Well I think it's been long enough now that I can post my thoughts about Hurricane Katrina and not hurt as many peoples feelings or get as many people upset o here goes.

I don't feel sorry for the people who were stuck in New Orleans at all. My reasons for that are quite simple. The first is that all levels of their government knew that their defenses against natural disasters were not good enough for many years and chose to do nothing about it. When you live in what used to be a swamp that you drained out to build a city you'd think that you'd keep your levys in good repair.

My second reason for not feeling sorry for the people in general is that they had plenty of notice that the hurricane was coming and didn't leave. I'm sorry but if I knew that a hurricane was coming the blow my house down I would leave, no matter how poor.

The stupidity of these people didn't even end after the hurricane ended. People came to rescue them from a flooded city and they refused to leave. Your house is already destroyed, there's nothing left for you to save, but you still stay...?

There was a natural disaster in New Orleans but it's not what killed the people of New Orleans. What killed them was a disaster of human stupidity.

People steal celebrities garbage and sell it on ebay now. Or make art pieces out of it. They wait outside their houses with highpowered cameras on the off chance they'll get some shot of them doing something wrong or just a shot of them without makeup on. There are dozens of shows on tv that talk about celebrity gossip. And the public eats it up. Why are we so obsessed with watching others?

They're rich, they're famous, they're beautiful... they are living the american dream. And if we watch we can live vicariously through them. At least that's the idea I guess. Is everyone so consumed with the idea of the "good life" that we have to have 3 shows on tv back to back that say the same thing about how big celebrities houses are or who they're sleeping with?

Arguing that celebrities choose that career in the spotlight and should accept the constant badgering of the media as part of the job really isn't fair. They deserve privacy like anyone else. That's like saying that because a police officer chose a dangerous career that they should all end up being shot... at least once right... afterall they chose a career where they'd get shot at. I'm sure some of them like the attention, but not all of them want it. I don't see why we can't leave them alone. Look at how annoyed all of us get when a telemarketer calls... now imagine they were calling constantly, knocking on our doors, never stopping. It's not fair to put someone through that because of the career that they choose.

Maybe we should all stop wishing to be someone else and start making something of ourselves...

I reported the abuse to msn. I left my email for them to get back to me and I made it very clear in my comments on abuse that the safety of children was at stake. So two days later I got an email back from msn stating that there was nothing they could do because the space had been disabled so there was no evidence of of pornography or child abuse that they could find. It really made me wish I had saved the page, but I didn't want that stuff saved on my computer.

I replied to their response saying that the site was illegel and being used to sell children as sex slaves and that msn should do everything in their power to track this person through their server. I'm yet to get a response.

I urge everyone who reads this to email msn staff and request that they do everything in their power to find the person responsible for that space and that they put checks in place to make it easier for them to track a person who is using spaces as an outlet for selling women. I'm going to continue to email them myself until they ignore me entirely or tell me they're doing something about it.

It seems that many people don't understand the significance that history really plays in our society. It shows us where we've been and teaches us important lessons to use in the future. Truly the study of human history is the only way to gain meaningful insight from human error. Yet history too often falls prey to bias and politics. It becomes skewed by personal or national agendas of those writing the history books. Is national pride and dignity worth stretching the truth concerning historic events?

The truth is a very subjective thing in many cases of historic study because often there is little primary evidence to research. In these cases the historians can't be blamed as easily for allowing personal bias to affect their theories. But what about the cases in which we have lots of primary evidence... more recent events... events from the World Wars for example. You would think they would be more accurate and would be balanced based on all the evidence we have on record. Still a bias occurs in the journals written and major facts are ignored.

All you have to do is go to an American highschool history class, a Canadian one and a German one and you'll get three totally different stories about why and how things happened in the World Wars. The curriculums are chosen by the government and they want to save face and instill national pride in their young citizens. So the truth becomes a less important factor than the dignity of the nation in the eyes of its youth. Ask any American child about Pearl Harbour and they'll tell you all about it... all of it except for the fact that the US attacked the Japanese first. Or ask a Canadian child about the TransCanada railway and they'll tell you everything... except that millions of Chinese immigrants died laying the track and then those left were sent to concentration camps after its construction.

