russoft

There's no credible research showing artificial sweeteners to be harmful. I've looked for it. Unless you're willing to believe suspect sources that anti-vaxxers also believe. One very recent study suggested artificial sweeteners are harmful to the gut bacteria that aid in digestion and this may lead to metabolic syndrome. The study was done with mice and is only a single study that has not yet been reproduced. If that research leads anywhere, then there may be a case to be made.

Part of wildlife management means culling. Game parks create environments conducive to thriving animal populations (usually as simple as developing the water reservoirs in the area) and those populations explode. A good example is elephants. Why would anyone shoot an elephant? If you pack too many elephants into a small enough area, they eat and destroy vegetation and trees faster than they can grow back. All animals suffer from a lack of food, and massive numbers of animals starve. An alternative is to sell a hunting permit to allow a hunter to come onto the game park and shoot an elephant. How horrible to kill such a majestic animal. Except it's controlling the population and all animals benefit because the burden on the environment is lessened. By the way, elephants are terribly destructive. We had two elephants come onto our land in Mozambique. They raided the local people's villages and destroyed their fields of maize. They all banded together and demanded the local government to solve the problem. The local government brought in a hunter to kill one of the elephants while the other ran off. Because there was no one who had the resources to fence the area off, they got killed. If only some capitalist pig had been around to take advantage of the situation, maybe we'd have elephant herds roaming around instead of NOTHING. I realize I'm talking about elephants rather than lion, but I think the principal is the same. If you can sell a big game hunt for $50,000, that goes a long way towards fencing land, hiring guards, and developing the land to foster wild animals. Since you brought up oceans (I certainly didn't): The problem with the ocean is that no one is allowed to take ownership of it. It's a communal area so the incentive to protect it doesn't exist. Believe me, I worry about the extinction of sharks and other species. We used to watch chinese ships off the Mozambique coast that would fin sharks and dump them back into the water. The government didn't have the resources at that time to protect the ocean, so it was abused by foreigners. The local people hack away at coral reefs to find food. If they saw the tangible benefit of tourism, they'd have an incentive to protect it. But the government makes doing business so incredibly hard, and scares off tourists via corrupt police and border officials, draconian visitor visas, etc. Of course the impoverished, starving locals will continue to destroy the ecosystem. Not enough rich foreigners bringing tourism money into their communities to incentivize conservation.

Zimbabwe is so unbelievably corrupt. The news coverage was about as clear as mud. I bet this hunter's guides didn't bribe the right official, or Robert Mugabe didn't get his feet kissed enough by the American hunter. All joking aside, while I have no particular love for hunting big cats, I see the value of it. Big game hunters have lots of dough to spend and that money goes a long way towards animal conservation. If the business of wild animals are profitable, they will be protected by private interests. This is important, especially in Africa where governments are hopelessly corrupt and do a poor job of conservation. I love animals and want to see them protected. I love Africa and I want to see it thrive. The free market is the best way to do this. I also love shooting things and eating meat. The free market will gives me these things too.

We should survey as many FDR listeners as possible then plot everyone on the political spectrum (there's a feature on said site). I like seeing graphs and data! I'm a geek.... Here are my numbers: Economic Left/Right: 6.0 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.44 Or "right libertarian" (but in contrast to some of you, I'm an authoritarian socialist)

Hi Matt, Sorry, haven't been on the forums in a while. As anyone who is serious about their faith to the level that they're willing to live in a rural part of Africa as missionaries, my parents believe that their faith is the truth. Just as anyone teaches their children what they believe to be true, my parents taught me about God the same way. My parents weren't relativists who believed that all religions were a way to God. If you're going to believe something, you sure as hell better believe it's the truth! If I were a Christian who thought other ideas were equally true, I'd cease to be a Christian since truth is objective. In our house, we would have bible studies and discuss passages. Those discussions were open ended. Even our youth group had discussion sessions and often those discussions would become heated. Discussion and debate about God and the Bible were not shut down, but rather encouraged both at home and in the missionary community at large. When we reached our teen years, my parents did not make attending church mandatory. Obviously they would strongly encourage us to attend, but we never felt obligated. More than anything else, my father would regularly remind myself and my sister that we had to be responsible for our own faith. To develop our own relationship with God. No one can have a genuine faith and a relationship with God unless they pursue their faith privately. That means questioning your faith, doubting God, and wrestling with conflicting ideas that you encounter. My parents ultimately understood that if I didn't learn to develop my faith on my own, I'd certainly lose it. At age 16, my parents let me hang out with my friends, who smoked, got drunk, and did drugs. At age 18, I left home and went to University. My Christian home and family was replaced by my college peers who were having sex, getting drunk, and were generally pretty hostile to Christianity. I think my parents knew these experiences were ahead of me and knew that my faith had to be my own, and not just a lifestyle thrust upon me by a Christian upbringing. I hope that explains it better!

