Your right about them being tough enough to withstand sharp objects infact as far as i know there is not any more effective ways to kill them without harming the wildlife and other things in the process. It also does not involve smacking the same toad over and over. There are so many of these things at times that finding the same one would be impossible.

I rember a politician from NSW got in trouble from animal rights groups over this same subject. Basically the cane toads are slowly adapting to colder and colder weather and moving down from queensland into NSW. This particualar polly got up at a press conference and said "Kids get out there with your gold clubs and cricket bats and knock those cane toads back where they belong"

Really as i have already said i think that there are alot more constructive things that these animal rights people could be doing such as doing something about all the humans dying in africa and all over the world as a result of starvation and Blood Feuds.

BTW my religion does actually say that we have to kill people who have sex with animals that verse is actually taken from the old testement. I just thought it was quite a humorous verse.

@ enderx

my browser does not want to open that page but if what you say is true then i take back most of what i have said.

but i have to say that lasher said that it is called toad golf for obvious reasons. i immediately conjured a picture of a bunch of bullies heading for the golf course with a few crates of beer and laughing as they drive the long shot and cheering after very good putting. so i appologise to lasher for what i have said. but he should express himself more clearly. the first rule of writting is to make sure that the person reading understands exactly what you want him to understand.

the only thing which i do not take back is the one about the slavery thing. of course this no longer applies to lasher but i am now merely answering you.

in the eyes of slave trader a slave was worth as little as a frog.

for example. the brittish later outlawed slavery. so when a slave ship captain had noticed a british frigate or other patrol ship he would often dump the slaves overboard. they were weighted too so that the evidence can sink faster. that is part of what i meant about compassion.

the other thing(for me personally the main thing) is hopelessness. i have seen many horses pulling carts. and when you look into the horse's eyes you can often see the fear and the misery. i sometimes think that these poor animals are already dead and that they are only waiting to be relieved of breathing. i always feel so sorry for them. i imagine that a slave could not have felt any better.

as for PETA members having sex with animals i did not know that. i guess shall no longer support them. unfortuanately i have already signed the petition. and by the way. no real animal lover would say that having sex with animals is right.

@ lasher

i am not an animal rights activist as such except for the fact that i am an environmentalist. mother nature has a way of killing off entire species so that the process of life itself can be perpetuated.( for example the end of the dinosaurs but even bigger than that the great Oxygen catastrophe. look it up.). so if mother nature see it worthwhile then that is it.

but you are right about us and the need to do something about people dying of starvation. and believe me i wish that i could. especially since i actually am a child of africa.

in fact it's the environmentalists that are the greatest block towards ending famine in Africa (and elsewhere) with the irrate insistence that nothing is done to improve agriculture and living conditions on the continent.
They're the one's that oppose the building of powerplants, hospitals, roads, the eradication of pests and diseases like malaria, the introduction of crop strains that can yield good results in harsh conditions with limited or no pesticides and fertiliser, etc. etc.

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/int..._driessen.html read and shiver...
On the claim that they want to preserve peoples' "indigenous lifestyle":

@ jwentig

i cannot speak for other environmentalists. i can only speak for myself.

i am not against building hospitals, roads or anything which counts as development. but i do have a problem with the needless destruction and of earth and its ecosystems or its lifeforms especially if it goes hand in hand with an obstinate refusal to except responsibility for it.

it may surprise you to know that one reason that i want the earth to live is that the human race is going to die with the planet if the planet dies. in addition to that i am actually more for nuclear power than for coal powered stations. and you dont have to tell me that we dont, at this moment, have the technology to turn everything to solar energy or wind energy or wave energy or something like that. but if we would have had it then i would have had a problem with nuclear power.

also i am all for developing africa but here you
have to consider choice.

both the san of south africa and the massai are being driven from their grounds under the ostensibility of "modern development". i have seen with my own eyes a massai warrior who have walked from his home in central africa to the parliament of south africa almost 5000 km away in an effort to make the rest of the world see the plight of his people.

just as we cannot say to the malian mother who wants a steady supply of grains for her babies that africa is to remain free of GM food crops so too we cannot tell the massai or the san that they have no choice but to accept it.

in fact if it was up to me and even remotely possible i would upgrade the entire world to the economic status of USA, europe or australia or one of those countries. in fact if i had to make a black or white kind of choice of preserving massai and san life styles while all of the third world stays as it is or upgrade all of the third world and destroy the massai and san life styles i would choose to upgrade.

do not think that all environmentalists are fools. many of us had been educated in economics and understand the problems. we just insist that more of an effort should be made to solve them. and even the fools themselves are just being mistaken for fools because they are just a bit to passionate.

Great quote...iam with quintoncoert.

