Sisyphus

Can I ask why the bath way is out of the question, then? It's very simple and as accurate as you're going to get. And what's wrong with an estimation based on mass? For something roughly the density of water (such as a human), kilograms = liters. If you're especially fat, know that you're lower density and therefore higher volume, and if especially muscular, know that you're higher density and therefore lower volume.

Theocrats?

The edge of a shadow on the Moon?

I'm not interested in fiction. Robert Heinlein often portrays an extremely positive vision of polygamy in his novels. I was just curious if anyone had any idea about the reality. Ideally more than Mormomism, as well, since growing up Mormom has got to introduce all kinds of other crazy variables...

Are there any studies on the effects of being raised by a polygamous group-marriage?

No. Orange means the apocolypse is coming.

Even if such bullying were as severe as YT says (anecdotally I haven't seen it to be that way at all, but then I've only lived in relatively liberal areas), I don't think that's a good enough reason. Not too long ago you could use the exact same logic against the de-segregation of schools, or interracial marriage. Yes, bigotry exists, but rolling over and appeasing it is hardly the way to fight it. And it can be fought, as we've seen with the radical diminishment of racism in the civilized world.

Yeah, but you age while asleep, and you don't while frozen.

Well, they do want a nation of Anglo-Saxon Protestants, with other races and religions subserviant. Religion is a big part of it. I don't know if that's "fascism," but I guess it illustrates that the word is overused to the point where its meaning (aside from the literal political party of Mussolini) is no longer entirely clear.

I'd say we have a bit of an advantage over dolphins, though, wouldn't you?

In order for that to happen, you'd have to have an AI which not only puts no value on the liberty of citizens, but no value on their happiness. (And of course those would be paramount considerations.) Otherwise it is EXTREMELY illogical. Why would an intelligent being think in such simplistic, isolated terms? That's like saying "The sun causes skin cancer. Skin cancer is bad. Therefore the sun should be destroyed." An intelligent, logical mind weighs the value of different benefits and makes the choice to encourage the best outcome. I'd just like to iterate how awful of a movie that was.

Yeah, on the one hand, France has enforced strict control over the French language for hundreds of years, and as a result it has changed very little from foreign influence. That's definitely not fascism in itself (although some might call it silly), so I suppose CPL.Luke doesn't know what it is, after all. On the other hand, this might not be exactly the same, inasmuch as Arabic is so closely tied with Islam. After all, the Quran cannot be translated, so what can other languages bring besides Satan? Seems like the move of an oppressive theocracy to me.

I would assume because it is vastly more intelligent than a human, free of ego, incorruptible, and necessarily keeping the people's best interest in mind 24/7. Don't get me wrong - the idea does scare me. I just haven't decided whether that's a rational fear or the influence of Hollywood and such. The more I think about these objections you guys are raising, though, the thinner they sound.

You could always go insane. Have you considered going insane?

Has it occured to anyone that the solution to all that hatred in the Middle East might actually be to more or less just wait it out? Plenty of things haven't worked. Threats of force have had the opposite intended effect, and we can't carry through with them, anyway. Democracy, to the chagrin and denial of neocons everywhere, is clearly not the answer either. Hamas is an elected government, for god's sake, and the brand new American-molded government of Iraq has been friendlier to Iran than the U.S. It seems to me the only thing which has any chance of success whatsoever is secularization, and that takes time. It's not something you can force on a people (or at least only in a very limited way), and it's not something you can even change an individual person's mind about. That kind of religious fanaticism just don't go away, and this particular brand demands not just bigotry and violence, but also that their government be as religiously fanatical as themselves. Separation of church and state, as it were, is impossible, and that is the problem. They simply can't be negotiated with. So how does it happen? Well, I mentioned you can't change an individual person's mind about it, and I think that's true. But NEW people are a different story. What I'm talking about is a youth-driven cultural revolution. If the young ever reject the religion and the hatred of their parents, then it won't matter how much those parents rage at the world, because sooner or later their children will be running things, and they'll want a liberal society. I believe that this will have to happen eventually, but we can probably help it along, if we always keep it in mind as an eventual goal. I'm not talking about anything specific, just a general attitude. We always have to be the "good guys." We can't be the oppressor. We should come across as trying to help them, and that's what we should really be trying to do. Never cause an innocent person grief. We should unite with innocent Muslims as victims of terrorism. You might say that this is, in fact, what we're doing. And to a certain extent we are, but it always seems like just an afterthought. What the Arab world sees is cowboy talk and bullying. The neocons who are in control seem to think that democracy by force is a panacea, and everything is directed towards that end. Secularization, on the other hand, isn't even talked about, because these same neocons rely heavily on desecularization at home, their deal with the Devil (err, conservative evangelicals) haunting them in all their endeavors.

Yeah, the physics works out. In theory, you'd get positive energy out of moving something from Earth to Jupiter. In practice, of course, its nonsense.

Lebanon has nuclear facilities?

What should we do, then?

I disagree completely. I don't think a marriage where a couple has no plans to have any children is any less legitimate than a marriage where they don't. I see marriage as a formal romantic partnership, and gay marriage certainly falls under that category. And even if it is merely a child-raising thing, plenty of gay couples adopt, anyway.

I know we've had this argument before, but for me it comes down to what is worse, the government poking its nose in our bedrooms, or the government poking its nose in our bedrooms and making bigoted decisions about them. I think the former is pretty obviously preferable, and I don't think the latter is any closer to the ideal, that is, the government staying out of it entirely.