Phi for All

I agree. Do you think this plays a part in the virginity issue, the trust issue or both? I could see men developing a bit of guilt because of their disproportionate investment. It just seems to me that normal caution (conservatism) can become overblown into an irrational fear (ultra-conservatism). Men often hate to admit their fears and will thus come up with lots of justifications for it, and the greater the fear the more wacky those justifications can become. So the establishment of some kind of moral control through virginity manipulation, denial of sex education and birth control, and anti-abortion laws becomes more bizarre as the fear becomes more extreme.

I think father/daughter dynamics are a whole other matter, but it might tie into the whole protecting-your-children-at-all-cost scenario, living and unborn alike. And it could be that virginity = trust and losing virginity, for women, is a betrayal of trust in the eyes of some men.

Since the age of consent where you live is 16, and you seem to have no restrictions about who a 16 can have sex with as many jurisdictions do, I'd say the problem isn't one of any sex-positive movement. Your jurisdiction has chosen to leave these girls to the mercy of middle-aged men when they could just as easily invoke accepted practices from other countries to keep them from being preyed on. In many countries it's illegal for someone who is either in a position of authority or beyond a certain age difference to engage in sex with even a consenting 16 year-old.

I think the foundation for extreme conservatism is rooted in fear. The more someone is afraid of the consequences of a progressive action, the more they fear that outcome. A lot can happen to erode trust and I think the more extremely conservative the person is, the quicker that erosion is. I also think extreme conservatism isn't a very positive stance when it comes to forgiveness. My experiences have shown me that people who fear betrayal the most are the least likely to ever forgive it. Sometimes that fear of betrayal is so extreme it can cause those people to mistrust even those who've never broken trust with them.

I don't think it's the obsession about virginity as much as the obsession about fidelity and the insecurity about progeny. If a man controls who a woman has sex with, he is assured of who the father of her children is. Being cuckolded seems to be an insult of such magnitude that men will go to ultimate lengths to prevent it. And to risk passing on all you've achieved to another man's children is even worse. Basic trust is such an important concept among humans that trying to do anything remotely sane in its absence causes lots of strange behavior. I think the more conservative a person is, the less they trust the motives of others, even those closest to them.

I agree, but don't be so hard on yourself. I can see why my analogy made you think we were playing sports. Flip. Flop.

It doesn't really matter when you're making vague, debunked accusations. Implicating the government is implicating the Obama administration. And it's simply not true that the government blamed it "on an angry mob pissed off at a rovocative [sic] film about Mohammed for almost 2 months". You're repeating a lie. In a large region where "impending volatility" is a day-to-day concern. To borrow from American football, we don't have the forces for a man-to-man defense. When you play a zone defense, you try to react as quickly as possible to threats as they happen, knowing that you risk giving up a little to prevent giving up a lot. In this case, it's tragic that the little involved a secondary embassy and four people's lives, but this is the real world and Ambassador Stevens was a big boy and knew the consequences. He chose to stay where he was. Again, if allowing him to resign gives him the ability to uncover this deep secret you've been hinting at for 13 pages, why would Obama do it? And where does that fit into your latest squawk about there being something wrong with the story of Petraeus' resignation? You're making less sense than usual.

I agree completely, so I'm wondering why you (and FOX News) keep saying the Obama administration did that? When something is debunked as untrue so many times, the fact that you keep repeating the untruth makes your stance vacuous at best. His only part was that his quick-reaction force wasn't configured in a way that would have let him respond to this threat. I blame this part of the problem the least since the Libyan government, the February 17 Brigade and the CIA team were supposed to have been in a much better position to offer support. I don't get why you think Petraeus' resignation is some kind of cover-up by the Obama administration. Wouldn't he be more valuable as a scapegoat, openly blaming him for falling down on the job instead of this embarrassing admission? Where's the benefit, the motivation?

This is the kind of fatuous, slanted, manipulative propaganja that FOX News worshippers love to get high on. It has no substance, no motivation and plays on vague doubts and fears held by poorly informed and dimly educated mob-mentalists. What it fails to actually say gets gleefully filled in by the masses who then fail to question why this situation is supposed to be anything more than what it looks like.

