Sayonara

Insofar as we are aware of its true nature, which is unlikely.

If a thread was closed by an administrator you can be sure that it wasn't simply a matter of emotions.

He may be highly respected but that doesn't make him ineffable. Hawking took some flak for that.

The principles of conservation must be modified if the element of time travel is introduced, with the result that the objection falls apart.

You have no sense of scale, do you? "Build a big space ship" is not a solution to the problem of changes to the planet. At best you'd be looking at a generational or hibernative ship for a few hundred people, which is frankly as good as useless when you're playing the exodus card. Even if you're planning to get the whole population onto this ship (which would be ludicrous), you haven't solved anything. Know any good terrestrial planets laying about? No, you don't - because we lack the technology to identify true Earth-like candidates from here, and who wants to spend thousands of years hopping between random systems looking for a place to pull over? Granted the long-term survival of the species does hinge on spreading to other stars, but in the scenario you are describing it would be a lot cheaper and a lot more realistic to try and deal with the problems we have caused for this planet. It's possible that the rise in sea levels, change in climatic temperature, and worsening weather patterns are irreversible. If this is the case we will still have the option of meeting that adversity in the same way that every species has done since the dawn of life: by adapting at the individual level, and evolving at the species level.

We don't make pyramids because we have no need of them, not because we can't do it. Which is of course irrelevant anyway, since pyramid building is a function of engineering abilities and not evolutionary processes.

Let's ban children from ever being naked.

Well I found it... PJ Harvey, "Kamikaze".

Any idea what the music is on the current Battlestar Galactica trailers on Sky 1?

I am currently working in intelligence.

Seeing in black and white does not mean that the animal can only perceive black and white objects.

Look up "inertia".

It would be easier and faster to connect the two PCs directly via their ethernet cards. The speed will remain at that of the slowest network card, and the risk of the wireless connection being momentarily dropped and killing the file transfer (as Windows does so well) is removed. You will need an RJ45 crossover cable to do this. You can pick them up anywhere computery.

I think squirrel activity during the colder months could be misleading. They are forced to move further from their usual stomping grounds to find food, and are hungry enough to overcome their aversion to approaching humans, true enough; but the fact that we encounter them more does not necessarily mean they are more active.

The same is true for any animal whose venom can cause anaphylactic shock, but they're still considered non-lethal.

The first problem is that new drivers are constantly being added to the pool, and some of them will be bad. The second problem is that more drivers deteriorate over time rather than improve, once they have been on the roads for a while. The third and biggest problem is that -- for the most part -- driving skills rely on learned procedures and responses, which are not passed on genetically and therefore selection does not operate on them. While poor eyesight, slow responses etc do play a part, they can be compensated for with various driving practices, and legislated against (i.e. drivers outside certain vision limits cannot get a license), and do not play as big a role in safe driving as the quality of the methods used. This is simply not true. The biggest killers are heart disease and cancer. Car accidents are way down the list.

It does actually say in the article that they aren't.

I have no idea who Carlson is, but if you are referring to the shrieking extremities such as Jack from "Will and Grace", these charicatures exist because they're funnier. They can say things a straight-laced (pun not intended) character cannot. The fact that some viewers are incapable of distinguishing charicature from reality is the unfortunate problem. Perhaps if the networks were more bothered about responsible broadcasting rather than viewing figures, such depictions would go away. Having said that, I'm sure there are plenty of gay people whose personality is largely a "put on", just as the same is true of many heterosexuals.

The dogs thing was Ivan Pavlov's "conditional reflex". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov Iirc, Watson was something of a fan.

Bit of photoshopping there methinks.

If you aren't going to make an argument or present evidence to support them, then please refrain from making such broad incendiary statements on this forum. In some countries what you just said is considered to be hate speech. Short- and long-term studies of human sexual behaviour are ongoing and will continue for many years, but if they have told us one thing so far it is that - homosexual or not - "simply stated" does not apply. Biological constraints work against this even before birth. During development, children continue to be restrained by biological factors and shaped by environmental conditions. I'm not saying that without a lot of work some aspects of an individual's makeup cannot be modified, but that deeply rooted attributes are so difficult to change that for all practical purposes the difficulties overwhelm the possibilities. This is another broad statement that lacks any credible rationale. In my experience, human sexuality is rarely "chosen". What you seem to be talking about are the decisions regarding how and when to act on sexual impulses and identifiers.