Nations need to start realizing that the true value in history is lost when it is changed and the truth is taken out of it. How will the youth of our nations learn from our mistakes if we never teach them what we did wrong?

It's not as clean as they say it is. While nuclear plants don't produce very many green house gases like typical power plants they do produce other waste... radioactive nuclear waste. Many of these wastes prouced have a half-life of several hundred years and our only solution for disposing of them is buring the underground. Unfortunately there is no real way to fully dispose of nuclear waste. Even when it is buried the radiation still contaminates groundwater and seeps from the burial site.

Also, nuclear plants are only viable for so many years until the plant itself becomes so contaminated by radiation that it becomes a biohazard and people can't work there. The radiation penetrates everything so fully that eve if you dismantle the plant all of the materials will still be radioactive and harmful. So the only solution is to fence them off for a couple hundred years after 50 years of operation... does that make any sense? And even if they are fenced off the radiation from the plants will still seep into groundwater and the environment around them.

Nuclear energy also isn't cheap. It's very expensive. On average it costs almost twenty times what typical hydroelectric power does per kilowatt/hour. The only reason why it costs the same on your electric bill as everyone elses is because nuclear power is subsidized by the government. They've invested so much in their nuclear programs that they need to keep them running so they use tax money the maintain a cost balance. The government can only give so much to the program though so as more nuclear plants are built the price of energy will start to climb.

There is also the question of liability and insurance regarding a nuclear plant exploding. The fine print in many house insurance contracts specifically says that the insurance company will not cover damages by nuclear explosion. This is the only thing that is consistant in all of the contracts for every Canadian insurance company. Also, the Canadian government has legislated that the power company would only be liable for one billion dollars of damages in the event of a nuclear explosion. That would barely cover five percent of the estimated damages from a fallout in a less populated area let alone a plant near a densely populated area.

Nuclear fallout is a very real possibility. Chernobyl isn't the only example of a nuclear explosion we've had. Russia had one before Chernobyl that they managed to cover up. There have also been plants in Canada and the United States that have come very close to meltdowns. The risk only increases as the plants we have built get older.

Evidence also suggests that it's not renwable. Like fossil fuels there are only so many reserves of uranium and nuclear grade materials for us to extract and after that they are gone. Recent surveys have found that we're using uranium much more quickly than anticipated and that the uranium supply can only last about another hundred years... that not much longer than the fossil fuels.

The energy situation needs to be reevaluated. Nuclear energy isn't worth the risk... we're better off putting money into research and developing new, better, and truly renewable sources of energy that are safe for the environment.

That one example shows us how helpless we are against the onslaught of war. We have so little real power after electing individuals into government. I believe that at the very least we should be able, as members of different countries, to have referendums on all major issues in our nations. So I pose this solution to Rocks question. If anyone else here thinks it's a good idea then I say we push for it and try to get it done. All countries should have nationwide referendums when they want to go to war unless there has been a real act of aggression against your country first. Forget congress or parliament... this is a major decision that effects how people in other countries view us as individuals so every individual should have some say... not just symbolic representation. This is my proposal... write letters to your senators and house leaders, to the presidents and prime ministers, to any lobby groups you can think of. Start petitions that you can bring to your politicians, even if it's only an internet petition. Make it a law that the people decide when they should or should not start a war when the idea is presented by the government. Perhaps that would balance the special interests of those who want the wars...

It's funny actually because Bush is using American nationalism as the same means to the same end that Hilter used it for. To gain approval for war. Typically in recent American history the government has focused on maintaining as low a number of American casualties as possible, but Bush doesn't seem so concerned with that. The only reason previous governments worried about casualties was to maintain a certain level of approval from the public and they couldn't maintain that while their boys were off dying in another country, not when America couldn't see any reason for it. But Bush has created a reason, a brilliant one at that... a nationalistic reason that we haven't seen since colonial times. Bush's America must suffer the White Man's Burden. Bringing democracy to those who can't bring it to themselves. And the strange thing is that the american majority (at least according to the last election) can rally behind that and gain a sense of unity from being the saviours of the world.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very nationalist myself. If you've read anything else I've written about you could probably tell. I have a very strong Canadian bias. That tends to give me a very cynical slant when I look at American politics... but I try to maintain some level of common sense about it. And I don't make accusations without some evidence to back them up. Still I have a great love for my country and I believe it would be far better off with less American influence. Nationalism can be a good thing, there's nothing wrong with loving your country. But it shouldn't be used as an excuse to start a war... or to practice a form of racial stereotyping we supposedly got rid of when Britain gave India independence.

