padren

The problem is the only manner I could possibly theorize on the matter would result in observations some people would find highly offensive. I don't want to offend anyone and have tried exhaustively to find other explanations to give "the anti crowd" the benefit of the doubt, but I just can't get any to add up. On top of that, every time someone who is anti gay marriage tries to make their case as to why there is solid reasons for banning it the result is at least one of us is offended. The only real reasons I've been able to identify stem from either 1) traditions 2) religions 3) social engineering The first two are the hardest to discuss because they are "sacred cows" that cannot be criticized and the third seems just born out of the fear we'll all stop breeding if we allow gay marriage, or some insulation from the sheer degree of damage these laws do to homosexual couples. All in all it seems almost impossible to have a civil conversation on the topic.

The real issue here is not racism at all, but something that has come up due to people being far enough removed from racism to be not so much "racially insensitive" but racismly insensitive. This cartoon was written and approved for publication with everyone in the chain missing how it could be seen as racist because racism simply isn't part of those people's daily experiences. I think it's an interesting phenomena: racial insensitivity arising due to such a complete lack of racism and understanding of where it still exists within our society. We are at a point where we do have white people being taught by black teachers, working for black bosses, who simply do not have the historical experiences that tell them this is in any way new or different from how things were, or even notice race as a component whatsoever. Maybe they are isolated and not aware of what many black people still experience and can be faulted for "ignorance" towards these issues but that is a very different from being racist or being apathetic towards those facing racism. All I really know about racism comes from statistics and the odd wingnut who goes off at a bar claiming "he's not racist because he doesn't blame black people for having inferior genes, he knows it's not their fault" or some BS like that - otherwise I have no first hand experience with people facing discrimination on race. I've seen people be attacked for homosexuality (or the suggestion thereof for the purposes of starting a fight at a party, etc) but never race, so I am definitely one of those ignorant to the modern day to day impact of racism in our society. But my point is this sort of obliviousness or blindspot to racism is not racism, and it's a disservice for those who have fought against racism to claim they are the same thing. It is it's own phenomena that has only being able to emerge due to the progress we've made against racism and it may require some attention but it shouldn't be bunched in with racism itself.

And, by that logic my organs may never start to break down causing eventual old age - just because it happens everywhere else I look... It's a logical conclusion that we will run out of places to find fossil fuels too - so lets put the Singularity hypothesis somewhere in the middle perhaps? It's reasonable to consider the possibility that we will reach a level of AI technology where the AI can design better AI technology. That may never happen but if it does, it is even more reasonable to assume it will make advances faster and faster in that field beyond our capacity to predict where they will lead. Singularity is a possibility, not a certainty but isn't it one worth considering?

Well, with regards to the OP: Lets say for a second that a fertilized egg has the rights of a person. If this law is applied to prevent an abortion, does that mean I can break into a woman's house and start eating her food and start mooching off her? What rights does that woman have to prevent me from doing such? If she can legally have me kicked out of her house, why can't she have a fetus kicked out of her womb? If the fetus has the same rights as I do, then she should be able to call the cops and have the uninvited squatter dragged off to jail. They can talk all they want about a fetus having the same rights as a person, but it will still completely miss the mark because those aren't the issues that cause the controversy. Secondarily, while they can rule a fertilized egg will be treated as having all the rights of a person, that is not the same as claiming a fertilized egg is a person. The law and the claim may coincide, but aren't necessarily the same thing. In either case I think the debate about this topic (not abortion in general, but rights at conception) that interests me is on what grounds was this considered merited? Scientific research? Legal precedent? What new information came to light that actually demonstrated that - in fact - a cluster of cells is a person? Regardless of whether the end result of the law is good or bad, accurate or wrong, how we go about making laws is very important. I see no difference between this legal declaration that a fertilized egg has rights, and a legal declaration that sex before marriage does tangible harm to the institution of marriage, or that homosexuality is a mental illness and sin, or serving pork endangers the diner's health... or any other law put on the books with no rational foundation. Maybe a rational foundation exists for fetus rights and can one day be demonstrated - but it is not being used here, and until it is this should not be law.

