bob000555

That's a truly ridiculous bald assertion. Obviously, when a man rapes a woman, he does great harm to her as a consequence. But that says next to nothing about his motive. With the exception of sadistic rapists, it would seem they are motivated by sexual lust and harm happens as a consequence. You really can stop making things up to make rape/pedophilia seem worse. Everyone (except Merat) already seems to acknowledged they are very bad things. On that note, I would appreciate it if you could address the things I pointed out in my precious post about your previous post in.

Are you saying that the things I mentioned here: are violations of existing rules? If so,I respectful suggest you bring this fact to the moderators' attention - Here is a thread in which another poster committed virtually all of these offenses, and I was chided for being "hostile" by confronting him/her about this, but nothing was said to the other poster. If not, why would we report these things, and will you consider changing the rules?

This is one of the most worst threads I’ve ever seen. All sides have produced a sorry excuse for a reasoned discussion, I realize this is an inherently emotional subject, but that’s really no excuse. A lot of the supposed “facts” in this thread don’t stand up to even basic scrutiny. I’ll address a few of them before moving onto the 800 pound gorilla in the room (Marat’s argument). Perhaps no one realized that because its not supported by the facts: Sarrel, Philip M., and William H. Masters. "Sexual Molestation of Men by Women." Archives of Sexual Behavior 11.223 Apr. (2005): 117-31. Print The penalty for homosexual acts is death in "five countries and parts of Nigeria and Somalia." Pakistan is not one of the five countries; they are: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan and Mauritania. http://ilga.org/historic/Statehomophobia/ILGA_map_2009_A4.pdf The penalty for homosexual acts in Pakistan is either life imprisonment or imprisonment from 2 to 10 years. http://ilga.org/historic/Statehomophobia/ILGA_State_Sponsored_Homophobia_2009.pdf This is a serious punishment. I can not see why you felt you had to make up the facts to exaggerate the seriousness of the penalty. Also, I could not find a single citation for your claim that pedophilia is used as a punishment by schoolteachers "in many parts of the non-Western world." If you have a citation for this, please share it. Moving on from outright falsehoods to silliness verging on Sophistry , we come to Marat’s argument Its apparent to me that Marat took a grain of truth then ran with it to ridiculous conclusions. I agree with Marat when he says “many rapes are committed by men because women withold[sic] their cooperation as sexual partners.” However, I believe the explanation for this is evolutionary psychology (explanation to follow) and not some consorted effort by women “illegitimately to enhance their social power over men.” (Don’t most people abandon the belief that the opposite sex has secret meetings to set strategy around middle school? ) Also, to the extent that Marat suggests that there is any excuse or justification for rape, I disavow myself of him entirely. In virtually every species of animal, the female makes a much larger investment in the production of offspring than the male. In simple species, this is merely the difference between the of nutrient and energy requirements for oogenesis and spermatogenesis. In placental mammals, the difficulties that pregnancy imposes on the female become a significant difference. In primates and other species where the mother raises the children, childrearing responsibilities impose further burden on the female. In virtually every species, this leads to markedly different mating strategies for males and females. One common theme is that, because males need to make a smaller investment to produce offspring, males attempt to maximize the number of mating opportunities while females are either passive or attempt to maximize mate quality. A common outcome of this is that males compete over females. For example, male fish develop bright colorization to demonstrate fitness, male elephants, walruses and rhinos develop tusks and fight over females. In modern humans, both male competition and female choice are important components of mate selection. Because females have an evolutionary incentive to maximize the quality of their mates while males have (or at least had, in primitive societies) an incentive to maximize the number of their mates, there is a mismatch in desired mating outcomes. Males have a strong evolutionary incentive to mate, even if the female does not consent to be being mated with. The adaptation of rape as a male evolutionary strategy is a likely outcome of this incentive structure. That, I would submit, is why most rapes are committed by men. As I said, I do not think this excuses or justifies rape in the modern world.

