Ernie Fitzpatrick asked:

Will the Ohio debate be the last one, the last stand for someone (can you say Hillary?). Obviously things have changed since last Thursday’s debate in Austin, Texas. Hillary has picked up on Bubba’s approach saying, “Shame on you, Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That is what I expect from you.” Shame on you!

And then, according to the Drudge Report, “With a week to go until the Texas and Ohio primaries, stressed Clinton staffers circulated a photo over the weekend of a “dressed” Barack Obama. The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat frontrunner fitted as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya. The senator was on a five-country tour of Africa.

He’s a MUSLIM!

Well that’s the picture the Clinton camp is wanting to subconsciously get across to you. However the TRUTH is that Obama is not anything like the urban legends going around that’s he’s secretly a Muslim and plans to overthrow the United States. Obama is a Christian, a person who follows Jesus Christ (and has for twenty years), and he did not put his hand on the Koran when sworn into his office of U.S. Senator.

Dueling chain e-mails claim (as Newsweek has reported) he’s a radical Muslim or a ‘racist’ Christian. Both can’t be right. We find both are false. If these two nasty e-mail messages are any indication, the 2008 presidential campaign is becoming a very dirty one. One claims that Obama is ‘certainly a racist’ by virtue of belonging to Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, which it says ‘will accept only black parishioners’ and espouses a commitment to Africa. Actually, a white theology professor says he’s been ‘welcomed enthusiastically’ at the church, as have other non-blacks. Another e-mail claims that Obama ‘is a Muslim,’ attended a ‘Wahabi’ school in Indonesia, took his Senate oath on the Koran, refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and is part of an Islamic plot to take over the U.S. Each of these statements is false. These false appeals to bigotry and fear remind us of the infamous whispering campaign of eight years ago, when anonymous.

Let’s not talk about Ralph Nader running for President or any of the trivial stuff. Let’s go for the throat!

Tuesday’s Ohio debate should be a lot more acrimonious than last Thursday’s “love-fest”. After all, it’s the last time (most probably) for a one-on-one debate.

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Ella Wilson asked:

No cricket match is complete without a good discussion on it. Well, we do not have to wait for any tournament to begin, as we are in a habit to talk about it all the time throughout the year. Cricket discussion actually attracts lots of attention of its fans who have ample of things to discuss amongst themselves. Fans are always ready to discuss anything on cricket and can go on and on and still, one finds out that they have not said it all; many things are yet to be discussed upon.

Cricket discussion begins well before a tournament begins at one’s house, work, college, school and even while one is traveling, whether in a bus, local train and even when one is driving on the road. In fact this starts right from the time any tournament is announced. Today most of the things are done online and cricket discussion is no exception to this. There are several dedicated cricket portals and websites and fans can participate in cricket discussions through the forum. And its quite easy to participate in such discussions. To be a part of it, one just has to sign up and be registered to the site and one can take part in all the discussions that are taking place there. cricket discussion is most interesting to indulge in when a live match is undergoing. As the time for match comes approaching, all one has to do is login in the computer and start discussing all about the game with like minded cricket fans worldwide. There are many things that one can discuss, such as merits and demerits of composed teams, the strengths and weakness of a player and teams.

Cricket discussion also gives a chance to discuss the strategies that a team must have adopted against one particular player or team as a whole entity. It is very interesting to discuss cricket especially when the major tournaments like ICC World Cup, The Ashes, India Pakistan Series, India Australia Series and Twenty 20 world cup takes place. Cricket lovers sometimes, get to have a taste of controversies, and as a result it gives rise to lots of discussion and debate on the topic. The ball tampering issue, murder of Bob Woolmer, world cup, retirement of Inzamam, retirement of Brain Lara and such topics has been subject to endless cricket discussions among fans. If there is nothing happening, then you can trust fans to come up with topics that in some way or the other affect the game. In fact, if there is nothing left to be discussed about the game, then one can always fall on the lives of cricketers.

Times have changed since the introduction of cricket as a commercial game, these days fans are much knowledgeable as compared to the older times. In fact, cricket discussion is all about interesting facts and if one gets a bigger platform like television to discuss about things, one can come to know the extent of popularity of the game.

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Lee Siemon asked:

One of the things I miss from the past is my family’s debates over current affairs and such. I come from a family of five boys and a couple of intellectual parents (I don’t think that rubbed off).

I remember that we used to sit in my parent’s living room or out on their spacious lawn on a Sunday afternoon and someone would ask an opinion on something — the debate was on. Often there were seven or more different opinions and no consensus when the debate ended. It was a stimulating time.

I had a high school teacher, Mr. Smithers, who really knew how to start the debate with fire. He would come into the classroom and make an inflammatory statement about a current event, and the reaction from the class was instantaneous. I discovered that most of the time he didn’t necessarily believe the stance he took, but he did know what position would inflame his students. This was a high school English class not a debate class, and most of the students would not have had the least bit of interest in debate per se, but they were unknowingly dragged into one on a weekly basis.

The one I remember best was the Cuban Missile Crisis. The morning after President Kennedy announced his intentions on television, Mr. Smithers walked into the room and said something to the effect “What is Kennedy thinking, he has no business telling the Russians what they are allowed to do”. Almost every hand in the class when up and many had already started raising their voice. He would then guide the conversation, all the while pretending to be upset at the president.