A lot of people find him offensive and he's definitely NSFW but I have to say I really enjoy . That's one of his tamer bits.

It seemed pretty strange to me and I had to check the date to make sure it wasn't published on April 1st... I can't imagine anyone making a connection between cell life in a bacteria strain and expect to extend a mammal's life - I thought they were saying they found that side effect in mice while they were doing tests. I honestly don't understand how the media get away with this sort of thing. Choosing to promote a story due to sensational appeal is bad enough (such as abducted cute-white-female syndrome) but to distort or poorly cover facts for sensationalism is just inexcusable in my mind.

That's true, but I think that doesn't entirely washes the mathematicians hands clean if they knew the models were being abused despite their advice and continued to provide models to be abused. That would be like selling Roofies through a legal loophole and saying "but make sure you never give it to someone without their consent wink wink" and ignoring all the news about the timely epidemic of cases of women getting drugged and raped in the area.

I think everyone has some degree of responsibility for their actions to ensure their contributions to society are in line with their values. To be completely ignorant (by reasons other than sheer denial/negligence) is one thing but the side effects of your actions exist either way. Of course there is a big difference between "to blame" and "legally culpable" but it's still worth noting who's to blame even if they are not legally culpable for how their models are used.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1142564/Pre-historic-Viagra-Siberian-mammoth-DNA-boost-sex-life-let-live-longer.html This sounds like a movie plot: extinct bacteria found in ancient ice has massive life extending and enhancing characteristics to lab mice. Oh, and it improves sexual activity or something but that is hardly mentioned in the article. When they make claims like: ...are they sensationalizing some edge cases or saying the results are really this big? If this ends up impacting medical science, it just goes to show how scientific research in one area can have profound unexpected results.

The simplest answer is that "Sun" and "Moon" are not names like "Venus" and "Mercury" are, they are things. There are suns, moons, and asteroid belts among other things in the universe, from Earth there is only one of each anyone refers to to there is the sun, the moon, the asteroid belt.

Says who? If this can be substantiated I'm open to hearing it - but so far all I've heard is correlation - no causation. Of course the people who come up with NSF/NASA centric spending plans are going to be pro those agencies - otherwise they probably wouldn't know them well enough inside and out to figure out how to use them to stimulate the economy. This plan was put together with many spending items, each designed to stimulate the economy. If we want to be critical as to the merit of some of those plans - and we should be - we need to investigate them, not assume the worst and dismiss them simply because they overlap with some programs the democrats would want anyway. As I already said, a resounding yes. They can fund bibles in motels if they want - if the numbers come out that it's an ideal economic stimulus plan than so be it. My only reservation about Schiavo is ethical - if we believe the moral thing to do is not interfere and we do because it can help the economy, then that's a moral objection to the stimulus plan. Not political, as it doesn't matter if it hurts lefties or righties ideologically but if it hurts her and her family then that is a moral objection, completely separate from ideological objections, and efficiency objections. I think it's fair to raise moral objections, and especially efficiency objections - but the ideological objections are what bother me. Especially when they are dressed up as efficiency objections when they are not. That's why I think everything considered in the stimulus plan needs to be picked apart line by line to test their credibility. We can't afford to mess this up. The concerns about next year are also valid - all stimulus plans need to deal with that. That would also be one of the reasons I don't consider "long term benefits" (such as education or future results from research) worthy attributes in evaluating any given program. We need the economy to turn around soon enough that it creates (or re-creates) every job this spending bill is supporting. We are in an economic "valley" and the bill is supposed to be a "bridge" to keep job numbers even until we get across to their natural resurgence. The programs themselves need to also shorten the gap as we can't run this bridge out into nowhere or it will collapse along the way.