Possibly, but the consequences shouldn't be much more than the 30 post rule and even if it happens the moderators of those forums would just lock or delete the threads. No matter what policy change is made, there will be some negative repercussions, but at this point the problem has simply gotten too bad for inaction. The optimal solution may not be ideal, but that does not justify holding to a non-optimal solution.

Sure, political opinions vary, and its hard to distinguish between a reasonable opinion and an inane one. I wouldn’t suggest the moderators should engage in viewpoint discrimination. I would, however, suggest that the politics forum is rife with problems that go well beyond differences in opinion. These include bald assertions used as argument, factual claims that are flat-out wrong, arguments based on well known logical fallacies, arguments with no distinguishable logic to them at all, and versions of events that could generously be categorized as “alternate” history. I’m not sure if its appropriate to post examples here because the posters in question could be reading, but if prodded I could produce them. I also agree with Jackson that some of the recent thread topics leave a lot to be desired. Perhaps separating the forums in “politics” and “politics-lite” is taking it a bit far but there should definitely be some amendments to the rules including: 1. If you make a claim of fact, you should cite it. 2. If you support your argument with a factual assertion that is demonstrably false, you should get a warning the first time and be suspended from the forum the second time. 3. Arguments should never be biased on bald assertion. 4. Users should be required to pass a test on basic logic before they can post in the politics forum. I’m not sure how to address the problem of the thread topics, but there is an obvious difference between threads like DJBruce’s “Prop 2: Affirmative Action in College” and Mr.Rayon’s “Why do men commit so many rape crimes?” or between my “repeal the Seventeenth Amendment” and Reality check’s “Fast and Furious.” One type of thread seems to attract serious debate, and the other…well, not so much. My suggestion would be that the ability to open new threads in the politics forum be restricted to those who have demonstrated the ability for reasoned discourse.

I think its generally acknowledged that the quality of the politics forum has gone to hell (a prominent user recently called it, "a waste of bandwidth."), but for those of you who don't know, recent highlights include an allegation that the women's movement was invented by communists and is therefore very bad, a rather unnuanced examination of poverty in the Muslim world, and "Why do men commit so many rape crimes?" (Apparently, women are engaged in a massive conspiracy to increase their power by withholding sex and rapists are retaliating in the only way they can. Someone on the politics forum seriously suggested this) I would suggest that the title of the politics forum be changed to "politics-lite" and that the requirements to post there be maintained. At the same time, another "politics" forum would be created. A user would be granted the privilege of posting in "politics" by the moderators only after he has demonstrated in "politics-lite" that he is capable of intelligent political conversation and could be revoked if he later demonstrates otherwise.

I rather doubt polygamy will be legalized in the United States any time soon. Public opinion is still solidly against it as demonstrated by public support for recent prosecutions of polygamists . The legalization of gay marriage is quite another story. Polls taken during the recent New York vote showed that the majority of Americans are now of the opinion that homosexuals should have the right to marriage. Recent studies by social scientists have shown that the outcomes of children raised by homosexual couples are at least as good as those of children raised by heterosexual couples. Homosexual couples tend to be wealthier and it is physically imposable for them to accidentally have a child both of which are statistically good things for their children, suggesting that there is a possibility that same sex couples may in fact lead to better outcomes for children. The only data I’ve seen suggesting poor outcomes for children raised by same sex couples is that these children are more then twice as likely to be bullied which is far from the parents’ fault. I fail to see anything lending credence to the claim that same sex marriage threatens traditional marriages. If your question about polygamy and gay marriage flows from the canard that “legitimizing gay marriage will legitimize polygamy, bestiality and pedophilia,” please do provide some evidence for such a claim. As for the claim that climate science is religion, swasont has said to drop it so I’ll only suggest that you look into the case McLean v. Arkansas in which the court made a finding of fact regarding what is science and what is religion. I would suggest that under the court’s test climate science is very clearly a science and not a religion.

Are you seriously going to accuse others of using "invalid" reasoning when you use logic like that? Of course you can find a stable families outside of marriage. No one is denying that, but it says nothing about the relative probabilities of stable families existing inside and outside of marriage.

