Breaking News:

You Tube has revealed that the Chinese have secretly developed a human clone machine, and now they are churning out an army that is just too cute to shoot.

Intel video analysts have noticed that the Commie Evil Genius has given himself away by not cloning some short fat ugly ones to hide in the middle ranks, as we and all other armies have to do.

During a recent bout of influenza, a professional pharmacist suggested that I should take Echinacea to improve my immune system.

I was rather shocked because I have always assumed that folk medicine, including homeopathy, health foods, etc, is a departure from medical science that should not be endorsed by a health professional. I did some research, both on Google and asking friends, and could find no credible support for the entire health food industry.

After the latest gun tragedy in Connecticut, the gun control issue debate has to get another kick start. The current situation is just too revolting for good people to tolerate any longer.

We have been through this many times on ON so my position is well known. I think it is too late to get adequate control over gun ownership to make much difference in this country, and it would be hopelessly divisive to even try.

If the Israel apologists want to maintain their outrage about unguided Palestinian missiles, then perhaps they should admit that an oppressed people will use any weapons that they can get to attain their freedom. Americans and Jews should appreciate that better than any other people. Americans because they did it to the Indians (and accepted many incoming unguided missiles in the process); and Israelis because the Jews were treated like this for many centuries.

You want them to use more accurate missiles, then give them some.

Are Radio Controlled model airplanes a nerd-worthy hobby?

I have just taken it up, or more correctly, gone back to it after an absence of 40 years. Back in the 1970s I played with 10ft wingspan gliders having a pod fixed to the top of the wing with a small gas motor and just enough fuel to take it up to soaring altitude. This was a lot of fun, but my aircraft gradually grew heavier under the weight of its repairs until it was not much use as a glider. My last memory of it was screaming towards me, low over a cow paddock as I frantically tried to mentally reverse the rudder and aileron controls. Sadly, one wing caught the ground, it cartwheeled, and stampeded the cattle. There were only balsa wood fragments left after that one, and I handed in my wings in order to spend more time with the new baby.

According to the great Christian theologians, like Augustine and Aquinas, the most difficult to understand issue in the whole Christian story (why we needed Christ’s redemption) was dumbed down so that the people of the day, nomadic Israelites, could understand it.

This is an extremely profound thought. Think about it. We have been convicted of the worst crime ever, and sentenced to a terrible eternal punishment, but it is too difficult to explain to us what it was so we must be satisfied with the Looney Tunes version. How could our all powerful, loving God be put in such a position that he had to subject his only son to terrible agony and death? There was apparently no other option. Who (or What) could impose such a requirement on Him? There must be a powerful exogenous force being exerted on Him? Some say no not an external force, this is simply his nature: He is so fundamentally good that this is the only way that the stain of his creation of humanity can be erased.

The cold war with the Soviet Union ended more than one score and three years ago, and since then we have been staggering (largely unsuccessfully) through a number of civil wars and peace keeping missions, none of which directly impacted on the safety of the USA. What will come next? I think we should look not to the Middle East, but to the Western Pacific.

Current policy on the “containment of China” seems to be leading to a new cold or hot war in the Pacific Region. The basic idea is that Chinese economic and military expansion in that region is a threat to the USA that must be stopped.
New bases are being found, and fleets are being deployed to demonstrate that the USA will not stand for China assuming a position as a major power in that hemisphere.

The furor over the torture of terror suspects by USA military and officials has died down, and all the identified perpetrators have escaped punishment, despite the fact that some of the victims were tortured to death. Does this mean that we have crossed the threshold and that these techniques are now routinely acceptable?

I for one am extremely disappointed that our current chief, who is so fond of using the term brought to justice to describe killing, using drones, or special forces, suspects that he cannot arrest, and bystanders, has been unable to bring Americans, who he can arrest because they are serving in his military and civil service, to justice for serious crimes for which there is plenty of evidence. To make things worse he allowed Ali Mussa Daqduq who tortured to death 5 US soldiers to receive justice from an Iraqi court , which freed him

Can the USA make laws that bind non Americans living in other countries?

Julian Assange, an Australian living in London, and founder of Wikileaks, greatly embarrassed and offended the USA by publishing sensitive dioplomatic documents that had been given to him (and other media) by a US serviceman.

Clearly the serviceman broke a US law, making him liable to prosecution. Call him well meaning, whistleblower. naive, or a fool, but he was a sergeant and so should have known better than to breach the trust placed in him by his country.

Have you ever wanted to talk to the bastards who pay people to drop those inane spam comments on our Omninerd web site?

The comments are usually a totally irrelevant and meaningless statement from an anonymous who knows nothing about some subject thread that has been dormant for a long time. They always include a hyper-link to a commercial web site, and the parasites are paid for the hits generated.

Perhaps you don’t see many of these contributions. If that is so it is because many of the regulars on this site are empowered to delete them.