The WTO is an organization that controls and monitors trade among and in countries. It's main purpose is still to maintain peaceful trade negotiations between all the countries in its membership. The problem with this is that only countries within the WTO can actually gain any advantage from its existance and when you join you give up a little bit of your sovereignty as a country because you then fall under WTO charters for trade. That means that a reletively small organization with no elected representatives has strong influence over the world of trade. Suddenly there's a breakdown of democracy cause now voters have no say in how their country can trade.

The WTO uses it's trade advantage to force impoverished countries to join their orginaization and take advantage of them by forcing devaluation of their currency and by not allowing government subsidization of trade. It also punishes countries that don't join by boycotting their products or placing large tariffs on them.

You also have to ask yourself who is in charge of the WTO. It's run by a board of directors similar to how a company is run, and the poistions have almost exclusively been held by wealthy Americans... so is the WTO just a front for American business elite to control cash flow around the world... yes, yes it is. An example of that would be how the WTO didn't force Americans to allow Canadian soft wood lumber into their market despite the free trade agreement and despite WTO charters that say the US could not ban Canadian softwood lumber. The WTO did nothing... because the board of directors has personal interests in that wood not coming over the border.

The WTO is just another way for the rich to enlarge the gap between themselves and the poor. It treats other, poorer countries unfairly and doesn't even follow it's own rules when American interests are not being met despite the fact that it is supposed to be impartial. I think it's time that the WTO just went away.

The first thing is that homosexuality being a genetic trait goes against the theory of evolution, which ironically enough most homosexual people believe is accurate. Selective gene transfer only happens when a certain gene is seen to give an advantage to the organism. That is the only way a gene will continue throughout generations according to Darwins theory. The problem with homosexual behaviour being gene based is that being homosexual offers no survival benefits therefor the gene would not be selectively transfered and would remain in a very small percentage of the society. Also there is the fact that it offers an extreme disadvantage in that homosexual people cannot reproduce with one another. Therefor the gene would always be recessive making it even more difficult for that gene to surface in a homosexuals offspring.

There is also the fact that they've never really found a gene that is the proven cause of homosexuality. They have found some genetic differences that occur but they haven't been consistant from person to person which means they are most likely individual mutations... which are common in everyone. It's quite the opposite actually from the studies that have been done. Studies done with twins have shown that the root of homosexuality is most likely in psychosocial factors. Since the genetic code is essentially what decides what you'll be like and there is no gene that we have been able to find that causes someone to be gay it means that people aren't actually born that way.

Just because they aren't born that way it doesn't mean it's their choice though. There are a number of factors that have been brought up by researchers that could cause people to become homosexual. One of these theories is that child molestation leads to homosexual behaviour. This theory does have some merit. Many studies have found that upwards of 50% of homosexual males have were molested as children. Many friends that I have who are gay have confided in me that they were molested as well. Which led me to conclude that it was a factor causing some of my friends to be gay.

I suppose it's the simple idea of socialization that leads to how someone behaves later. The problem is that there is so little we understand about how the human mind works and how things effect it. How a parent treats their children can have unpredictable results. Who knows what kind of treatment could lead to someone "inheriting" homosexual behaviour.

One thing that I will add that I'm sure some people will disagree with, but that I know is true because I see it so often among my friends and now disturbingly often among my sisters friends (around the age of 17) is that people are now choosing to be gay, not because they think they are but because of how much it's pushed be society now. It's a strange turn around but now being gay is the cool thing to do. I've had friends who were in active homosexual relationships simply because they thought it would win them friends.

The media and education system pushes homosexuality so much now in Canada that you're not seen as normal unless you've "experimented." Every girl I know that my sister is friends with openly claims to be gay or bisexual. It's no longer a matter of whether or not you really are gay... now it's a matter of whether or not it's the coolest thing on tv.