I'm not entirely sure about that. While I think conservatives attempts to legislate morality are usually ridiculous, I find it rather hard to disagree with them when they say that stable families are the best setting for raising children. I tend to think that the government has a legitimate public policy interest in seeing that children are raised in a setting that will help them be productive members of society.

Would you happen to have a citation for your claim that most early United States Senators were former State Senators? The three early senators with whom I am most familiar would be the "Great Triumvirate" of Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay, only one of whom, Clay, was a State Senator before becoming a United States Senator. I agree with your idea that the function of the former method of selecting Senators served to make them more likely to be members of the elite/gentry. As an admitted elitist I consider this to be a rather good thing. As to Marat's point that senators already tend to be rich and therefore elite/anti-populist, I would point out that the wealthy and the elite are two very different classes and that the nouveau riche are typically excluded by the later. In the current system, the selection pressures for Senators are vote getting ability and, to the extent that wealth can help get votes by funding a campaign, wealth. I would argue that these have almost nothing to do with the ability to govern and therefore lead to the selection of "bad" Senators. On the other hand, the qualities necessary for admission to the elite include intellect, education and other specialized skills in addition to wealth. An example of a "specialized skill" of the elite would be their networking ability. The fact that someone has managed to be selected by the state legislature suggests that they are able to deal with their fellow elites which suggests that they will be able to deal with their fellow Senators and other government officials to get favorable policy for their constituents

While that's an interesting and somewhat convincing argument, its not the argument the court used. The court did not say that "perpetuating an advantage" violates the Fourteenth Amendment, they said "Hunter" refers to Hunter v. Erickson, SCOTUS, 1969. The citizens of Akron, Ohio had modified the city charter to make it so that, "any ordinance regulating real estate 'on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin or ancestry,'" required the approval, not only of the city council, but of the majority of the electorate. SCOTUS found, quite rightly, that this amendment to the city charter “place[d] special burden on racial minorities within the governmental process” and therefore violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal-protection clause. "Seattle" refers to Washington v. Seattle School District Number 1, SCOTUS, 1982. Seattle School District Number 1 had enacted a plan to integrate its schools by forced busing. The voters of Washington responded by enacting an initiative (Initiative 350) that said, “no school board . . . shall directly or indirectly require any student to attend a school other than the school which is geographically nearest or next nearest the student’s place of residence." But, school boards could enact policy to send a student to a far away school "if he requires special educational programs, or if the nearest or next nearest school is overcrowded or unsafe, or if it lacks necessary physical facilities." SCOTUS cited the precedent set by Hunter and decided that Initiative 350 violated the Fourteenth Amendment because "non-neutral allocations of power “place special burdens on racial minorities within the governmental process, thereby making it more difficult for certain racial and religious minorities than for other members of the community to achieve legislation that is in their interest.” In this case, The Sixth Circuit has decided that Prop 2 is in the vein of Initiative 350 and the aforementioned amendment to the Akron city charter and therefore applied the precedent of Hunter v. Erickson and Washington v. Seattle School District Number 1 to say that Prop 2 somehow creates an unconstitutional burden for minorities in the political arena. Personally, I see several problems with this line of reasoning. First, both Initiative 350 and the amendment to the Akron City charter clearly effected the political arena. They were meta-laws, laws about laws (or, more accurately, what could become law), namely, the Akron amendment decided what could and could not become city law and Initiative 350 decided what could and could not become Board-of-Education policy. The point being that a meta-law has the power to deny the minority fora to effect change. Apparently, the offending portions of Prop 2 are and I fail to see how these are meta-law falling under the scope of Hunter and Seattle, any more than any other law that forbids discrimination. The second hole in Judge Cole's logic is even more glaring. He himself points out that the logic behind The Supreme Court's decisions in Hunter and Seattle was Therefore, before we even get to the step of applying the Hunter/Seattle test for violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, we must answer the question of weather or not Prop 2 was neutral or non-neutral in its modification of political institutions(That is if, indeed, it did modify any political institution; as Judge Gibbons argued in his dissenting opinion, universities are not political institutions.) As the proposition expressly forbids the affected universities from either discriminating against or for anybody, I fail to see anything non-neutral about it. It would appear that the court applied a precedent intend for political, non-neutral laws to a law that was fundamentally non-political and fundamentally neutral. As you can see, there are some real questions about the application of the Hunter/Seattle precedent to this case. And, as I am bob000555, you should not be surprised to learn that I have some inside information on the matter. Suffice it to say that I would not be at all surprised if the Sixth Circuit decides to rehear the case en banc.

