Severian

I never made any judgment - I was pointing out that it is not democratic.

It certainly was rooted in science until they made observations which indicated it wasn't true. That is the problem with people who have scientific 'faith' - they think that because all scientific data supports one hypothesis it must be true. In actuality, all hypotheses can only be proven false, or assigned a probability based on how well supported by the evidence they are. This probability though is highly subjective and contains all sorts of assumptions, so one has to be very careful when claiming something to be scientific 'fact'.

A huge amount of rubbish is published on the arXiv, so I would say it has a rather low signal-to-noise ratio (I presume that is the way round you meant). I am a professional scientist working on high energy phenomenology, so in principle hep-ph is my field (http://arxiv.org/list/hep-ph/new), but I am lucky if I find one paper in 30 to be interesting.

The trick to stopping bullies is to go for the eyes. Very few bullies will be willing to risk it with someone who has the reputation for eye-gouging.

To follow the analogy to its logical conclusion, maybe we should provide free automatic rifles to prospective bank robbers. That way we they could shoot their way out of bank robberies more effectively and wouldn't have to face the consequences of their actions. But I must confess to not liking your analogy. I think you are being rather offensive in equating teenagers having sex to criminals. I think you should try and be a little more tolerant. "Quelling the drive" was not my intention. Forcing them to be responsible for their actions was.

No, kids have sex (and unprotected sex) because they are not well enough educated/conditioned/trained. As I said before, they need to be taught the consequences of their actions.

Is this new 'democratic way' the way in which the minority disagree with the majority so violently that they declare their independence? Which laws would these be?

It is almost as if the question "What is time?" is a trigger (in certain individuals) to perform a complete mind dump onto the keyboard. A sort of typing diarrhea, so to speak.

Sorry, but that was utter shite.

Er... no. You have to hit the beam coming the other way, which is roughly 10 microns in diameter.

I posted this a while ago: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?p=380520#post380520

No - you were neglecting a valid argument because it does not apply to the US. That is just bad form. No-one forced them to get pregnant (leaving rape aside), so no-one is being forced here. I think this is quite a nice analogy, because it is your own behaviour causing consequences you need to be held responsible for. You can choose not to walk your dog (or not have one) just as you can choose not to have sex. (Notice you can also avoid getting pregnant by not lifting a "finger".) Both have consequences. If you take your dog for a walk you may be forced to pick up its poo (if a cop spots you, you will be arrested if you don't); if you have sex you may be forced to be pregnant for 9 months. This is just daft. How can one violate a woman's body by not doing something? They are in a self-created situation; all an anti-abortion law does is prevent them applying a quick "fix".

It is a bit pointless to discuss this if we don't know what the actual question asked was. It could have been "If control could be successfully handed over to Iraqi forces, would you support bringing US troops home within a year?". It is about time that journalists started giving their readers fuller information.

I wish I had a secretary.

A lack of friction. It is friction that damps orbits enough for massive compact objects to form. Since dark matter presumably only has a weak interaction there is no effective frictional force.

I'm sorry. I didn't notice the stipulation in the original post that we should only discuss laws in the US. I don't advocate forced pregnancy. Forced labour is fine in my view. If, for example, someone breaks the law, they may have to do some community service. That is forced labour, but you probably don't have a problem with it. And we don't need an illegal act to force labour. For example, all self employed people have to fill in their tax forms. People whose dogs shit in the park have to pick it up. Would you regard these as unconstitutional? People have to do things they don't like to do all the time - especially if they are a consequence of their actions. Is that straw coming out of your ears? I never once suggested that people had to like being pregnant, and I certainly never suggested that they be sent to jail, put to death or raped if they didn't. Why would I want to? So do I. I hope you weren't planning to. And I also hope that you weren't suggesting that an unborn baby is 'violating' its mother's body by existing.

OK, I see. I had been kind of assuming that "Newest SFN Style" was ... er... newest.

I think having a rather large army camped in Kosovo may also help their 'control' a little.

I am confused. I don't have a 'Community' on the navigation bar - I have 'Forums'. And isn't the User CP where it always was?

I think my change of opinion has partly come about through the realization that pregnancy is really not that bad. So the woman has a few months of discomfort - big deal! It is not like you are condemning her to 20 years in prison. For that matter many countries still have military service; I would rather be pregnant than do a year of military service, but we don't regard military service as an abuse of our rights. I think the other contributing factor to my change of heart is in having a child of my own. The miracle of childbirth was amazing and I couldn't imagine a world without my daughter in it. Every child in the world is a gift we should embrace.

You are strengthening my point, not yours. There has been peace in NI because a liberal democratic government maintained the status quo, treating all citizens equally and allowing the time to wash away the hurts. There would have been an absolute bloodbath had NI been handed over to the Republic. I think the only way out of the Israeli/Palestine issue is to create a new state which is not Israel and is not Palestine, which encompasses both cultures and treats everyone equally. I don't envisage that happening any time soon because the hardliners won't allow it, but that is the only way. First of all, I wouldn't trust the US to be impartial over NI, so they should keep their noses out. Secondly, only an idiot would have supported the independence of NI when the situation was getting better by the day. But even though the situation in Kosovo was improving, the UN, US and EU still stuck their big noses in an made it all worse again.

Are you implying that you think this would be a good thing?

From your figures, you increased your money by a factor of 5.5, which over 20 years is equivalent to an interest rate of about 8.9%, which is not too bad, but not amazing.

I don't know. There is just something about blogs that smacks so much of opinionated, self aggrandizing egotism. I mean, when you are writing the blog, are you really thinking that people will find it interesting? "Oh wow, my readers are going to love this. Their lives will be changed forever!" There is so so so much rubbish one the web in the form of blogs. Do we really want to add to it? I must admit to having the same felling about starting threads. Why would anyone be interested in my opinion? So I tend to find myself just responding to topics I feel strongly about, or correcting someone when they say something stupid, or just answering a question when I know the answer and think I can help clear up the confusion.

You are talking about a regime that is no longer in power. The things that were done in the war were terrible, I agree. But they are in the past and should remain there. Do you really want to continue to live in a climate of hostility? And I think that is exactly the problem. The people who burned your customs post are living inside the borders of Kosovo - they are people who you separated from their state. You are recreating the same tensions all over again. Are you now going to arrest any Serbians living within Kosovo who choose to protest? Are they going to have to fight with rifles against a modern Nato army? Are they going to have to die for their freedom? Because quite frankly, the rabidity of feeling from Kosovans (as demonstrated by your post) leads me to believe that there will be more bloodshed.