How's that for an inflammatory title? It's finally time to make this post. I hate opening up and sharing. I find it much easier to remain nonverbal. But Stefan's latest videos (and a recent sermon at church ) on the general theme "talk about things that matter, even if it's uncomfortable" has prompted me to finally do this. I am a child of Christian missionaries. My parents were the children of missionaries too. I grew up in Southeast Africa. While many of my fellow MKs (missionary kids) became leftists, I'm convinced that my childhood experiences pushed me towards libertarianism. I grew up far from the city. I'm not sure what was technically legal or illegal, but I enjoyed a life of freedom in rural Africa. Every household owned an arsenal of guns. I made my own gunpowder. Set off home made fireworks. Build my own diving gear. I basically did what I wanted without worrying that I might be in violation of some city ordinance. As a child, we would travel through Zimbabwe often. My father gave me an allowance of Z$100 on one of our early trips through Zimbabwe. By the time I left Africa about 10 years ago, we had to exchange US dollars for Zimbabwe dollar vouchers (not even real banknotes, each worth tens of thousands of Z$) on the side of the road before going through the border. The official government exchange rate was around Z$100 to $1 USD at that time, but it was trading much lower on the "black market". The whole country was devoid of fuel and we had to make sure we topped up our tank right before transiting through the country. The border no longer accepted fees in the official currency and demanded either Rands (South African currency) or USD. Many of my childhood friends were white Zimbabwean farmers who fled the country after being threatened with death. Zimbabwe always stood in stark contrast to its neighbor, South Africa. Despite mismanagement by the ANC (ruling party), South Africa stood as a shining example of civilization. If you could avoid getting carjacked, mugged, or murdered, the country offered so much in comparison to the rest of Africa. In fact, the best medical doctors I've ever met were all South African trained. I grew up in a good family. One might think that a parent's willing to drag their kids into dangerous parts of the world must mean they're more concerned about their work than their family, but it simply wasn't so. Yes, my parent's spanked me. It wasn't traumatizing nor did it create distance in my relationship to my parents. We were very close as a family. To this day my sister, mom, and dad are my best friends (besides my wife of course). My parents didn't send us to boarding school because they wanted to spend time with us as we grew up, so we home schooled instead. They invested time and money in ensuring we had many experiences together. Whether it was world travel or pursuing hobbies, money came second to relationship and learning experiences. Though they are committed Christians, they never made faith mandatory. They made sure I knew that my faith had to be my own. They knew I'd wander off into the big world one day and confront many other appealing ideas and if I didn't own my faith, I'd lose it. I returned to Canada at age 18 to begin University. During my years in university, I went from being politically conservative to libertarian. After undergrad, I tried to join the Navy. After a year of waiting for a position of my choosing to open up, I enrolled in a graduate program studying magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Reflecting back, I'm glad the military didn't work out. I worked towards my MSEE and subsequently got a job with a university where I continue MRI research. Since listening to Stefan's show, I've become a lot less comfortable at my job. I talk to people in the private sector with comparatively terrible health care coverage and feel sick to my stomach knowing that the money they pay in taxes goes towards research grants that pay for my salary and health care coverage. I feel only moderately better knowing that I'm not directly employed by the government and that any day I could be out of a job if the research center lose a research grant. Despite my continued employment at the university, I advocate for small government, flat tax rates, and civil liberties. I hope I can talk myself out of this job. But then I saw my home province in Canada vote in a bunch of socialists, and suddenly I don't feel bad anymore. I realized that people get what they deserve when they vote for bad policy. If people are stupid enough to keep voting for socialism, I'm not going to feel bad taking advantage of the system. I'll advocate against it with all that's in me, but I'm certainly not going to feel guilty. I voted against it. That said, I am waiting for my permanent residency so that I can start my own business. I am convinced of the virtues of entrepreneurship. I'd rather create wealth than consume it. To sum up: I am excited about FDR. Stefan is a force for good in the fight for freedom and truth. I think he's wrong on many issues, but I'm excited to explore those issues more deeply. I'm rethinking my positions on a lot of issues. While I believe in small government, I find anarchism to be more ethically consistent. Many of its ideas are very appealing. On the other hand, I've seen the benefits of good government vs. corrupt government. Additionally. I'm going to read the literature on spanking before kids come into the picture. My parent's were good parents, but that doesn't mean they did everything right. They might have been wrong and as soon as I can stop being so defensive of their parenting choices I can form my own opinion about spanking based on the evidence. I hope to challenge my ideas and in so doing, find the truth. As Aristotle apparently said (but knowing the internet, maybe it was Hitler): "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."