I thought it was explained in the original post, but I guess not. The Seventeenth Amendment made it so that United States Senators were directly elected instead of being selected by state legislatures.

The founders built two major checks on populism into the original constitution. These were the federal courts and the United States Senate. Judges serve for life and their salary cannot be lowered while they are on the bench. This design was intended to make it possible for judges to make principled but unpopular decisions without fear of repercussions. Additionally, federal judges are appointed, rather than elected, as some state judges are. This was intended to insulate them somewhat from the riffraff of politics. Similarly, senators serve staggered six year terms, unlike representatives’ two year terms. This was done so that no matter how far public opinion swings, only one third (at most) of the senate can change at one time. This somewhat insulates the senate from public opinion and makes principled public policy possible. These protections worked well for a time. The senate kept impulsive policy from being enacted and checked the House’s populism. The Courts could carry out judicial review after laws had been enacted and challenged. But, soon, one of the protections that kept populism in check vanished. Previously, senators were appointed by state legislatures rather then elected. This served to insulate the senate from electoral politics. During this time, both the Courts and the Senate were refuges for gentlemen statesmen. For the Senate, this changed with the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, which passed in 1917, during the Populist Era. The chamber that was once home to Statesmen like Webster, Clay and Calhoun soon became home to odious politicians. To some degree, the Senate still provides a check on the House, but in other respects, the Senate has run amuck. Take the filibuster for example. In the past, senators could be trusted to use the filibuster sparingly, only when they were truly incensed about an issue. But, now that the Statesmen have been replaced with petulant children, they threaten to filibuster any bill that doesn’t strike their fancy. If the Senate is to function in its intended manner: to be the deliberative upper chamber that checks the House’s populism, and to enact principled public policy, it needs to be populated be Statesmen. Unfortunately, the current electoral climate, Senate seats will be filled by people who are experts in electoral politics, in poll-worship, rather than people who are experts in Statesmanship, in good governance. The current debt ceiling crisis demonstrates how detrimental this can be. Traditionally, a Statesman would step in and help, but the Senate is no longer a breeding ground for Statesmen, and so they no longer exist and mere politicians are left to bicker. The solution of obvious: restore the Senate to its proper place as a chamber of principled discourse, replace the politicians with Statesmen, repeal the Seventeenth Amendment. What do you think? P.S: The check provided by the courts is also under threat. When the judges do their jobs by acting as a coequal branch of government and checking the others, they are often called “activist judges” (which, in its contemporary usage, is code for “judge who made a judgment I disagree with.”)

Are you impelling that the idea that women's entree into the workforce screwed up the economy is taboo? A best selling book was written on the topic eight years ago. http://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Mothers/dp/0465090826 I would suggest that the reason you're not getting much discussion on the topic is quite the opposite of it being taboo: it's old news.

No. As Fermat said, the explanation is too large for the margin. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Trade_Theory

