Ambassadar

96.02 with a 3 mile avg error Some of the middle states were tough and Delaware threw me for a loop for a minute. I have been blessed with the opportunity to visit most of the states at some point so that helped a lot. Especially with relations of middle states.

I just want to see more nuclear power plants being built.

You aren't trying to have a reasonable discussion. You are trying to have an ego driven debate. I don't feel like wasting my time with that. If you want to actually read what I said and converse about it feel free. Otherwise I'm over it. Heck as long as you quit going around calling people racist then that's the only issue I had with you. I don't care if you think we should have open borders. I disagree but whatever floats your boat.

I know 1.5 billion isn't a reasonable number. The point I was trying to convey is in an alternate reality if there was an open border and you took 1.5 billion people and moved them into the US it would completely alter this country. The original population would be a minority. The infrastructure would be completely overrun. Pollution would go through the roof. Water would be scarce. Food and other prices would go through the roof. People would be living in the streets because builders couldn't keep up with such a demand. Crime would rise from people living in shanty towns that would spring up since there would be a huge lack of housing. The list just goes on and on of how it would screw up the country. These are not racial issues. These are hard numbers and hard reality. I am all for letting people that will make this nation better coming into this nation in a controlled legal process. When numbers of people coming in get too high the entire system and infrastructure of this nation can and will be overrun. That is why we can't have out of control illegal immigration. School systems need time to expand to meet growing populations. The environment needs population levels kept at reasonable levels to avoid destroying it. etc etc There is nothing racist about this. It is just hard numbers and hard reality. Legal immigration up to a certain point is great. The further you get past that point the worse things will get. The government needs to control who and how many people enter this country and become citizens. To allow open borders and letting in million upon millions of persons entering this country is madness. If we need more workers then increase the legal limit of immigrants that may come here each year. To bring it all back to what started this just because someone thinks a fence will help solve the problem(I personally have my doubts it would) does not make them a racist.

So let's say your plan becomes law and in the next five years 1.5 billion people apply for citizenship and move to the United States. Who they are, what race they are or why they want to come here is irrelevant. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I agree slavery was wrong no matter who committed it. I just went back and read your responses again and it looks like I made a bridge between your comments about Jim Crow Laws and the slavery response. Sorry about that. I'll explain how it came across to me when I read it. You said it was only people who SUPPORTED Jim Crow laws that were racist. I made the assumption you would feel the same way and would claim that it was only people who SUPPORTED slavery that were racist as well. This made me think you were trying to say everyone that supported slavery had to be racist except for black people who owned slaves and they were doing it out of greed. What I was saying is that is a double standard because it assumes non blacks wouldn't do it purely out of greed so you would automatically assume they were racist. Anyways I did accidentally make a logic leap that you didn't actually say so if you don't believe what I thought you did I apologize.

So Paperclipsyaaar, do you think the US should have completely open borders and anyone on Earth that wants to become a US citizen at any time can do so and move here? I find it funny that you are going around calling everyone racist yet you are also the only person drawing racial lines of who is right and who is wrong to feel certain ways based merely by their skin color. Last time I checked saying it is ok for one race to do something or feel a certain way but it is not ok for another race to do or feel the exact same thing is racism.

You then repeat name those reasons a few more times for effect so I named a couple of reasons so you could "show me how each of them referred back to racism." So here are your responses to what I said and pasted: You aren't showing that reason is racist. These two sentences are the only references back to racism you gave. During the 50's some people were racist and some people were not that abided by those laws. Some people that support the fence are racist and some people are not. Neither you nor I know what a person's heart is so until they actually expose being racist it is being a jerk to condemn them of that. Yeah, I guess all slave owners were racist... especially the black slave owners... who owned... black slaves... so they were... racist against themselves? Any free person in the US could own slaves and many ex slaves went on to own slaves themselves. So obviously black slave owners weren't racist yet they followed the slavery laws. This means we come back around to my last point that some people that followed the law did so for racist reasons and other people did it for other reasons so you cannot condemn every person as a racist that believes that the laws should be followed until you know their heart. Otherwise you are just being a jerk going around condemning and insulting people without proof. Here are a lot of references to make sure you believe this point: Tours of the property of a rich a rich Charleston black slaveowner http://www.gullahtours.com/dereef.html Baepler, P. (Ed.). (1999). Introduction to White slaves, African masters: An anthology of American barbary captivity narratives. (pp. 1-5Cool. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Daudert, C. (1999). The temptation of st. Rosalie: Portrait of a black slave owner. New York: Hansa-Hewlett Grooms, R. M. (1997). Dixie's censored subject: Black slaveowners. Retrieved June 3, 2002, from http://www.americancivilwar.com/authors ... owners.htm Halliburton, R. (1976). Free black owners of slaves: A reappraisal of the Woodson thesis. South Carolina Historical Magazine, 76, 129-136. Johnson, M. P. & Roark, J. L. (1984). Black masters: a free family of color in the old south. New York: W. W. Norton and Co. Koger, L. (1995). Black slaveowners: free black slave masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860. North Carolina: Mc Farland. Schwarz, P. J. (1987). Emancipators, protectors, and anomalies: free black slaveowners in Virginia. The Virginia Magazine of history and biography, 95, 317-338. Vogeler, I. (1997, March). Free black slaveowners in South Carolina. Retrieved June 5, 2002 from http://www.uwec.edu Woodson, G. C. (1968). Free Negro owners of slaves in the Unites States in 1830. Connecticut: Negro Universities Press. You aren't showing that point is racist. You aren't showing that point is racist. You aren't showing that point is racist. 1 Please keep your post on the topic that you were going to show how every reason was racist. You are trying to take things completely off topic by trying to start a different debate on "should we legalize all illegal immigrants." All this comes down to is you shouldn't go around calling people racist because it is rude when you don't know what they truly feel. You aren't showing that point is racist. You aren't showing that point is racist. You aren't showing that point is racist. You aren't showing that point is racist. You aren't showing that point is racist. You aren't showing that point is racist. 2 You aren't showing that point is racist. 3 You aren't showing that point is racist. You aren't showing that point is racist. You aren't showing that point is racist. 4 So you felt the need to say this four different times. Is there any reason you felt the need to keep repeating this over and over other than to try to make me look bad or stupid? It really came across as rather rude. I myself have used your tactic this thread so you can get a taste for how annoying it is so hopefully we can have a civil debate. If you are going to attempt to make the other side look ignorant at least use a real point to do so. To me this just reinforced my opinion that you like to insult, make fun of and belittle people you disagree with since that is the entire reason we started this is because you called someone a racist. Now you are trying the middle schoolish cut people down games on me. Hopefully the opinion I am beginning to form of you is wrong and we can avoid this kind of junk in your response.

