Campaign Finance Reform?

Financing political campaigns is still a problem, even after the passage of the McCain-Finegold reform act. But there is a relatively simple way that campaign finance can be made much fairer.

First, let people and organizations contribute as much as they want to the campaign. Second, if the amount is $1000 or less, they can contribute the full amount to any candidate they want. But if the amount is more than $1000, the donor must specify one candidate to get 60% of the money and the one of the other candidates, if more than one, to get 40%. This arrangement will ensure that each major candidate will probably have enough money to compete effectively, while still allowing people to back their favorite.

Another effect would be the elimination of most uncontested or sham races. With a substantial amount of money available for compaigning, you should always be able to find a suitable copposition candidate.

http://www.thelittlegreenie.com

On Useful Supplements . . .

Practically every supplement that some people say is helpful in certain disorders has other people who say “Be careful. Not scientifically proven.”

You may run into this is, for example, if you want to use
glucosamine to treat arthritis. A number of manufacturers make it, lots of people buy it and find it helpful, but many doctors say it is worthless. But few if any doctors say it is harmful.

What to do? What you can do in a situation like this is perform a simple scientific experiment. The experiment is very straightforward. You simply start taking the stuff, in a small quantity at first, to make sure it agrees with you, and then in the amount recommended by those who say it works, and pay attention to what happens. Does it relieve the condition? In my case glucosamine saved me an operation on my knees. If it does not relieve your condition after three to six months (most supplements work slowly), you can conclude either that it does not work for you, or that perhaps you should try a different brand or method of taking it. If it does work for you, you cannot be sure that it is the cause of your relief but you can say that it might be. You can then continue to take it as long as continue to get relief and no bad symptoms occur.

If you want to complete the scientific experiment aspect, you can stop taking it for awhile, see what happened, then start taking it again. But there are many variables: food, liquids, life styles, etc. The most you can say is that you have run a scientific experiment with a sample size of one, and can report positive results. The next person may get better or worse results but the odds favor better.

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Intelligent Design vs Evolution

What is an example of intelligent design? How about an airplane or an automobile? They are certainly too complex to have come into existence by accident. The automobile was invented or created in the 1890s, and after that it slowly evolved to the car of today. People saw the original car and little by little began to modify it. They added doors, headlights, bigger engines, power steering, radio, heating, and air-conditioning. These changes didn’t happen overnight. It’s taken about 100 years to from Henry Ford’s first car to the modern car. And of course the same process was at work in many other areas such as airplanes, radio, television, medicine, etc.

In all these areas evolution has been at work, not through natural forces but through the actions of man making changes that led to steady advances.

Of course machines are not alive, as animals are. And these machines, while complex are not as complex as the human body. For a really complex machine or structure you have to look at things like the US power grid, the worldwide internet, telephone systems, and stock markets. These systems were not created by anybody designing them. The basic parts were designed by men but the overall systems were not designed to end up as they are today. They were simply allowed to grow and get more and more complicated. Today’s supercomputers, for example, are so complex that no one person could actually design one. They have been created by allowing existing designs to keep expanding and changing, and allowing complexity to increase.

These systems are not alive in any sense but they were all created and evolved in a relatively short time--about 100 years or less. Considering the speed with which these complex systems has developed, why has it taken life so long to develop to it’s present stage? If we allow modern technology to develop and evolve for the next million years, what are we like to end up with? Artificial life? That’s what the Intelligent Design group seems to be implying. If a million years is not enough, how about a billion? The earth has been around for about 4.5 billion years, and it took a big chunk of that time for life to begin and evolve, so allowing technology a few million years to see what it can do is not out of line.

http://www.thelittlegreenie.com