In the end, no matter how you dress it up, it all boils down to corporations with way too much clout, masking their private primary agendas with secondary and tertiary concerns that play on the fears and desires of an under-educated and under-informed populace. All the crazy wackiness is just smoke and mirrors so our laws and thus our public funds can be manipulated to serve the few instead of the many. While it may seem futile to many to fight such insidious greed, we must keep in mind that our system allows us to change this if we can be tenacious and smart and require that our leaders be tenacious and smart as well.

It never ceases to amaze me when I hear this kind of inhuman, hate-filled raving coming from someone who claims some kind of moral high ground. I'm sure, in your narrow view, the vast majority of those slutty whores are out there having sex with everyone but you and something drastic needs to be done to make sure they all pay for it, no matter the context, no matter the situation. This stance on sterilization is simply the next step along the road to further hypocrisy and malevolence cloaked in the guise of "doing what's right". I find it shameful that you lack the ability to place yourself objectively in the positions others may face in their lifetimes while claiming the same rights as those who can. Your views are anathema to a functioning, healthy society of cooperative, intelligent, compassionate, real human beings. Even the fact that you would separate a "woman's rights" from those of "a human being's" tells me that your perspective is extremely detrimental to civilized human development.

No need for all the hand-waving. The whole telling us what to do bit is called "government", and it doesn't matter who's in charge at the time, it's what we pay them to do. What we should be concerned with is how SMART their choices are, how they choose to use the funds we give them to make our society better. The fact of the matter is, no one can stop anyone from making a mistake, and no one should stop anyone from correcting a mistake. I'm sorry you assign some magical importance to newly created embryos just because they could one day be a human. Both sperm and egg are alive already and an embryo is just another stage of development. If you let it continue to develop there are all kinds of moral, financial and temporal responsibilities to be faced. The context of conception can differ greatly from the context of birth and child-rearing, and no matter how many holier-than-thou hypocrites get in the way, no one should be held responsible for unwanted biological processes. Since abortions will continue whether they're legal or not, it all boils down to how safe you want them to be and how many more resources you want to exhaust fighting the inevitable. I merely wanted to address your argument from incredulity regarding freedom and liberty and how making decisions about your own body is basic to that freedom. I'm really not interested in your pointless and ultimately futile misogynistic assertions. Grow a uterus and let the government tell you what to do with it, see how it feels.

It's completely possible that you value the concept of your own progeny above the vessel you'd use to create them. It's also possible you feel the need to control the actions of others that you deem unacceptable. Both explanations have ample evidence to support them.

I sincerely hope not. I also googled "asshole gauge", and since Gauge is also a semi-popular feminine name, I was similarly disappointed. MIT has had some promising success with an application known as the Jerk-o-Meter *, but its applications are all voice-activated and not at all suited to our internet discussion forum format. * I sense further elaboration and hilarity in an upcoming installment of Swans on Tea.

I understand, but I think it's clearly our plurality voting system that's at fault. If people thought voting for someone who represents their views more closely than one of the major parties, and felt that their vote might not end up helping someone from the majority opposition party, I think they'd be less likely to support an Obama or a Romney choice. We clearly need a system that in no way seems like you might "throw your vote away", or in essence vote unproductively.

I would love to see that. I was actually thinking about reviving this thread myself, since my state voted to draft a proposition limiting campaign contributions by corporations. Montana went even further and established a policy that denies corporate personhood based on the Citizens United ruling because corporations are NOT people.

I think I see what you're saying, that since the Republicans represent the right and the Democrats the left, and they're the majority parties, Obama is the only productive choice for those on the extreme left and therefore represents the way they vote. Is this correct? I think most people from the US here would agree that we would all benefit from more diverse representation. I've voiced this concern many times myself and that stance seems to go unchallenged. Personally I would be much more interested in discussing ways to correct our two-party reliance, and practical ways to approach voters with a better way to elect our top officials.

