According to ancient legend the Gordian Knot was a incredibly intricate "construct" which no mortal could unravel. Alexander the Great simply drew his sword and hacked the sucker into fuzz. The fable has become a metaphor for resolving intractable problems with a bold stroke. I don't advocate the-sword-of-war which never resolves long term problems. But if I were "God" I'd reduce the religious shrines/centers of Rome, Mecca, and Jerusalem...and all the many religions holy writings and symbols....into molten pools of radioactive glass.

Alan, a knowledge of history is important...but to slavishly follow two century old practices [human slavery, government sanctioned prayer, etc.] simply because they have a "historic foundation" is foolishness. .

OK! I'm back! The natural world got along JUST FINE without those LONG non-available carbon stores...and Mama Nature will have to make some adjustments when such ENORMOUS amounts of highly concentrated carbon is released into the atmostphere. What sort of adjustments? Some trend to GCC...? The fast-disappearing vegetative cover of the world won't absorb 1% of the excess. Like the excess water in the Midwest some mischeif is going to take place. GCC....? The evidence seems mightly persuasive. Bye y'all...and to the resolute DENIERS...y'all have a good day.

H.m.m.... ! I was cut off. Do we have a word limit? As I said earlier....somethings gotta give. Let's ignore for the moment what may be indesputably observable. Let's ignore ALSO the scienticfic...those careful studies which point to either the existence or non-existence of GCC [global climate change]. One responder retorts that carbon-dixide is essential for plant growth. Granted, but so is water, and yet an excess of water in the Missouri-Mississipi drainage regularly destroys millions o acres of food crops. Some 300 millions years ago [OK! Maybe just 6000 years ago] Old Mama Nature sequestered PRODIGIOUS stores of carbon in the form of petroleum, gas, and coal [in the Antelope Mine of Wyoming over 30 feet thick]. Back soon...

SAD. Just five repsonses...of which two are unrelated subjects and one other is a knee-jerk. I agree that the U.S. and Euirope environmental efforts are spitting in the wind when China and India are building dirty coal-plants at such a prodigious rate. Wind turbines are a great idea to supplement the existing power sources. But the wind is capricious, so tthey require expensive backup stystems...mainly instant-start or idle-speed-spin gas turbines. Solar takes up a lot of landspace, it's not without subtstantial costs, and the suckers don't work when the don't shine! We've built-out our hydroelectric potential...and the existing reservoirs are silting-up and losing storage capacity at a fearsome rate. But somethings gotta give.

I'm a bleeding-heart liberal on many issues...but I've advocated "flogging"....meaning some form of corporal punishment....most of my llfe. Let the offender make the decision...prison time or cane-ing. The sheeple...the masses...have gone for SO LONG without thinking...and they're SHOCKED at such proposals. But ten days in a socially-acceptable lockup is profanely CRUEL albeit not unusual punishment. Send the freshly-flogged offender back into society where he can work to support himself and his family. When an offender is incarcerated tthe innocent family is brutally punished during his/her absence...and law-abiding taxpayers must endure the expense of incarceration. . .

I personally find homosexual conduct repugnant, but I'm confident that gays....else they would embrace the practice...find heterosexual conduct equally repugnant. So let's compromise. I'll not "couple" in public with my wife or girlfriend...and gays should avoid their more egregious "couplings" in public. Let's be sensitive to one anothers sensitivities. Why offend unnecessarilly...or gratutiously? Homosexuality has apparently existed since mankind evolved. It's a fact of life...so let's expend our energies on the non-gay moral issues which confront mankind... including joblessness, social safety-net's,, the well-proven statistical tenuousness of hetreosexual marriages, drug abuse [including alcohol and tobacco], child neglecty,...

After I read DHE's commentary [12:45] I wrote a good friend........... Hi, Cookie. Here's a delightful readers response to a screed on TownHall. He/she's a contemprary who's intelligent, philosophical, thoughtful, humanistic, tolerant, freely-admiting-to-self-fault, the polar opposite of much too common Town-Hall-Mean-Mouth....the sort of person [like my girl Cookiel!] who I'd like to sit on the front porch with, and share a cup of coffee each day. I was tickled by his/her nostaligia for the Norman Rockwell America....but also by his/her acceptance of difficult but inevitable social changes [ "because I will get used to it. Or, I won't and someday I'll die]. Such a pleasure~! Jim

Patty at 11:30A proclaims she doesn't want to oppress or subjugate anyone, but only wish to suppress deadly behaviors. H.m.m...but isn't homosexual behavior ALREADY being freely and legally practiced...and might the risk-taking be less common in a committed longterm SSM? I'm repulsed by open displays of homosexual conduct but SSM doesn't coerce me. BTY my long-term and once highly-rewarding hetrosexual marriage failed...and indeed half of such marriages collapse.

You say American are sick of the royal wedding? According to Bloomberg 22.8 million American's got up at 3 A.J. to watch the spectacle. Sour grapes, Ann?