I believe that debating is a healthy way to open our minds up to different perspectives on a subject. Sometimes we change the view point of others, sometimes they change the way we see the issue, and often we all just come away with an understanding of how everyone sees an issue. We have to approach any debate, be it an organized one or just a discussion between two people, with the mindset to hear and understand the opposite view point.

If you get fired up about things that are going on around you, put it up for debate and see how many others agree or disagree with you. There are many forums on the Internet where you can spawn lively debates on just about any subject. One such is www.as-i-see-it.com I hope you get into the fun of debating.

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Himanshu Juneja asked:

A Group Discussion is a collective amalgamation of available information. Each individual in the group is believed d to have a say in the process of communication. A Group discussion is based upon three P’s-Purpose, Planning and Participation. It involves two other components- Leadership and Casualness.

Advantages of Group Discussion

1) The participants have been analyzed during Group Discussions.

2) The participants have been evaluated on key attributes such as communication skills, inter-personal skills, leadership skills, ability to think and express rational thoughts and opinions

3) It is said that two heads are better than one head. Thus, Group discussions are assumed to be better than individual discussion.

Disadvantages of Group Discussion

1) It is based more on elimination rather than selection.

2) Complete and just evaluation of candidates is not possible in short duration of time.

3) It seems more like a fish market at times.

Do’s of Group Discussion

1) The number of participants should be at least two.

2) Criticism of ideas does not take place in a group discussion.

3) Quality of ideas is always significant and stressed upon in a group discussion.

4) More the number of members in a group discussion, more is the information available.

5) The hidden talent and skills of the employees of the organization comes into limelight.

6) At times some new, creative ideas and solutions to the issues are brought up. Group Discussion encourages creative thinking.

Don’ts of Group Discussion

1) It is expensive in terms of money, time, energy and manpower lost.

2) Hasty decisions are hampered.

3) Few expressive, young and assertive members dominate the discussion.

4) At times, the discussions are irrelevant. The focus of the discussion is not clear.

5) Accountability can not be fixed.

6) It should not be time consuming.

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Annie Condron asked:

Despite the Supreme Court ruling banning creationism and intelligent design in science classrooms, evolution is still on trial in Texas and Louisiana.

I feel like it’s the Scopes monkey trial all over again. [Or at least the fictional account I read in Inherit the Wind.]

Both Texas and Louisiana are voting on changing the curriculum to allow for “weaknesses” in the theory of evolution to be introduced to students.

Many science teachers see this as a backdoor approach to integrating creationism or intelligent design (basically creationism 2.0) into science curriculum and potentially, science text books.

Since Texas makes up such a large percentage of the textbook market, publishers will likely tailor their national materials to suit their needs.

“These weaknesses that they bring forward are decades old, and they have been refuted many, many times over,” Kevin Fisher, a past president of the Science Teachers Association of Texas, said after testifying. “It’s an attempt to bring false weaknesses into the classroom in an attempt to get students to reject evolution.” NYT article

Personally, I have to vote with the Supreme Court and science teachers on this one.

Science education is about teaching children to question, discover truths about the world and learn to prove those truths. It seems a disservice to students to introduce materials that have been overwhelmingly disproved by the scientific community.

Don’t get me wrong, America guarantees people the right to believe whatever they want to believe. People should be allowed to teach their children whatever they’d like. They are welcome to send their children to private schools that provide a curriculum that introduces religion into the classroom.

But public school just is not the place.

As a Catholic school alumna, I fully support finding the balance between religious beliefs and science education. Unlike many who think science kills faith, I think that evolution is a much more impressive interpretation of the Biblical “7 days” creation.

Regardless, this dated debate is taking valuable time and consideration from the major problems facing science education. Texas CFI exec. Dir. Clare Wullner represented it best. She was pictured in the New York Times wearing 19th century clothes.

The sign on her seat reads: “Evolution was a controversy . . . 150 years ago. It’s not anymore. Teach 21st Century Science.” Read more about the debate

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David Ogden asked:

Discussion forums offer several benefits to Internet marketers if they use them correctly. However, many people spend time in discussion forums and are not really benefiting from them as much as they could. In this article we will talk about a few ways you can use discussion forums to benefit your Internet business more than you may currently be doing.

1. One key thing you can do is join only a couple of discussion forums at first. If you are currently not doing much marketing in discussion forums there are a couple reasons why you don’t wan to join too many forums all of once.

One reason for this is you want to get a feel for how the forum works. You can’t do that if you are constantly jumping from one forum to the next.

Another reason is discussion forums offer an actual way for you to market your business once you become a known entity within them. The best way to do this is to get involved in the discussions as quickly as possible and start to build up your reputation within the forum.

2. When you are participating in the forums never used them to promote your business or products in the posts themselves. If you will just participate by providing quality useful information people will appreciate that and you will begin to become known as a person who is well liked and trusted.

3. Take the time to set up a very simple signature file that includes who you are, and what you have to offer. Of course you want to include a hyperlinked keyword phrase that leads to your website, blog or landing page.

By keeping this simple you will have better results, because you are not confusing the reader with a lot of choices. If you practice list building this is an excellent place for you to provide a link to a free product or report so you can capture contact information from your reader.

4. There will be times when you really don not feel like participating in the discussion and that’s okay. Discussion forums are an excellent place to get free information that can help you build your business too.

There is no charge to join a discussion forum and you may just want to spend some time reading the various posts that there are. This is an excellent way to come up with ideas on future content for your own website or blog.

Many of the top article marketers for example use discussion forums as content ideas for their next article. This should give you several ideas on how to use discussion forums better than you may currently be using them.

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