There's another reason why this archaeologist/doctor comparison is fallacious: you're leaving out residency, which you've already acknowledged is stressful as hell. Even if we accept your premise that archaeologists spend 4 years in undergrad and 6-7 in graduate school (even though a PhD can be completed in 5), doctors still spend more time in training. A neurosurgery spends 4 years in college, 4 years in medical school, 1 year as a surgical intern, 5 to 6 years as a resident, and often 1-3 years as a fellow in some sub-specialty like pediatric neurosurgery or neurovascular surgery . Even the lowly family physician spends 4 years in college, 4 in medical school and 3 more in residency. That equals even the worst case scenario for training to be an archaeologist and every specialty trains for some amount of time between the 18 years spent preparing to be a nurovascular and the 11 years spent preparing to be a GP. Its easy to argue that doctors are over-glorified refrigerator repair men, until something goes horribly wrong. If there's ever an aneurysm in you medulla oblongata that's threatening to rupture, you'll gladly take the helicopter ride to one of the very few hospitals in the country that can help you (Johns Hopkins Hospital, The Mayo Clinic, Stanford University Medical Center, or Massachusetts General Hospital) and when the surgeon (who spent 18 years in training for the honor of being woken up at 2 in the morning to fix you) fixes you, you probably wont care so much that nurovascular surgeons make $500,000 per year. You will however, be glad that unlike a refrigerator repair man, he can't say the problem is too complicated and throw you to the curb. You'll probably also be glad that that $500,000 salary attracted some very bright person to medicine rather than law, investment banking or management consulting. As for your claims that medicine hasn't improved significantly recently and that doctors don't conduct original research (which you contrasted with archaeologists) you are, again, wrong. (You specifically mentioned cancer) As for the "doctors don't do original thinking" thing, the only reason you think that is that most people only interact with a certain kind of physician. Its true that the doctor you saw last time you had strep throat or the doctor who set your broken arm is probably not doing any original research...unless you happened to see that doctor at a research or university hospital. Doctors at research hospitals and university hospitals often hold dual appointments as professors of medicine or research scientists and it is in their job description to do original research. Along with normal patient care, they do things like carry out clinical trails and develop experimental protocols.

Sure. But first a note on the academic study of history. You're making the claim that the USSR was the first country to liberate women and asking someone to prove you wrong. That's simply not how historians work. If you want to make a claim, you offer evidence. You don't simply amuse something happened because it sounds right. This results in laughable inanity like being wrong about era of the invention of the income tax by over 1800 years. "Truthiness" and "sounds right" are not forms of evidence. Now, setting aside the problem of an absolute disregard for academic procedure, we come to the next problem with you claim the the USSR was the first to liberate women: you failed to state exactly what you mean by liberating women. This turns out to be a real problem because there are so many possible definitions for the phrase. In the context of this thread, the first employment of women seems germane. This of course, happened well before the epoch of communism. Even before the industrial revolution, during the putting-out system, women had a definite role. We use the word "distaff" to mean "of or relating to wives" because wives had exclusive responsibly for the spinning of fibers on distaffs. Alternatively, in the context of this thread, you could mean the employment of women outside of the home. This, also, happened well before communism. During the early industrial revolution laborers in textile mills were mostly women with male overseers. By the early 1800's we had the Lowel System in the United States in which textile workers were almost exclusively women. Getting farther outside the context of this thread, you could mean women's suffrage. In this case, you are right that the Bolsheviks made a big ado about their granting women the vote. You are however wrong about them being the first to do so; New Zealand was the first major country to grant women suffrage nearly 24 years earlier. Your argument that the employment of women increased the cost of living is a perfectly valid one (see: "The Two Income Trap," Elizabeth Warren.) But this stuff about the communists being the first to do this or that is just ridiculous. Untruth in the furtherance of truth is still untruth. And even if the communists were the first to enact some policy, it wouldn't necessarily mean that that policy was "bad". Please take your Glen-Beckian logic elsewhere.

You continue to spew "facts" that are patently and demonsterably untrue. The first recorded instance on an income tax was in China in the year 10CE during the reign of Wang Mang. The British instatuted their first inome tax in 1799 which was 19 years before Karl Marx was born and at least 40 years before comunism was even thought of. http://earlyworldcoins.com/articles/wangmang http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/history/taxhis1.htm

Photons do not have mass.

