Sayonara

It certainly doesn't demonstrate that all bonobos are mentally ill or that homosexuality is a disease. Although I have to admit, I am not sure where we can go with it from there There are two problems with this: 1) Firstly, it requires that gay people are incapable of breeding, rather than just that on the whole they don't fancy it so much, which is not the case. 2) Secondly, if genetic inheritance worked in any way that would make homosexuality impossible, we would not expect to see any inheritable conditions which confer sterility, and yet we do.

Well I'm so glad he is on the case then. The energy crisis is solved! Tune in next week, when we see him provoking fresh tumours in a ward full of cancer patients.

Virtually everything that humans do socially originally comes from biological impulses to protect the clan so that it can survive and flourish. Why should homosexuality be singled out as something that does not contribute? Can you really not see how breeding males in a mixed group might be advantaged by having non-breeding, non-competitor males in that group? (As a fairly basic example). Regardless, this thread is not about the "value" of homosexuality or whatever arbitrary reasons one can come up with for eroding or negating any such notions of value. This is a thread in which we discuss a possible medical inequity in a scenario where a hypothetical treatment has been developed for a non-harmful biological state. Speculation which has been borne out by other scholars. As I said, there are plenty of better discussions of it on the site. It's not just that they have an agenda. It's that they are extremists in their pursuit of it. So that's fine then. If you remember, I said "if I were you I would check the references", as opposed to "ignore that PDF entirely!". Going to have to come back to that because I need to make dinner. I AM HUNGREEE. Given what you replied to, does this not imply that you do not consider gay people to be lucid or self-actuating? If so, on what basis should anyone agree with that analysis? No. There is no reason which you can conceive of. This is an argument from incredulity. It's not though, is it? It's more like staying gay because you like having sex and/or relationships with people of the same gender, and/or don't particularly feel that your emotions are any less real or any less valuable than those of the next person. No. Not to mention that: 1) "Gay sex" is not the same as "bum sex" (will leave the details to your imagination), 2) Bum sex is not exclusively within the domain of homosexuals, 3) Vaginal sex is hardly beneficial. In short, consensual damage that might possibly happen and which is deemed acceptable by the person receiving the damage is no basis on which to label someone's entire being as "bad".

I see Apple Updater is downloading the second Safari security update to me now... 9.9Mb this time. Thanks Apple!

Don't parents generally get rather attached to their babies before they are born?

Anyway, just watched the movie. My question is... how does the energy released compare to the energy requirements of the radio transmitter?

I blogged the challenge a couple of times but soon lost interest. I see that they have redesigned their web site, shame the content has varied little in almost a year. How long can demonstrating free energy take?

If you hit the big reply button to go to the reply page (as opposed to doing a 'quick reply'), you will see a button below the reply box saying "Manage Attachments".

Where are you getting all this tripe from? Please search the forums for threads with "homosexual" or "gay" in the title and read them carefully. I could be wrong, but I think ParanoiA's point is that homosexuality itself is normal and not 'unhealthy'. He is making the distinction that homosexuals who force their own behavioural heterosexuality are creating a problem for themselves.

Just as a side note, so as not to feed Killa Clown's misunderstandings, there are in fact also masculine gay men who are NOT acting. In fact they are quite common. We don't notice them as much because they don't advertise their presence by screaming "hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiyaaaaaaaaaaaa!" and trying to generate attention. Instead they go and do manly things which, let's be honest, are fairly unremarkable things for a man to do, and don't really draw the eye.

I only just noticed that final sentence. On what civilised planet you have ever heard of do perfectly lucid and self-actuating patients have to have a "valid reason" to oppose treatment, and who decides what a "valid reason" is? If you honestly think that gay men are men who think they are women, then I am afraid it is you who is blind. Unless of course you have never been exposed to at least a partial cross-section of gay culture, in which case you are bound to drink in the token screaming queens you see on so-called comedy shows and think that they are somehow representative. I would urge you to base your strongest views upon what you can personally perceive and deduce. This does of course require some degree of observation, and perhaps also interaction (I don't mean you should shack up with a bloke, obviously - but maybe go to a gay bar or a community meeting or something). Err... not being nit-picky or anything, but if your judgement is affected in terms of remaining homosexual, doesn't that still qualify as the subject of Cap'ns question?

