michaelhobson

Nice! Back by popular demand I guess. They used non-animal glue in their manmade shoes until some time around 2005 I think. It's nice to hear they are bringing it back!

New Balance makes a lot of vegan shoes and they are pretty much tough as nails. I'm wearing some New Balance 479 trail runners right now. http://images.nittanyweb.com/scs/images/products/16/large/4939.jpg

If I didn't have small children, and being divorced I don't even have control of where they live, I would split my time between Bar Harbor, Maine in the summer and Key West, Florida in the winter. For now I'm stuck in Pennsylvania, where it's always too cold in the winter, too hot and too humid in the summer and rains just about every day.

It's been a couple of months since I've pimped the Pittsburgh Vegan Meetup over here ate VB&F. Since my last update in April, we've added 23 new members, up to 247 now and held 7 more meetups for a total of 47 since we formed in November 2006. So, why haven't you started a vegan meetup in your city already? Our next meetup is at Dozen Bake Shop. This is their second Vegan Dessert Night which was in part inspired by our group. http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/4/2/e/8/global_4397128.jpeg This from James, the owner of Dozen Bake Shop.

I don't know about you, but murder and rape are pretty high on my list of things to avoid.

Pittsburgh! Okay, maybe that's longer than a long day's trip. http://theveganpeople.com/images/smilies/icon_e_confused.gif Damn I'm jealous of this trip. I hear freedom calling me and am missing my rainbow brothers who are having one hell of a party in Wyoming about now.

So do millions of ENGLISH people, and a few select canadians, not to mention pretty much every european I have ever met. Not really a key value for american culture then, eh? Yes, I do value equality, as do many people around the world. I would argue though that the majority of americans don't. They value equality for white people, want to send blacks back to africa, mexicans back across the border and finish off the asians "like we should have done in WWII". So again I don't see this as an american value, most are stuck in their tiny monocultures and don't dare venture out often. No, I don't own a suit or more than one pair of pants for that matter. A huge chunk of americans do every day though, so being casual isn't really an american value either. In fact you are purposely excluded from the most lucrative parts of american society if you choose not to wear their uniform. At least we agree on something comrade.

Whaaa???? I haven't had it in a long time, but I loved Sun Chlorella mixed in orange juice, I would put in so much chlorella that I'd almost have to chew it. Yum. Oh, Kyo-Green was awesome too, did the same thing with that.

I can understand that happening. I have had a different experiences though. I felt much more at home after 10 days in England than I have ever felt in the U.S. I have also in the past spent years surrounded by people from India, while not all great, I do enjoy their culture quite a bit and would consider spending some years in India if I had the opportunity. Mostly though it's not a complete disdain for the U.S., there are numerous cultures here, coastal Maine for instance is a culture I really feel at home in, other than the obvious seafood-centric diet. It's more of a feeling of being a world citizen, which I have found in fellow travelers too, some of them even holding dual citizenships and multiple passports. This sense of belonging to s single culture or nation is foreign to me. I'm an earthling and that's as far as my allegience goes.

No, it absolutely cannot cause candida growth. Nutritional yeast is 100% dead on arrival.

I have so little in common with 99.9% of americans that I can't really consider american culture as something to celebrate. American culture to me is based around four things, jesus, sex, intoxication and meat eating. I just don't get it. I'd move, but most countries don't want american immigrants and being divorced, my kids wouldn't be able to come with me, so I'm stuck here. Okay, now this I could almost celebrate. When I was a teenager I built bombs in my garage and set them off in my yard. Fortunately we had 7 acres and almost no neighbors.

Share your personal perspective on guns in this new thread viewtopic.php?f=19&t=13879 Feel free to carry on the gun debates in this old thread, the new thread is more about a personal sharing and how your thoughts on guns were formed.