How many “first things” did the communists do exactly? Every time conservatives want to bemoan some change they call it “the first thing the [communist or Nazis] did.” In just the past year, I’ve heard “The first thing the [Nazis/communists] did was ban smoking,” “The first thing the [Nazis/communists] did was ‘go after’ the guns,” “The first thing the [Nazis/communists] did was install universal health care,” and now “The first thing communist did when they took control of the USSR was ‘liberate women’.” [sic] The only thing I can possibly think of to explain the phenomenon of the multitude of “first things” is the seeping of Glenn-Beckian rhetoric and its requisite disregard for truth into the mainstream.

The current predictions from Professor Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia Center for Politics show the democrats losing control of the House by a sizable margin but holding on to the Senate either by virtue of a 51-49 majority or by virtue of a 50-50 split and the Vice President being a democrat. http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/ My observation is that conservatives are losing the momentum they had a few months ago while liberals are gaining some momentum. I would predict that the Republican bite of congress will be slightly smaller then expected. That, however, is besides the point of this thread. Even with democratic majorities in both houses, Obama has been making the case that Republican obstructionism is holding back the country( and I rather agree, although that’s not really the point of this thread.) Routine nominations are being held up. The threat of a filibuster has become the rule rather then the exception with sixty votes rather then fifty needed to get anything done. With the loss of a majority in one house of congress and eight or nine members in the other, these problems can only get worse. Without drastic action from the president, gridlock has the potential the bring the engine of public policy to a stand still just as the stakes become higher then ever. In my opinion the president needs to (for lack of a better term) stop playing pussyfoot with the republicans. If he believes republicans are holding up nominations for partisan reasons he should do something about it. If I was his speech writer I would propose he give this speech on the evening following the election: The threat of “fill[ing] every single vacancy in the federal government with…hand picked appointees” is actually quite powerful as at anytime there are numerous vacancies in the various district and appellate courts. Filling all of these with hand picked appointees could have a significant and lasting effect on the judiciary. There are other ways for the President to get tough on the new congress. My question is what, if anything, do you think he should do?

You’re falling into a common fallacy regarding probability. It’s the same fallacy used by religious types to argue that there must be a God and it goes along these lines: “This particular arrangement of mater and of the laws of physics is incredibly unlikely.” This is, of course, true, but the problem comes when we attach a certain reverence to this importability. The religious use it as proof of a plan which the use to imply a creator. The fact is, even though this particular arrangement of the universe is unlikely it had to have some arrangement and each arrangement is equally unlikely. Think of it as a raffle with many entries: one of them will win even though each one is unlikely to win. The one that ends up winning was no more or less unlikely to win then any other. A uniform and balanced universe would be a homogeneous universe with all areas having the same density. Even in such a universe given enough time areas of higher relative density would emerge via Brownian motion. These areas would then exert a gravitational force and attract surrounding material becoming even more dense and making their gradational fields even stronger leading to a snowball effect of sorts.

The problem with disclosing the purchase of a protective derivative is not so much the signaling of the risk inherent in the underlying security. The problem is more that it signals to potential lenders and counter parties that the firm habitually engages in dangerous trades. This may or may not be true but economic signaling theory tells us that agents will attempt to infer information from imperfect signals. That is to say that if it was disclosed that a firm had purchased protection on a security it would be acknowledged that some of the risk in that security had been offset but it would through the stability of the rest of the portfolio into question. This would make it almost imposable for the firm to get the overnight loans that are the lifeblood of a bank. To prevent this from happening firms would just stop hedging leading to disastrous consequences.

The problem is that risk is inherent in the banking system. The marginal cost of accepting additional risk is low enough that if hedging become more difficult companies would be more likely to simply not hedge then to give up the massive upside potential that is involved in risky securities. Am I to take this to mean that you read the entire post and then were intentionally intellectually dishonest? You responded to parts of my post by not taking into account other parts of the post that qualified them? Is this not just a clever form of a straw man?

No disclosure is bad because if buying protection requires people to disclose that they hold dangerous securities they will simply never buy protection. As I said one of the purposes of derivatives is hedging, this use simply doesn’t receive attention because it is a much more interesting story to claim that Wall Street was wildly risking everything and putting the tax payers on the hook. Did you read and consider the entire post or did you pick out one part you thought you could criticize easily and ignore the rest?