If I understand things correctly, all energy we can "harness" today was made available by the big bang, like compressing a spring or throwing a rock up a hill that it can later roll down to release potential energy. The first hydrogen atoms were created, and it's been "trickling down" like water running down hill ever since, assumed towards a "cold death" equilibrium. Even potential energy from gravity only exists because the Big Bang's energy "pulled masses apart" allowing them to fall together again. So, imagine you are standing on the side of a hill and a stream is running down. You can tap that energy at your current height on the hill by redirecting it (damming it, adding a water mill etc) - the more energy you tap, the less there is left to be pulled out (water speed gained by gravity is slowed in moving turbines, etc) but due to the sheer amount of energy it's really hard to notice we are making a dent in it. The whole reservoir has some total mass, and can only flow down so far, and that is the sum total of potential energy in the universe before the stream runs dry. We may tap some "side streams" that branch out from the main one, those that represent say, fossil fuels, but it's all still potential energy from the same reservoir. The fundamental problem with a perpetual motion machine, is it's always taking some of that water, and redirecting "back up the hill" to flow back down and "pump itself back up" again. Perpetual motion machines need to work without external energy - hence you create a separate channel near the stream (not touching it), fill it, and try to gather enough energy from the water flowing down to pump that water back to the top within the circuit. The only way in this analogy to move water, is with power generated from water. So no matter what, you cannot increase the total amount of potential energy available, and it is constantly running down. No act can make the Big Bang's water reservoir larger, as any mechanism to move water up hill costs more water going down hill. Any new concept or idea or physical law will always have to adhere to that fact, which makes perpetual motion simply impossible.

Did you read the link under the name "Thor" in that post? Basically: People may have voted they believe in Thor because they have may have believed in some actual, non-literary being named Thor, that may just not have had supernatural origins. Or maybe they voted for Thor because he's always fun at parties, could go either way.

On purpose >_> I may have the social graces of a stray dog, but that doesn't mean I have to announce it...

Thor is the Supreme Commander of the Asgard fleet. Sure, he died when he and his people created a black hole to destroy their own planet to keep hostile civilizations from acquiring their technology, but the question didn't qualify if people believed he was alive or not...

Okay, this made me laugh, so I have to post it here. I'm working late, it's 6:30am, not sure when I'll sleep but it happens. I go outside for a cig, and am standing on the sidewalk in front of my place....I start to hear a shuffling from one side... then the other side.... ...I look around - morning joggers half awake - I thought the zombies were rising for a moment there!

Well, weak agnostic is someone who thinks there isn't enough evidence either way, I myself am a strong agnostic, which means I don't think it's possible to know either way, based on the fact that any being of near god-like power/advancement could either remain hidden or completely fool our senses into thinking it was God god. Bigfoot could be proven to be true, and if the creature exists but wants to be hidden, it has limited resources to accomplish this, so it's fair to believe it's unlikely. If there is a God that wants to be undetectable, that bugger's gonna be undetectable, period. If some guy popped up claiming to be the son of God and raised the dead, walked on water, etc etc, it still would be pretty weak evidence that the guy is actually the son of God, since if there is a being that can do those things, then he can probably fake being a god too, or actually be God. There's just no way as a human to know which is which, hence strong Agnostic.

I do agree with you on the housing market, though I am not sure the plan is to return to the bubble's height, just correct for the extra dip taken immediately after. I also agree that freeing up money to lend by banks doesn't help when those that would borrow it are too overextended to borrow. I don't know the housing market well enough to speak on it too much, but if part of the problem is people who could normally buy are unable to now (who did not buy during the subprime fiasco) due to bank reluctance, then helping them buy houses with reasonable mortgage terms will reduce the number of vacant houses on the market, and help it rebound to normal (non bubble) levels. This stimulus package is about mostly spending power and jobs though, not housing. It was kicked off by the housing bubble bursting, but it's gone a lot farther than that and could continue to - hence we are trying to prevent that and get more people back to work. The consensus I was referring to is that regarding the economic situation regarding general industry, not housing.