Actually I think he has about 12+ million more reasons for supporting a Mexican fence than a Canadian one... I'll name off a couple of reasons for ya... of course this won't be every reason because I don't feel like taking the time to add more at the moment. First and foremost they broke the law to be here. The law states that people are not to enter this country illegally yet millions have done so. Some people think building a fence where the vast majority of the infractions have taken place can help enforce existing US law. I'm not debating if the wall is or isn't a good way to enforce the law but some people feel it is. Wanting to follow US law is not a racist action. Illegal aliens add a big tax burden on citizens. Some people don't like killing themselves at a job and being taxed a big chunk of their paycheck only for billions of dollars to go to people that are not paying taxes and are here illegally. Here are some numbers on costs US taxpayers are having to pay due to people being here illegally. 1. Illegal aliens drain on tax monies that would otherwise be spent for law-abiding citizens. Social services for illegal aliens were estimated to cost the law-abiding American taxpayers, in 2004, over $70 billion annually (Federation for American Immigration Reform, 2004, accessed 2/26/2007). Most current estimates for costs of illegal alien services since 1996 is almost 400 trillion dollars (ImmigrationCounters.com, accessed 2/26/2007). 2. New Jersey spends more than $2.1 billion annually on public expenditures for education, medical care, and incarceration for the estimated 372,000 illegal aliens residing in the state. Governor Jon Corzine admitted, that illegal aliens are, "one of the worst tax burdens in the United States." The Costs of Illegal Immigration to New Jerseyites. 3. Officials in California report that providing illegal immigrants these social services costs the state $3 billion annually. (Close Up Foundation, accessed 2/26/2007). 4. Illegal aliens increase poverty. Most ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâ¦Ã¢â¬Ålack a high school education resulting in increased poverty and expanded government expenditure.ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬ÃâÃ

He wrote The Wheel of Time Series for anyone that doesn't know.

:( *salute* To a veteran and one heck of a writer. From what I have gathered he recorded what happens in his last WoT book on audio and his wife and brother are going to finish the book. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/stor ... d=10464451

I still don't understand why some people are so proud to be racist. So if a person thinks million upon millions of foreign people shouldn't be allowed to illegally sneak into a country they are a racist? Who are you to judge what someone thinks when you don't even know? Are you inside his head? Do you know his reasons for supporting a fence? There are many many reasons why someone might oppose massive illegal immigration besides racism. By giving a knee jerk reaction and judging him a racist based off the sentence he wrote means one of two things: a. You are ignorant and don't realize that there are other reasons people are against illegal immigration(I doubt this because you have been quite witty in other threads). b. You know there are other reasons and you are just being a jerk because you have fun condemning people you disagree with.

Make sure to get enough sleep and exercise. When I was a freshman in college I would stress out big time for exams. Pulling an all nighter was not unusual for me. I learned as I went on that if I started studying a little earlier and went to bed at normal hours and kept up my working out routine during finals week my grades would be a lot better.

Ron Paul I don't agree with him completely but on the stuff we disagree he wouldn't be able to get it passed anyways. Basically our government needs to stop spending so much money. He is the only guy I think would actually act to do his best to cut spending. Sure most of them say they will but Ron Paul's voting record backs up what he says every time. I actually trust he will try to do what he says. I don't feel that way with Romney, Hilary, Obama, Guliani, etc. The more we spend now the more we are going to get taxed later be it in the form of direct taxes(income tax) or in the form of indirect taxes(government printing more money so inflation goes up so all money I earn and have saved is worth less so I have less).

