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To address the OP (as I've been too busy in Europe to read these forums lately): no, there are no relevant secular reasons to oppose gay marriage. The closest you can come is a semantic argument (marriage is by definition between a man and a woman) which, as far as I can tell, is little more than thinly veiled bigotry. There's little reason to concern yourself with the precise definition of the word otherwise.

Wow, I just watched an anti-public healthcare ad on Fox News. Their allegations: "The government MAY cease research into live-saving drugs!" (huh?) "Millions of Americans MAY lose their healthcare and be FORCED to use the public option" (Is this a result of the proposed legislation, or just that millions of Americans lose their healthcare due to other reasons? Never explained!) "Your chances of beating cancer will be worse because the quality of care will be lower!" (supporting evidence? why do you come to this conclusion?) It's just a barrage of FUD and baseless hypotheticals without any supporting evidence. Guess I shouldn't expect anything better of Fauxnews. -- Two minutes later, on the actual program (Hannity): "President Obama is trying to RAM THIS THROUGH, just like Clinton!" (slightly paraphrased. WHAAAAAT? Ram this through?) "But the only way to RAM THIS THROUGH CONGRESS [...] out of control spending [...] [FUD FUD FUD]" My brain hurts. -- A minute later: "GOVERNOR Palin to take on President Obama on Healthcare" -- Gretta Van Sustren (wait, Palin is still a governor?) -- 5 minutes later, OH JEEZUS: Hannity is saying the government can't do anything. MEDICARE! SOCIAL SECURITY! THE POST OFFICE! They all suck! Amazing how the government can't do anything when Democrats are in charge, but when Republicans are in charge if you criticize the government you're an AMERICA HATING TERRORIST. Yes, rather interesting dichotomy there.

Yeah, there's g77 and g95. g77 is much more robust than g95, but it may be good enough for your needs. There's also "ifort", the Intel Fortran Compiler, which is free with registration. http://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-compilers/

I'm at an airport right now watching the Fox News coverage of Obama's speech. It goes a little bit like this: "Obama spoke to school kids today. [Total non-sequitur] Obama isn't honoring school vouchers!" "Obama spoke to school kids today. [Total non-sequitur] Obama isn't cracking down hard enough on child rapists!" "Obama spoke to school kids today, and some conservative parents are opposed. Let's give airtime to one of these wingnuts!" [...] "Since they're public schools, school kids could be FORCED to listen to this sort of thing! (why is it bad?) What the school decides overrides the parent! (uhh, any evidence this is happening? Parents can't request their kids not hear Obama?)" This is the first time in recent history that casually taking in Fox News really made my blood boil.

Mac games don't run on Vista, sorry.

Evolution operates as a continuum which is always amidst a transition. If you're looking for "give me something that can blow my mind" evidence of "transitional" species, take a look at ring species. One visual Tree Of Life coming up: http://tolweb.org/tree/

So like, all this hubbub is over a webcast. Kinda blows my mind.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6145785/Scouts-to-no-longer-bring-penknives-on-camping-trips.html Apparently knife crime in the UK is such that a knife vendor who trains scouts on knife safety is recommending scouts not be allowed to take knives camping. Crazy. Sounds like there are quite a few people who support the scouts having knives. It seems pretty nuts to me that scouts not be allowed penknives or swiss army knives.

Anybody But Palin?

I think we'll have telepathy as soon as brain/computer interfaces evolve to permit it.

I've seen all of Moore's films and liked most of them. I didn't like Bowling for Columbine because of the subject matter (and also because it won an Oscar over Winged Migration that year, which was a far, far more amazing film). Sicko was awesome, and one which I wish more people would watch nowadays amidst the healthcare debate. I'll withhold judgement on Capitalism: A Love Story until I see it.

Fox News had a bad enough lineup to begin with having the O'Reilly Factory, Hannity (formerly Hannity and Colmes), Hannity's America, Fox Report/Shepherd Smith (or whatever he's doing now), Your World With Cavuto, whatever the crap Gretta Van Sustren's show is, etc. Then to that they added Glenn Beck, and he's been more popular than almost all of it except for O'Reilly. Glenn Beck is surpassing Hannity, and he has the 5PM slot. Fox News has their own Howard Beale. I wonder if they know what to do with him when he goes completely bonkers. -- Oh yeah, Glenn Beck hates 9/11 victims families and wants them to shut up. Seriously. That's practically a direct quote. I'm not kidding: hf33g9ep4YU

Capitalism undermines democracy. Corporations can donate to candidates and buy votes and policy, and when that doesn't work they can lobby for it. That doesn't necessarily make capitalism bad but it provides the power for a small group of individuals to dramatically and unduly influence public policy.

Here's an awesome article on the coming age of brain/computer interfaces:

But that would be shifting the burden of proof. You are the one making the claim. The onus is on you to defend it. I know it's hard, but in this crazy world of logic and evidence based thinking, telling people "I know I'm right, and the proof is out there, go fish" is a huge cop-out. If you feel the evidence is out there, your duty is to aggregate and present it to us, then it can be judged. Asking us to go find evidence to criticize is an enormous cop out. But hey, just for sh*ts and grins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_viewing

The exact workings of memory are not well known

You're making the statement. You have the burden of proof. You have no evidence! You have no way of defending your statements.

You have far too much faith in what the government spends money in. God no

Sounds like the bandwagon fallacy to me. I'm reminded of the "Fifty Million Smokers Can't Be Wrong" poster from the Simpsons.

If you can prove the existence of ghosts under controlled conditions, James Randi will give you one million dollars.

The attribution of various radiative forcings to overall changes in the global mean surface temperature is the meat of the debate in regard to climate change. A new study has recently posted their findings: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL038932.shtml Here are their plots for the attribution of climate change: I know in the past many have asked for a more updated plot than the one I usually use: So there you go, plots from a more recent modeling effort.

There's been a strangely disproportionate and historically unprecedented disparity in warming between the arctic and antarctic. There has been substantial warming near the northern pole, and negligible warming (and arguably cooling) near the southern pole. Just recently (as of a year ago or so) the "northwest passage" opened up for the first time since the Medieval Warm Period.

xWL-pfCao-U Some expert sleuthing by America's most misunderstood political commentator Glenn Beck exposes one of America's quintessential "Robber Barons" as, in fact, being a communist. Many courtesies to Mr. Beck for his investigative services.

Perhaps you should go back and reread my link... Utility fog is not the same as grey goo. The idea behind grey goo is that it's an undirected self-replicator that knows to do nothing but self-replicate. Utility fog implies some degree of high-level organization, and I implied they were being organized by an artificially intelligent entity. We need to eat food. Utility fog could be powered by anything. What if they're designed (by a recursively self-improving artificial intelligence) to withstand intense conditions?