I believe the consensus in Washington is that the current industries have been shrunk to below where they'd be otherwise due to a huge lack of confidence and lack of credit, and kick starting the economy is supposed cause a resurgence back steady levels, at which point the industries themselves will be paying these new employees, not the government funds. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Based on what analysis do you find NSF/NASA funding to give poor economic returns? We can't call it bad simply because it has an ideological basis and may not help much with bailing out the economy - we call it bad if it is bad at helping bail out the economy. And to be clear it takes more than "greater than zero" benefit to qualify as "good" for the bail out, it has to be competitively good relative to the top programs. Maybe I am just not understanding what makes "good" bailout sense economically - what programs do you feel excel at economic stimulus and what makes them excel? If I understand the standard you are using I may understand your dissatisfaction of these programs better. I don't know enough about the layoffs to comment on them, but wouldn't most of that money going to NASA be spent by NASA to contractors of established aerospace companies? Wouldn't it help those companies keep their employees through this rough patch so they still have jobs when we come out on the other side of the recession? I am not saying that in itself makes for well spent funds, but it's hardly as flawed as forcing all these people to move to Florida and dropping them shortly after. I may just have an unrealistic amount of optimism, did they just write a number next to the title NASA and say "That could help!" or did they see if NASA was in a position to create jobs, had projects they were sitting on, and assessed the amount of money to get the best of those put to action? I was under the impression there was a little more research going into this - but I could be wrong. I would like to see from what information you drew your conclusions, as it's information I've been wanting to find but I haven't been having a lot of luck.

I agree completely - it's why I started the thread to discuss to rate the most efficient ways to boost the economy objectively instead of ideologically-minded politicians. I also agree with you on the NASA spending comment from that letter. If he has said (with something to back it up) that the NASA funding would produce a high bang for our buck while helping the ailing agency, then I'd laud him for it. I can see the future problems of throwing money at Russia to get to the space station instead of spending here being one of economics, but not one regarding immediate relief. I am not convinced that spending that money on NASA won't be better at boosting the economy than road building or tax relief - I don't know enough about how it rates against those projects to know, and I wish more people were talking about it. Regarding Terri Schiavo other than the one caveat that it would be immoral to pass a bill that kept her plugged in or unplugged her for the sake of the economy - if it fixed the economy and had a much higher return on investment than any other funding in the Bill, I'd say go for it. If we find we don't want to be so far right or so far left after the stimulus has stabilized the economy, we can deal with that then. We should of course be aware of radical plans (slavery would boost the economy, but have a huge social impact) that have impacts outside of their stimulus effect, but if they simply edge us a little left or right then we should focus on the bang per buck - and not get too concerned with ensuring the plan doesn't shift us at all left or right at the cost of bang per buck.

It's probably too difficult of a mod, but it would be nice if moderators could set a 'heat factor' on a thread, starting at 'mild' to 'almost hot enough to close' so people have an easier time gauging how close to the edge of acceptability a given thread is. Right now I feel like in the "Do you believe in Thor" thread I'm walking on eggshells out of concern it could get too hot and be closed, but it's not easy to guess how concerned the mods are at any given moment. Perhaps I am being overly concerned, and if a mod finds it concerning at all they'll just make a comment to that effect.

I fear this takes us close to the event horizon from which no thread returns unclosed, and it has been discussed at length in the long since discontinued Philosophy and Religion board. All I'll say is I disagree emphatically with the above as has been documented many closed threads in that board, but won't personally discuss it here as I don't want to contribute to what I see as a risk of this thread getting out of hand and thus closed. If my fear turns out to be unwarranted then I'd happily discuss it.

But Pangloss, what doesn't have an ideological bent? We may find enough people (due to the fact there are only two main parties in power) that agree on a few ideological factors and thus both support efforts such as road construction, but almost everything is going to be ideological. Even tax breaks - when they're for leaders of industry, it's trickle down Reaganomics, for the working class, it's Keynesian. When it comes to choosing programs the moment you try to get any mileage out of them (do more than just digging holes and filling them to create jobs) by creating jobs that have beneficial secondary effects those benefits are going to be even more contested for ideological reasons. But what's the answer? To not include secondary benefits to maintain ideological neutrality would be criminally inefficient - I'd rather see secondary benefits go straight to faith based groups than see it wasted, regardless of my dislike for faith based groups getting federal funds. So really, what is high yield and ideologically neutral in this package?

So.... the Grammys are to Adam Smith as Peacocks are to Darwin?

My Bad - thanks for the clarification.