here's one