Would you consider yourself a conservationist or a preservationist? I ask because you step up to defend the preservationists, but by your own statements you sound more like a conservationist.


The major problem with nuclear power is that many people seem to automatically assume that a nuclear plant is by definition a Chernobyl, a China Syndrome waiting to happen. But even in Chernobyl, the count isn't that great. Deaths directly attributed to the disaster are 47 workers who were present at the scene, and nine children who had thyroid cancer. Thing is, radiation isn't the only thing that can cause thyroid cancer; lack of iodine seems to be a factor as well, and some of what I've seen indicates that the Chernobyl region was dealing with that also. (The accident is cited for "estimated that there may be 4,000 extra deaths due to cancer among the approximately 6.6 million most highly exposed." Again, though, the radiation isn't the only possible cause for such cancers.) We know nuclear power works, placing it ahead of such things as Solar, Wind, Tidal, etc..., and as noted it's nowhere near as bad hydrocarbon wise as coal, oil, and natural gas supposedly are.

Another problem some people seem to have is the 'the waste products from the reactor are going to be radioactive for millions of years! Yer all gunna die from cancer!' logic. While its true that many of the waste products have multi-century or better halflives, that's actually a good thing. Think about it: Which one's putting out more radiation per minute? A 1lb sample of something with a halflife measured in centuries or millenia, or a 1lb sample of something with a halflife measured in weeks or months? My understanding of what I've read is that the really nasty stuff never leaves the reactor.


Are we allowed to include the choices of the individuals who have already embraced what we fondly call 'civilisation', or only those who haven't?


It's not the fools I'm worried about, it's the fanatics like David Foreman.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Foreman

One of the things I've seen attributed to him elsewhere that's not mentioned on the wikipedia site is an open acceptance of and pride in those individuals who 'spike' trees to prevent lumber workers from cutting them down. The process involves forcing a metal rod deep inside the tree; it's not going to be visible from outside (otherwise those trees would be ignored, which isn't the goal). Cutting the trees down is only useful if the wood can be processed later, what do you think's going to happen to someone running a saw on a spiked tree when the blade meets the metal rod?

Also, a question for Lasher, since he's in Oz. This is drawn from something I saw a few months ago. Lash, how many types of 'hopping mice' or 'jumping mice' (can't recall exactly which) are there in Australia, how many of them are on the endangered species list, and what're the differences between them?

@ enderx

- conservationist and preservationist

i have no idea what the difference is. i did not even know that we could be divided up like that.

let me see if i deduce correctly. preservationists wants to maintain the old way of doing things because they believe that progress harms the earth. conservationists just wants people to stop harming the earth if there is no need to.

if that is so then it closely relate to the terms light green and dark green. i think that in that regard i would be light green.

i do not see humans as evil or above or seperate from nature or anything like that. remember that in another thread i actually defended the humans from those who said that they are evil and nothing else. i said that mostly humans would be good except if they are driven to evil by the absence of choice. of course you get the exceptions.

in my opinion the humans are just a bit primitive but things have been improving for several decades now. all they need is time. but i suppose that that is another topic.

as to why i defend them. i honestly see little difference between light green and dark green. but i do have a problem with the fool who says: "no GM crops in africa" or "no nuclear power in africa". they have absolutely no idea what the scale of the problems are.

so i suppose what i am or am not depends on where you draw the line. i can tell you that i most certainly dont know where the line should be drawn. i just know that i know myself and that i know what is right and what is wrong both for humans and for nature.

- nuclear power.

i know that nuclear power is the cleanest fuel that we have at this moment. there are only two alternatives to nuclear power at present. coal powered stations or a shortage of energy since we do not have enough and cheaply enough renewable energy. coal powered stations causes green house gasses which is at the moment a bigger problem than nuclear waste. it is also a more immediate problem.

nuclear waste is going to take a considerable amount of time to become a problem. by then we might very well have solar panels in space with power being beamed down to earth. in another thread we actually discussed (or argued about) it. the americans have already started to look at that possibility.

- development of africa and the choice of individuals

i am talking about the fact that if the massai wants to retain their traditional lifestyles then we of civilization have no right to force them to relinquish it. of course it could be argued that you of the first world should have some say in that because you do most of the charity work in africa. but i see that as humanity. in fact that is one of many reason why i refuse to believe that the human race is all evil.

- rods in trees.

where does he put these rods? in a plantation which humans planted for the sole aim of foresty or in trees in the amazon.

if he puts it in trees in the amazon then i am not going to say anything against him. like i said before. i understand that point.

but if he puts it a tree which the humans have cultivated for the sake of foresty then he is fool. those plantations actually help protect nature since now humans dont have to chop down a rain forest in order to print a library of books.