One of the things you must learn to do is look for the fallacious logic. When the issue is low dosage levels of fluoride and the argument against refers to ingesting huge amounts of fluoride, which is clearly a strawman fallacy, it should tell you that the argument is intellectually dishonest. Why would they do that? Part of it is misunderstanding and fear. Another reason is these people have alternative products they want you to buy. Note that while the "natural" movement is telling you how evil chemicals and vaccinations and synthetic products are, scientists, pharmacologists and synthetic manufacturers aren't telling you the same thing about "natural" products. Organics and natural products are perfectly fine, they'll tell you, but they're generally not sustainable for the whole planet. When you start making products for an immense market, you find that you need modern ways of quickly producing what you need. Organics and naturals are meant to appeal to people who are easily frightened of things they don't understand. And believe me, there is A LOT to understand when it comes to science. And the knowledge is all layered, so in order to understand one thing, you have to understand four other things first, and those four things really require a basic understanding of even more things. I get it, it's a daunting challenge to educate yourself in science when it's so much easier and seemingly intuitive to believe the con men handing out candy bits of pop sci "wisdom". They make it very appealing and a lot less time-consuming. People will tell you all kinds of things to sell you on their products and services. They'll tell you they can remove bodily toxins through your feet if you'll buy their Energy Field Osmosis Detox Foot Bath session. Or they'll tell you they can remove built-up earwax using their Holistic Pressure-Differential Ear Candling technique. It's up to you to find out that there are no physiological mechanisms in the body that would draw toxins to a single part (there's really not a consistent definition of toxin; the body needs a variety of chemicals to do what it does). You're the one who has to discover that the Ear Candles are made of cloth impregnated with the very wax that seems to get pulled from your ears. You're the one who has to decide what to believe. We have a whole planet full of a growing population that doesn't seem all that docile or sick from chemtrails or dying from pesticides or fluoride poisoning. @ellementcollector1: We have no reliable methodology or equipment for measuring how much of an asshole a person is. I googled "asshole probe" and believe me, it's not what you'd expect.

This is a very good point. It's far too easy to claim the other guy is crazy, and indeed it has been my kneejerk reaction to the majority of Republican actions of late, and it bothers me greatly. I know it clouds objectivity to dismiss a whole group of people because of the unreasonableness of the most vocal fringe elements. In my most objective moments though, I still conclude that it's the religious right that is causing such jarring dissonance within the GOP. Their insistence on sexual control and their hyper-conservatism is completely at odds with a platform of less government intervention, personal privacy rights and supporting great schools. There must be some way they can stop allowing so many extremist ideas to overcome the good things they want to accomplish, and I hope the president can help them find that path, being a more sensible religious man himself.

First, the first $40M in taxes collected don't just go to general education, it will go to our public school capital construction assistance fund. The money will build new schools and renovate old ones rather than be used for teaching (a fine point, but one that was made clear to voters; this is for education infrastructure). Second, and I think more importantly, this will allow us to grow industrial hemp. I would think most of the US should be thanking us for this. When we can show that it's really easy to tell the difference between cannabis for recreation and hemp for rope and oil and paper and biofuel, I don't think the Feds can get away with busting us for industrial use. This will force them to reconsider the use of hemp as a SMART way to grow our economy using sustainable, practical means. And third, of course, we'll be saving law enforcement from having to conduct and prosecute on the 10,000 yearly cases of marijuana possession that clog the system and make it harder to investigate more meaningful crimes. All the laws that govern alcohol use will apply to marijuana. The only thing I'm unclear on is how they'll be rating "under the influence" when it comes to driving impaired. Blood alcohol levels are fairly well understood, and afaik before legalization if you registered ANY traces of marijuana on a roadside test you would be arrested. I don't know if they really have an acceptable level of cannabis intoxication the way they do alcohol.

OMG that's funny! I shalt be breaking the 8th Commandment with this all day long. Thank you very much!

Could you give us an overview, please? It will be difficult to get anyone to read your book (even if you actually attached a copy), especially since it's not conventional physics. Perhaps start with an excerpt so we can see the foundations you've laid and how they differ from accepted theory.

So you really believed Romney when he said he wouldn't raise taxes on anyone, that he could pay for his plans with closing millionaire loopholes in the tax structure? Even after he admitted in September that he'd have to raise taxes on the middle class? That's your class, isn't it? That's what I couldn't believe from my middle class Republican friends, they kept saying Obama would raise their taxes but Romney wouldn't. And that's not what either candidate said.

You said it better than I did. But I'm still a better asshole.

I don't know much about why Puerto Rico remains a territory instead of a state. I would think we would welcome more taxpayers and a full state in Latin America, and I would think the increased taxation on the population and businesses would be offset by the same kind of economic surge that Hawaii felt when it became a state. I love the similar climate of the Yucatan peninsula, and with the crime surge in Mexico I would prefer vacationing in a US territory. ' I have a milestone anniversary coming up. I'll check out Puerto Rico as an island getaway.