I think 'treatment' probably carries less of an implication. I would hope though that in the majority of cases the difference in their judgement comes from their professional medical opinion as to how best to address the needs of an individual patient, rather than personal bias. For instance to borrow your pimple analogy, a doctor who waves away angsty teenagers with pimples as time-wasters is indeed judging his patients' conditions according to some level of response he has set for himself, but he may well go to some length to help if he recognises that a patient has such a severe case of acne that they risk facial scarring. Or at least he should. I don't see it as a value judgement. It may be that the cost of the treatment outweighs the benefit of clearing up the acne a bit early (economical decision, something the NHS tries to be good at), or it may be that the acne is not severe enough to warrant risking the side effects of a tetracyclin or whatever the fashionable antibiotic is at the time (clinical decision). It can go the other way too. The kid who is at risk of facial scarring is likely to have treatment suggested, because there is a perceivable risk of physical harm to him. The whole thing is fraught with ins and outs even when we are just talking about pimples.

Some sort of rack-style ratchet would do the trick. Killa Clown, could you doodle a sketch of what you have in mind?

No. One with wheels.

But you neglected to provide the caveats (a) it doesn't do the group any harm either in that respect, or (b) that homosexuality may indirectly aid procreation in the group. The most recent was Cap'n Refsmmat's second-to-last post. There are more scattered about the place but I am not about to stand in for the search function. No, I am saying that it could be misrepresented. And if you read the PDF carefully, you will see evidence of that. You must always at least consider the source. It's not as if GodHateFags.com have no agenda, is it? I sympathise with the problematic situation on getting sources, but even if there are "few" sites citing their sources, anything has to be better than that place. We don't particularly want to chance sending our members there, particularly the younger ones.

I think this is happening because most of us cannot fathom why something called a "cure" (which represents to many a fix for something that is bad) should be associated with homosexuality, due to the valid point mentioned a couple of days ago that something being medically bad affords a medical condition and not the other way around. I am erring toward Severian's viewpoint that rather than seeing it as a "cure" such a treatment should be considered "the option to switch", which puts it in the same league as bleaching one's hair, rather than having a tumour removed. In such a case no medical recommendation is afforded or even necessary, and we aren't lending homosexuality attributes for which we have no evidence. Although advertising would probably come up at some point...

In the same way that everything else we consider to be "good" is good without perpetuating the species, surely. No, we call that "bad". Being "bad" is not the same as being "I can't see why it's good". What are you trying to illustrate here? "Worm their way in" implies some sort of nefarious intrusion. It's just a thing that happens. Yes, some people really like talking about it a lot, but that's an attribute of all humanity. Reasons why homosexuality is good for a social group have already been mentioned in this thread, and discussed extensively in others. The idea that "contributing to procreation" is the only thing of value for any given trait is a falsehood, and if you apply it only to homosexuality then you are making a case from special pleading. If I were you I would check the references, rather than just taking the word of one of the most vicious and harmful hate speech sites ever made. Please do not post links to their content on here again. It is offensive.

This is getting old.

This thread makes a bit more sense now. I think you may have lost your audience a little by not clarifying that Lomborg is only considering extinctions due to human action.

What OS are you using?

I know this sounds really obvious, but try asking her for clarification.

The discussion which emerged in this thread regarding a hypothetical cure for homosexuality has been moved here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=27232

You are right, we are misunderstanding each other. You have just highlighted that very well with "if you are arguing in favor of not suggesting treatment for a medical condition...". I am not arguing against suggesting/recommending such a treatment. I am opposing your arguments for it because I am not convinced they are terribly good as they stand. This 'drawing out' of more sophisticated explanations happens a lot on SFN, you must have noticed? Also, I am not arguing that nobody will find their sexual preference to be a problem, but I am sounding the note of caution that you may have severely overestimated the numbers of people who find it problematic (in their own words, not those of their family, ministers, etc), and this could lead to recommendations blowing up in your face. Again, I have no problem with this hypothetical cure being available for anyone who wants to use it. After all, a society that treasures diversity by necessity must respect the right of the individual to make their own choices. The one question I have had throughout this whole discussion is "why is any such recommendation necessary?", and iirc there has been no attempt to supply an answer. I will split this off to a new thread I think, because it is way off topic but also jolly interesting.

And yet clearly they must have occurred, on account of all the incredibly devastating events that have hit this planet since life began. Comet strike, super volcanoes, ice ages, etc. They are hardly benign and they certainly destroy habitats. I'm not really convinced, by the way, that you just "forgot" the K-T boundary mass extinction event.

You'd also need to differentiate between the walls and the floor.