The use of the word "programming" in the name is somewhat misleading. NLP has virtually nothing to do with influencing others' behaviour, except by virtue of the fact that they will respond more favourably to the person who uses NLP to improve themselves. I suggest reading about it from authors who are closely associated with the subject, since a lot of the information about NLP on the web is misinformed bunk.

Fair enough. I am highlighting the distinction between natural selection "in the wrong direction", and natural selection that does not occur quickly enough to be of use to a species' survival. Deteriorative evolution (which has never been observed, currently or archaeologically) would be the former, and extinction is the latter. Not as such. Although they could certainly be viewed that way, I don't think it has much bearing on my point. No, you were not. There is no strict sense - the definition of what constitutes a species is still up for debate. If there is any standard definition accepted for ecological and evolutionary purposes, it is Ernst Mayr's isolation species concept: species are "groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups". There are two things to note in this definition: 1) Homosexual behaviour is not excluded, because mating behaviour cannot be universally excluded on any kind of cross-population and/or cross-lifespan basis, 2) Because this is a negative test, members of a species may be either actually or potentially interbreeding. This is not the ideal definition in all cases, since it assumes sexual reproduction. However for humans it works very well indeed. I am not simply pointing out that gay people can be parents; I am pointing out that they can and do pass on their genetic material. There is no ideal state of perfection. There are only retrospectively useful intermediary steps that are constantly challenged by changing environmental conditions and intra/inter-species pressures. Sunspot has created a fictional scenario that (a) makes no sense, and (b) is not based on any biological models. If your allusion to this nebulous and as-yet unexplained term "deterioration" has nothing to do with homosexuality per se, then I question your motives. Without defining your terms and illustrating a functional link between the two things, it looks like you are just trying to attach a negative word to a specially selected group.

So do many gay people. Gay people experience the same urges as everyone else: the need to socially interact with peers, be with someone who understands them, etc. It's possible that flamboyance and extroversion are a means of increasing the chances of attracting the attention of potential friends/mates in an environment where such people do not occur in high frequency. I doubt it is linked directly to homosexuality; plenty of straight people display the same behaviours.

This thread is about the evolutionary role/purpose/value of homosexuality, whether social or biological. If your post is not intended to address that topic then you could make it more clear by putting it in a different thread, one where it will not be read in a context that you did not wish to use. No. The implication of "deteriorative evolution" is that genetic changes oppose the demands of selective pressures. It does not suggest that they fail to meet those demands. Your definition falls apart the moment one considers any species with a vaguely organised social structure. Take the hymenopterans for example, or gorillas. Clearly there is a lot more to maintaining many species than mere reproduction, and - wouldn't you know it - the structure that does this is in fact the community itself. Also you need to bear in mind that a species needs variation, which requires that different populations interact sexually. In many higher life forms this includes a requirement for social interaction that is not necessarily mediated by the breeding individuals. If anything, it seems that the more complex and sophisticated a species becomes, the greater the need for a society that incorporates different roles and patterns of behaviour with alternate goals and pay-offs. Regardless, when you are talking about a population in the billions, the difference between "potential to breed" and "breeding" has an effect on the species that is entire orders of magnitude less significant than the effects on the individual. Given the above, this has all the hallmarks of an arbitrary statement of the sort that is usually preceded by "You can't be in our club because..." Like many before you, you continue to ignore the fact that massive numbers of "homosexuals" have - and will continue to have - reproductive sex, they donate sperm/eggs, and lesbian mothers abound (whether surrogate or not). This is, of course, aside from the fact that human society is so vastly removed from animal society in its sophistication of requirements and outputs, that to suggest non-reproduction voids any hope of playing a valuable and fulfilling role in the community is just daft. And I think there are few who would argue with you. However: 1) You have not demonstrated that homosexuality is a barrier to "being a member of the community", 2) You have not defined the terms of such membership beyond a subjective and flawed assertion that it relies on reproduction. Anyway, after all that, you totally didn't answer my question: "what has deterioration got to do with homosexuality?" You said earlier that your post was not to do with evolution, so now I don't even know what it is you mean to say is deteriorating. Then I fail to see why your hypothesis requires any consideration of sexuality. Why not just state it as "people who don't breed..."?