Severian

On the contrary, I can see this happening within 10 years or so. In the UK, the married couples tax allowance was already abolished back in 2000, so the tax incentive of being married in the UK is gone. Now, the UK is already thinking about a system in which the rights of non-married cohabiting couples will be the same as those that married couples have (eg. hospital visitation, inheritence, rights to children etc). If this comes to pass there will be no legal reason for couples to marry any more. Maybe then the state can start minding its own business.

Well, laws banning inter-racial marriage were a step in the right direction at least. Any marriage banned is good for me (although I obviously don't support the racism inherent in the distinction).

I agree with that, although I do approve of banning gay marriage.

We need to bring up our children to understand that corruption is abhorent, and we need to reinforce that in schools. The reason there is so much corruption in our society right now is because people feel they will be disadvantaged if they do not do it. Since everyone else does it, they don't see it as a moral problem. For example, shop owners in the UK pay a special tax which is supposed to cover the amount of money they are expected to not declare in tax. So a butcher for example is expected to eat from his shop without declaring it and the tax he would have had to pay if he sold it to himself is estimated. Also there is an extra charge because it is assumed that he will take money out of the cashbox directly and not declare it. In this sort of atmosphere, where corruption is expected, we should not be surprised to find it going on.

But how much is a 'galloon'?

That soiunds far too high. The unemployment in the UK is much lower than that (although I think the way they count is rather dodgy.

Let me ask a question to Bascule and IMM: if you had to choose between the life of an adult chimpanzee and your own baby child, which would you choose?

This is a good point, because it illustrates what I think is a misconception. We usually believe that jobs like being a lawyer or a doctor or a banker require a person with a particular mental disposition. This is true: they need to be trained and in order to get through that training and be effective in the job they have to have a degree of intelligence and self organization which many people do not have. Therefore there is a restricted class of people who can do these jobs. However, we usually also believe that the vast majority of jobs, such as a garbage collector, a mailman, a labourer or a burger flipper can be done by anyone. There is no training required therefore there is no restriction on who can do these jobs. But the latter opinion is not true. Most of these jobs require a certain disposition or outlook on life. I certainly could not do any of these jobs because I am too highly trained. My disposition is entirely wrong, and I wouldn't last very long in any of them. (This is putting aside the fact that I would be too expensive to hire.) The problem with unemployment in the west is not that there are no jobs, it is that the population is trained in the wrong things. Have you ever tried to get a plumber on short notice? Why should that be such a problem in a society with unemployment? It is because the unemployed don't want to be plumbers - they want to be 'management consultants', or 'IT specialists' or whatever. I don't think there is anything wrong with this per se, but we do need people to do the less skilled jobs too.

A chimpanzee is a chimpanzee, but a human child is a human child. That is enough.

Anyone who could be completely described by their choice of username and avatar would have to be incredibly shallow.

If we are going to define homosexuality as 'normal' I don't see how one can possible call asexuality 'devient' or 'abnormal'. Homosexuals are not attracted to members of the opposite sex, while hetrosexuals are not attracted to members of the same sex. Asexuals are not attracted to either, so they are a combination of both.

Are you trolling with that statement, or do you genuinely believe that?

I wouldn't like to say that it was impossible, but I think it is a bit far fetched. The distance to the ionosphere is not very well defined (the ionosphere 'switches on' slowly) and changes depending on where you are, so you would get huge dissipation from the parts of the wave which were not resonant. I imagine that the energy requirements to do this would be staggeringly huge. But even more worrying would be the health (and environmental) effects of pumping so much energy and electromag radition out into the atmosphere. Just look at the width of the 8Hz peak and you will see that a it would not be an efficient resonance:

Lol. Nicely said.

I would suggest Halzen and Martin. It is quite basic and should be managable with a decent knowledge of quantum mechanics. It completely avoids quantum field theory, and uses more physical arguments instead. It is not very rigorous, but it is a good place to start.

If I have any mod powers I am certainly unaware of them. I have no extra buttons to press saying 'delete thread' or 'launch tactical nuke' or anything like that.

A 'snot'? Lol' date=' how old are you? A perfectly enforced system would work, but first of all, the current system is impossible to enforce because it encourages people to circumvent it, and secondly you are losing a resource which would make everyone richer. Do you really need me to explain why I think shooting illegal aliens would be barbaric? The first two sentences in your point indicates that it is a reason for the restrictions. I think if you asked the average person on the street (and it is the opinions of voters which count) you will get an answer containing the words 'them' and 'us'. Now it is you who are making the assumptions. Illegal aliens may need a little help getting set up but there is no reason why they would need welfare once they have found a good productive place in society. They are just as likely to find a productive place as many of the teenagers who are of 'white culture' but sponge off the state for years and years.

I think this brings up the central reason why I don't dislike immigrants. I don't value someone more because they are the same nationality as myself. in fact, I tend to have a higher opinion of the disadvantaged from underdeveloped countries because they have at least had the initiative to try and do something about it, while the disadvantaged from my own society have failed in a comparatively rich environment. (That is of course a generalization.)

Yes we have a privite forum (3 in fact) where we gossip about you all. Edit: that sort of gossiping is quite dangerous actually since we occasionally promote people to experts or mods and I worry that they will find some of the things I said about them behind their back.

'Expiration' is one of these words I really hate. What was wrong with 'expiry'?

Oh - I hadn't realized that either. Seems a bit pointless then.

Why is that? I am genuinely curious. I would rather find useful work for them all, and failing that have the best person for the job irrespective of where they are from. This brings up a more pressing issue: we should be putting new laws in place to prevent cute women leaving the country.

Oh - I thought everyone could do that. As you can probably tell from the wee red dot, I always hide my online status.

Its probably a good job, since I would go a bit rampant.

That is not only barbaric - it is moronic. Unfortunately this is not the reason that you restrict immigrants. Firstly, you restrict them because they are culturally different from yourself. Secondly you restrict them because you have a (false) perception that people with degrees from rich countries are going to be more useful to your society. It is incredibly easy to get into the US for another western country. But the people who come from Mexico are just as likely to be constructive members of society as a rich person from the UK. So why do I get spam mail from the US government offering me a green card every few weeks, while people from Mexico are being deported? You (and the UK for that matter) are squandering an incredibly valuable resource. We would all be better off economically if we found some way to help the immigrants become useful members of our society. I find it a little surprising that the US, given its history, hasn't learnt this.