That is interesting. But I meant cars as something which will be an extra demand for clean electricity, at a time when people are burning coal for their home energy needs. Can you both make the air conditioning clean and your car? And that's USA where you have lots of space.

The public largely rejected nuclear, yet reality says all those electric cars will need to plug into something.

Nuclear isn't called nuclear anymore. It is called "broad sustainable energy mix". The public will see windfarms and solar, because they take up space, and meanwhile here and there, new nuclear will quietly be built, and if by then anyone objects, they can cite urgent need to reduce emissions, given we've already built so much wind and solar and yet, oddly, we still have a ways to go to reach the targets.

There are basically two sides to the eco movement. The 70s folk who grew up reading The Ecologist and concluded humanity is a cancer on the planet. Meanwhile the other lot are basically, yeah we want better cleaner lifestyles, but we still want a lifestyle, with jobs and housing and children, with convenience and growth, with better lives for everyone.

Various planning restrictions are being eased to make windfarms possible, on the basis that the environmental targets are urgent and more important. That same workaround can be applied to nuclear. The way to get more nuclear is to never mention the word.

In the meantime, gas is there to make up for the variability in solar and wind. Once everyone wants to plug in their car to charge, everybody will want "sustainable energy".

Well obviously nuclear should merge with banks.

"Islam" needs to split and differentiate. The extremists want to claim their Islam is the only true Islam, and the only valid Islam, hence the killing of apostates and various other Islamic groups and people who happen to be on their hit list. But because Islam is still very conservative, it doesn't have that sense of self-reflection and self-criticism, where it stands outside itself and says, you know what, this monotheistic One True Way puritanical thing we conservative types like so much, is bullshit, it doesn't work in practice. The sooner Islam acknowledges in its theology that the puritanical Truth it clings to is a fiction, because in reality, nobody agrees on the one true doctrine, in reality, people are all different, then the sooner young "heroes" in search of adventure and militancy, can stop using Islam as a militant pretext, and stop dragging ordinary people into it, ie. the regular people who happen to be born in to Muslim or South Asian or whatever cultures. The trouble is, the Iranian and Saudi leadership both base their authority on Islam, and conservatively cling to it, cling to the notion that Islam is Pure and therefore, their leaders are right and pure and just. And instead of it simply causing a bit of cognitive dissonance, it has festered to the point that they now have ISIL. As a 15th Century European theologian remarked as he watched two holy armies attack each other on the field, "well, they can't both be right." So criticising and attacking Islam is necessary to get people to start to decide which Islamic version they want to be part of. If doing this causes some small minority to decide their favourite version is the ISIL one, then so be it. The sooner Islam fragments into multiple versions, the sooner the majority can stop sleepwalking into supporting laws which kill apostates and blasphemers, ie. stop the moderate majority finding themselves siding with the extremists simply because they all want to perpetuate the myth that Islam is one true thing, and only one version can exist, thus obliterating the various minority versions who are often the more liberal sects.

Brilliant post, thanks!

In a sense, you're asking, what is a "self"

So people can try a diet/lifestyle for themselves and see how it goes, being sceptical but still trying it. Some people try LCHF and become fans of it. Some become vegans and become fans of it. The hard part is that it takes decades to figure out if it works for you, and even then you can't be sure. People say, oh I'm vegan and feel amazingly healthy... at the age of 30. Yeah, but how will it work out for you in 30 years' time? Some people run marathons to lose weight, and after their 30th marathon they are still overweight and say, well, obviously I need to run a few more! Personally I tried LCHF and found unexpected good results (emotionally, mental focus, energy levels, etc. and weight). But that's my impression of my experience of what seems to work for me, and YMMV.

Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."

Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.

Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?

Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.

Well many of these regimes talk about free speech as if it was a "Western" thing, but it only happened to arise there.

Free speech is a universal principle, and the reason it is universal is that the individual human being is not a Moslem or an American or Chinese, he or she is a human being. The individual. And that's who has the rights. This is why Mullahs or Bishops shouldn't be able to dictate what you say.

Then, again considering all people across the planet, what things are universally limits on free speech? Well, children, across the world, need to grow up in a safe environment and likewise, adults, all over the world, don't want to be caused to stampede out of a cinema, and so on.

Modernity is universal, a principle discovered in certain countries, but you don't hear anyone claim that Islam can't be taught in Germany because it was invented in Arabia. No, they pretend to universal influence also. So the principles have to work for everyone, and that means, criticising those who try to impose pre-modern standards onto the modern world.

If they can get it down to 3 minutes, everyone takes off their clothes and has sex.

Also, the interpretation step performed by the first two is considered a corruption.

The third is purest and best and absolute, whilst the first two are seen as corrupted.

That's why they can use the same god but still trump all the rest.

So the ideal is, never allow Islam to be corrupted, never, by anything or anyone. Never allow reinterpretation or criticism.

You Americans have plenty to feel embarrassed about. Questioning a dodgy paradigm isn't one of them.

The trouble is, modern civilised life doesn't really come online until every individual has rights.

Any empire can create peace within its borders, and any Imam or Priest can declare, "when the whole world is under the One True God, then there will be peace."

Whether the empire's leadership is currently moving for aggression, or moving for non-aggression, whether they are attacking, or biding their time to gain political influence, these are merely strategic issues, the aim remains the same, that there is One and only one true way and everyone else who resists is damned to hell.

If you're gay, if you're a woman, if you're the wrong race, or hold the wrong beliefs, then off to hell you go. Because you haven't been given equal rights.

For reasons unknown, the West made it to some semblance of modernity.

Currently, there is a concerted and deliberate effort by the leaders in the Moslem world to push to an Islamic revival, and ISIL is just one branch. The point isn't that the extremists are only tiny a minority (thousands v. 1.6 billion), the point is that the extremists are in positions of leadership and are trying to drag the majority of normal people, including all the Moslems, into a world war. It includes emphasising all the violent doctrines at the expense of the peaceful ones.

The Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, written to oppose "Western" notions of human rights, and which says, yes you have human rights, BUT ONLY the ones permitted by Islam", that was written by the leaders of these Muslim countries. It is the Islamic leadership in its various branches which is causing the problems and dragging the 1.6 billion Moslems into it.

By that time the panels may be covered in dust anyway, I think they mentioned.

Helping people become liberal and desiring of human rights, is an issue which has gotten entangled with ethnocentric nationalistic (what people call "far right") views.

Unfortunately this has meant that the multicultural movement has avoided questioning the far right wherever it is found (Europeans do not have a monopoly on being racists). This in turn has given more ammunition to the European far right to promote racism against foreigners. It is quite tragic really.

The only place to resolve this is to simply promote universal human rights for everyone. This is what many modern thinking Muslims are doing for example, they are questioning their own group's racism, sexism, homophobia, and tribalism, as well as European far right tribalism. Human rights are and should be universal. True for all. But it does seem to be happening, and the Myth of the Muslim Tide is, as the title of that book suggests, immigration is not a scary monster.

But it is important to note that European liberal multiculturalism has tended to label immigrants as being made of groups, and this has only made it harder for liberals inside those groups to escape the conservative entrenched opinions inside those groups, and to get out and support liberal values like equality for women.

Sorry if this post sounds a bit garbled, I am trying to address three points at once, to promote liberal values.