6'2 201 lbs for me. 25.8 BMI BMI is a joke. According to the BMI I am labeled as overweight yet I am getting pretty close to having a six pack and can do about 16 pullups. The problem is muscle weighs more than fat and it doesn't take that into account so it's accuracy completely falls apart when it comes to athletic people.

The best way to gain confidence in public speaking is to just put yourself in a situation to talk in public as much as possible. For me it is merely a matter of fear that leads to my nervousness and to overcome fears we have to confront them until we beat them. Usually if I think about it a lot before I talk it makes me more nervous. Usually once I get to talking I get over it pretty fast and then I'm fine. The last public speech I gave was in front of about 25 engineers at a major NASA instillation. I had only graduated college about six months before the speech and a lot of these guys had been engineers for 20 or more years already. That was a little intimidating. The main thing to remember is you prepare yourself before a speech so that you can provide information that the people you are talking to don't know. Another thing that helps me is to think that I wouldn't be bothered talking to anyone in the audience 1 on 1 or even 5 at once so talking to 30 at once isn't really any different and the nervousness is more just all in my head.

So your response to someone merely saying hate is a big problem and the root of many other problems is to attack religious people. Nice...

Wow, thats insane, ya'll must have been in incredible shape. I started running again last week. I am in terrible running shape because I have only been lifting weights the past few years. Two miles had me hurting lol. My girlfriend has been laughing at how bad I am since she is one of those little cute marathon runner types. I'm more the jumping/fast twitch kind of person so distance running kicks my rear.

At first reading I'd have to say this is a pretty good post by Defender. Regardless of things he said in the past he appears to have a pretty solid point on this thread. We people are flawed creatures. So often anger and hate come so easily and love and forgiveness come so hard. I definitely screw up my fair share when it comes to this but I am in a constant battle with myself beating down anger and trying to replace it with love. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. I think a big part in combating this is for us all to open ourselves up to asking forgiveness if we offend or sometimes an even tougher thing is giving forgiveness when we have been wronged. We also need to accept that people are flawed and no one is perfect when it comes to this. We have all screwed up and we will all do so many more times in our lives. I think a big thing missing from forums is it is so hard to convey and feel the emotions behind people's words. I'm sure I have probably offended people on here with my words at times and if I had been in person I could have seen that and apologized. So anyways, in an effort to spread the love on this forum, any one here has been offended by my words I apologize. It is never my intent to offend. Please know in the future if I say something that anyone feels I am personally attacking them I don't mean to do so, I may disagree on something but that doesn't mean I dislike or want to hurt the other person merely because I disagree with them. So for all who feel I have ever wronged them, sorry.

If you are just trying to lose weight do whatever you will be more consistent at maintaining over months. Both are great for getting in shape so just do what you enjoy. They will both get you where you want to be. The most important thing for you if you are starting out is just making sure you get at least 3 good workouts a week every week and don't slack off.

If you ask a lot of people that don't believe in a God if they believe in faith healing you will get a whole lot of "your mind did it all" answers. If they admitted they believed in faith healing then they would have to admit there was a higher power that did the healing. That ain't gonna happen so they have to rationalize it some other way which means the only alternative is your mind did it. Not crackin' on anyone. It's just the way things are. I'm sure if you went in other forums everyone would believe it was a faith healing. It all depends on your audience as to what answer you will get.

Treat your parents like you would want your own children one day to treat you. You only made this post because feel guilty because you know you are doing something you deep down know you shouldn't be doing and you just want some encouragement from people to make you feel better about yourself and the situation. If you are cool with that then whatever floats your boat. All I know is I hate the feeling of guilt and feeling I was hypocritical or that I lied. Even if your parents never find out you will know what you did and it sounds like it will bother you because you sound like a guy that has some pride and honor. If it was me personally and a friend tried to peer pressure me like that I would give it to them straight that it's not gonna happen and I don't appreciate them trying to peer pressure me. If they persisted I would drop them as a friend because they don't give a rip about me. They just care about their own interests and what they can get from me. Just my 2 cents. It's your life. Choose wisely. Is one night of fun worth betraying a lifetime of trust with the people that love you most?

:P

I have a friend that took some kind of acne drug and he says it messed up his face. Something about it cut back on the natural oils his skin produced permanently. I think that particular drug got taken off the market a few years after he used it but ya never know what other drugs out there that are supposedly fine right now will end up being taken off the market eventually.

The National Championship depends on how the SEC plays out. I think it will be USC vs LSU or Florida

Why do Atheists keep saying this kind of stuff when atheists killed the heck out of any religious people for the mere fact of believing in a God and worshiping that God during the French Revolution and in varied Communist countries? People are screwed up. Yes 500 years ago the Catholic Church did some terrible things. Yes kings used a religious front to pursue their own agenda. Yes Communist dictators murdered millions to pursue their own agenda. No entity out there is perfect regardless of if it is a religion or lack thereof because every entity is made up of people and people are fundamentally flawed. People can take perfection and screw it up. What must be done to pursue truth is to judge those people based upon the beliefs they claim to hold dear. Only then can we see what the true motives they hold and the actual pro's and con's of whatever belief structure they claim to believe.