There's a great idea, plant more forests. I think a great place to start would be to subsidize the planting of forests instead of Corn. Instead of forested land being taxed you get a check from the government for every acre of forest. Make the payouts scale in some way relative to the amount of carbon that the land is likely sequestering. Factor in how well it is maintained, conducting regular burns to get rid of excess dead underbrush that is a forest fire risk.

I watched it just last night and I have to disagree, it is a pretty decent movie. Like every movie it has some parts that don't make a lot of sense, but over all I liked it quite a bit.

Ocean Floor Disposal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... always struck me as a good idea, particularly in a subduction zone.

I actually had a bank refund me the dollar amount of a teller's check once. I had mailed it to another party as payment for something and they never bothered to cash/deposit it. My bank eventually sent me a letter saying that it had been 18 months or something and since it hadn't been cashed they were voiding it and refunding the money to me.

No, feeding a child is not part of reproduction. Once the child is born, congratulations, you have reproduced. Rearing the child will involve feeding it, which is best accomplished through breastfeeding but also suitably done through bottle feeding, or any of the other artificial methods historically used. Is a baby bottle now a sexual item that should only be sold at adult novelty stores? At what age do we consider the child old enough that whatever they use to eat is no longer a sexual object 2, 5, 8, 12, how about 18? Hell as a mature adult, rearing further offspring, maintaining my life is obviously part of reproducing right? So can I count all my eating utensils, dinner ware, and cooking implements as sexual objects?

Honestly trying to say that breasts are the only purely sexual organ because they are used to feed children is an enormous stretch. Besides what about the Ovaries, Uterus, and vagina? Exactly what besides sex are those organs for? I suppose the argument could be made that they produce hormones, but the major point of those hormones seems to be sex drive and femininity.

I'm not sure that a narrow waist is actually an indication of a good birthing physiology. I believe it is actually wide hips which people think indicates a lower risk of mortality in child birth. However by constricting the waist artificially it makes whatever hips are present seem wider.

I have a sister in law that is both a huge puritan and who has a medical condition that prevents her from producing nutritionally sufficient milk. The medical condition was not a commonly known fact in our extended family. So, when her six year old son observed my wife breastfeeding our infant daughter and asked some basic questions, all hell broke loose when my wife answered them in an age appropriate manner. Some people you just can't reach...

Oh I'm not trying to deny that I find breasts attractive and an effective turn on. I also find the femine shape(s) in general to be attractive. My wife also has one of the most seductive smiles I've ever seen. And she's got a wicked sense of humor. All of those things can be selective traits of various strengths, but they aren't actually required in the fundamentals of sex. Just because there are foot fetishists out there we don't have laws requiring everyone to wear close toed shoes in public.

And I'll be the first to admit that I find it a little awkward to be around a breast feeding woman in public. Why you may ask, because I feel the need to exercise greater self restraint and refrain from staring like an asshole. But I know that it is my hangup and my problem, not the mother's.

Simple because breasts are commonly associated with sexual attractiveness does not make them sexual organs. Other things that have been commonly associated with sexual attractiveness in relatively recent history:
Narrow waists
Pale complexions
Hair, in all it's infinite varieties
Ankles
Knees
Feet, bare, deliberaly misshapen or both
Necks, some people even deliberately elongate them
Stretched ear lobes

And that is just the female traits I can think of off the top of my head. Simply because something is a selective trait does not make it a sexual body part. Your example of a penis doesn't work because one of it's functions actually is a part of intercourse. Breasts do not serve any such purpose, they can of course be a part of foreplay but so can a back/foot/neck/scalp rub, or really pretty much anything else. You would be amazed at the warmup type effects that can be had from doing the dishes, folding laundry, sweeping the floors, or taking the kids out for a walk. Practically speaking almost anything can be involved or related to sexual activity, but it doesn't make those things sexual objects or activities.

The burger comment was meant to point out the absurdity of people getting all hot and bothered about the eating/feeding habits of a child and mother. Hundreds of millions, possibly billions, of people don't find the consumption of fast food burgers disgusting and banning, or discouraging others from the eating of such food in public obviously is ridiculous.

"Except that they play a fundamental role in sexual reproduction."

Care to elaborate on that? I've fathered 2 children so far through sexual reproduction. And at no point do I remember breasts playing a fundamental role in that process. If you are refering to how they can be used as a selective trait then you could just as easily argue that my steady job, calm demeanor, personal hygene habits, and social skills are all fundamental in sexual reproduction.

That is an intersting thought but I wouldn't bet on it holding true. Some dimorphic attributes could be attributed to social standing among the cultural group. For example being of lower standing could result in receiving less calories, leading to the disfavored gender selecting for being able to survive with less calories, being of smaller stature and such.

Yes, cultures can and do draw their own arbitrary lines all over the place, for example some muslim cultures consider a woman's hair to be sexual, which is why they require it to be covered in public. We aren't even talking full on hijab here, just requiring that the hair be covered by a wrap or scarf. Try floating that in a Western culture, where even though hair is acknowledged as being an important trait so far as attraction is concerned, the idea of having to cover it up or not flaunt it is viewed as ridiculous.

That is factually incorrect. Both men and women have breasts. In fact there are hormone therapies that have been used to allow a father to breast feed his child, without actually altering his sex, when the mother was not able or present to do so. The size and shape of breasts is a good example of sexual dimorphism but both sexes have them.

Breasts are most definitely not intrinsically sexual! They have been sexualized in much of our modern cultures but they are not intrinsically so.

One of the things that always amazes me about breastfeeding is how much more uptight our modern western culture is about it than our Victorian Era ancestors were. But today it's perfectly normal to see advertising that is overtly sexual, and almost pornographic in nature, plastered everywhere selling almost anything. Heaven forbid that a Mother feeds her child the highest quality food possible in a natural way, where someone else might see. How about we campaign for people eating disgusting things like fast food burgers and fries go do that in private somewhere?

The first thing that comes to mind with MySQL was the lack of automated account management. Yes, you can do it manually but that is inherently less secure than having an automated process that can be counted on to do things the same way every time.

The last time I had to evaluate a MySQL database was around a year ago and there was a whole lot of "MySQL doesn't natively support that" coming from the MySQL expert. It is possible that the expert didn't know what he was talking about but each of the features that I tried googling for came back with sales pitches for 3rd party software packages to get that functionality. And there is nothing wrong with that, if whoever is in charge is willing to pay for those products. The problem I kept running into though was the attitude they wanted a complete replacement for Oracle or MS SQL at zero financial cost, instead of just significantly less.

That approach can work but as soon as you have any kind of compromise you've essentially handed out the keys to the kingdom. Defense in depth while a pain in the ass is effective in limiting the negative outcomes from security lapses. For instance would you be happy with a company that you did business with storing all your payment information in clear text because it was on a "secure" server? Defense in Depth says that regardless of how many security measures are in place between that data and the rest of the world critical information like that should be encrypted.

I always wonder how much of that income from tax enforcement though is actual taxes that were owed and crazy penalties. My Mother in law made some foolish tax mistakes when she got her divorce settlement, most of it was 401k money. It's one of those cases where she made an honest mistake and the penalties are pretty punitive. I'm all for collecting owed taxes and even assessing punitive fines when necessary but as it stands now intent doesn't seem to matter at all.