The gun thread has had some interesting debate, awesome points raised and links to some good statistics. With all those many pages of debate behind us, I thought it wise to start an entirely new thread for this discussion. I want to know what formed your perspective on guns. What are your experiences with them, either positive or negative and what role do they play in your life, if any. I'm from "the south" in the U.S. and all of my family were hunters, my dad, both grandfathers, all of my uncles and cousins on both sides of the family. I got my first gun as a present from my dad when I was six. By age 12,(even though my dad and I stopped hunting by the time I was 10) I had four shotguns, two rifles and a handgun. I kept them all in my room and had ample ammunition for all. I also had airguns, a blowgun, bow and arrows with razor tips, throwing hatchet, knives and stars, hunting knives and a sword. I was one seriously well armed kid! I was also an emotionally unstable kid and often suicidal, fortunately I'm still here. It has been over 20 years ago, but I still think about those days sometimes. I went so far as to load a gun, cock it and put it to my head, squeezing the trigger to see how far I could go without killing myself. I was a 9th grade dropout at the time. I remember the police coming to my house one day to escort me to school. It's good my brother didn't let them in the house, I was in my room with a loaded weapon ready to shoot them. Those were dark days for a 14 year old kid! Not sure why I'm sharing other than to foster a decent discussion on guns in our society. I've been close to gun violence, starting with the painful memories of animals shot as a kid, especially the ones who didn't want to die, the ones who had to be shot again. My great grandfather on my dad's side shot himself in the head long before I was born. My own grandfather on my mother's side shot himself in the head when I was 18, we were pretty close before then. My uncle was murdered around the same time, although not buy gun, stabbed twice and then set on fire. Violence doesn't know many boundaries. In second grade, my friend David didn't come to school one day. They found his body late that night in the woods near his house, he was 8 years old and had been shot in the chest. He and a 12 year old friend had taken a pistol, belonging to David's dad who was a police officer, but had moved to another city leaving behind one of his guns. The older kid wanted to "see what would happen" if he shot someone. David laid there in the woods all day with a bullet in his chest and died just before they found his body late that night. As a teenager it got worse. A friend of a friend, who I had met a couple of times, a 15 year old girl, shot herself in the head behind the local post office. She was drunk and just out walking around with another friend who didn't even know she had a gun. She simply pulled it out and randomly ended her life. When I was just a toddler, my family kept a foster child, a little girl. She was later adopted by a nice family who also adopted a brother for her. I found this out when I was around 12, recognizing her from old family photos, I realized she was in my class at school. I was also in the Boy Scouts at the time, and another character in this story Matt Miller, was one of our teenage group leaders. It would be several years later, but Matt Miller, enraged by a dispute over a girlfriend, would invite this girl's brother out in to the woods to ride his four wheeler motorcycle. Instead he filled his chest full of bullets with an AK-47. In an odd twist of fate, the victim's family including the sister/former foster child moved in next door to my family. We got to know his mother well and got to understand first hand some of her pain. By age 18 I had sold all of my guns and haven't owned one in almost two decades. I have recently considered buying one, not out of fear, but out of practicality, or what I'm sure some of you will insist is just repressed fear. Where I live, pretty much everyone is armed. The police don't respond quickly and even a lot of them are not trustworthy. As the economic situation in this country declines every day, and I believe will continue to do so until the country is far different from what we know today, I expect a rise in crime and violence. We're already seeing a sharp increase in burglaries and robberies as a result of the economic situation. But this inclination to have a gun again is balanced by everything I said above. Have no idea where I will ultimately land as far as a decision. Feel free to respond to anything I have said, but my main purpose in starting this thread is for you to share your perspective as I have done. Hopefully it will not devolve in to petit bickering.

You might be right, this bit of research supports your idea.

Except it's not, people I care about live in all parts of the world. Patriotism seems part of an archaic nation against nation system that just can't die fast enough.

Nice, happy to hear about your success in $ and otherwise. If you're working 14 hour days and enjoying it, you must be doing something right.

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- A man wielding a knife broke into a Shanghai-area police station Tuesday, killing five police officers and injuring four others, authorities said.

Without guns teenagers would just kill themselves by other means. New Zealand has very strict gun laws, yet the highest teen suicide rate in the world. Of course, Finland, the U.S. and Canada are also in the top 10 and they have very little gun regulation, so I guess you can interpret how you like.

I like to dress mine up in little ninja costumes before our walks.

Heh, we don't do Jesus's birthday either, or our own birthdays for that matter. I was born. So what? It was 36 years ago, who cares?. Christmas is my all time favorite holiday to hate, I'd much sooner celebrate 4th of July.

In the news today: Surprising fact: Half of gun deaths are suicides

From the Merriam-Webster dictionary: Patriotism - love for or devotion to one's country I just don't see any point in either.

wait, what??!?!??! Don't mind Richard, he smokes a lot of crack.

With such a giant load of $#*!, I'm stepping quietly around it, so as not to get it all over my foot. Talk about child-like answers. Ugh.

You just need to scroll down a little in General Discussion. You must have missed this thread Re-organizing some things on the forum, including moderators