Pangloss

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If we didn't split up over abortion I can't imagine splitting up over gay marriage. Anger over this is mainly in the province of activists and those directly impacted by the limitations of the law, which is a relatively small portion of society. Revolutions are the province of large-scale social groups. Unfortunately for emotional advocates, the public at large is not highly motivated on this issue. That could well be a factor in polling, by the way -- people tend to support the status quo when the status quo isn't hurting them. Once they start to realize that it's hurting someone else, and that changing that won't hurt them, opinion tends to come around. I believe that's what's happening on this issue, and that that's supported by the polling data, though I have no sources handy at the moment.

Nice post, Sisyphus. As Edward Everett said after Lincoln followed him on the speaker's podium at Gettysburg, I wish I could come close to saying in two hours what you can say in two minutes. Hat's off.

That's VBA for you; I sympathize. It's a lot better with Visual Studio and SQL Server as well. Heck, it's better in the world of data-driven iPhone applications. (lol) I'm not sure about all that you're doing in your app, but the big-picture answer to your question is that you need to run the query at form load to populate the listbox. If it's staggering down to subsequent listboxes after the first one is chosen, then you need to have those trigger off selection events for the previous listbox. I don't know how that is done in VBA/Access.

Try taking off the semi-colon on the end (actually everything after .Value) and see if that does it. strSQL = "SELECT [title] FROM Table1 WHERE LIKE '" & cboCode.Value or strSQL = "SELECT [title] FROM Table1 WHERE [code] LIKE " & cboCode.Value (the second one just removes the single quote after LIKE) If that doesn't work, try this one: strSQL = "SELECT [title] FROM Table1 WHERE [code] LIKE '" & cboCode.Value & "'" (single-double after LIKE, then double-single-double at the end) I didn't realize you were using VBA rather than regular VB -- they're slightly different, and I should have picked up on that sooner since you were talking about Access, sorry. But it looks like truedeity picked up on it. It sounds like you're real close to the end.

With regard to the above, the unmarried one is "Barbara". Not Jenna. You'll want to be clear on that point.

(Is this subject line ok? I saw that Phi already changed it once but I thought it was still a little confusing.) That's cool, I hope you get a good photo.

Quite right, and well put.

Well it sounds like you're close, but there's a hitch somewhere. Usually when I'm in that position I throw down some break points, add some variables to a watch list, and run the debugger. But I'm guessing you're not really familiar with that practice. It's kinda hard to describe, but basically it allows you to run each line of code one step at a time and monitor the values in the variables to see if they're correct at that point in time. If they're empty then that tells you something. There are tutorials around the net for this but they're kinda spotty and many are quite dated. I'll look around. Have you checked to make sure all your variables match up and that you're calling all objects by their correct name from the form? (Meaning if you call an object "textbox1" on the form then you have to call it "textbox1" in the code -- seems obvious but it's easy to get confused.) I'm not as familiar with VBA as I am with more traditional Windows forms and Web forms, but if you want to send it to me I'll be happy to take a look at it.

Thanks, I appreciate that. I agree that the importance of an issue to an individual is not an objective matter. What can and should be objective, however, is the process by which society makes a decision on whether or not to solve a problem. On that basis I believe that gay marriage is simply not sufficiently important to warrant a judicial fiat or any other solution that goes against the majority opinion, because of the repercussions of that action. But I have no problem with your reasons for thinking differently. I absolutely agree that there are many times and issues on which we shouldn't compromise. Equal protection is not one of them. If it were I'd be demanding an end to affirmative action and progressive taxation tomorrow -- as you say, we are all members of some minority, you're absolutely right about that. But I see no need to press those issues. That's because I believe those specific freedoms are less important than the larger issues at stake. In short, like the founding fathers, I believe in compromise. But obviously we feel differently at a fundamental level and I respect your opinion on it. I do think we agree on whether public opinion can continue to be pressed in concert with other efforts. I think you're going to find the next four years much more frustrating than I will. I'm going to be really happy with the 10% change here and the 20% change there, on this issue and that. You're going to be very upset at the lack of 100% change across the board. But there's no question in my mind that we'll be better off with those 10% and 20% changes than we would be had we put our feet down on every issue and gotten nothing done, as has been the case now for decades on issue after issue (particularly energy). I say this not to attack you, but just to suggest that you reconsider what the word "progress" means, especially with regard to the long timeline (and memory) of human history.

Okies, well I appreciate the reply. Maybe I'm just tilting at the wrong windmills again. Wouldn't be the first time. It still sounds to me like we need to be putting filters in smokestacks, but I guess I can see why that's no real help on the larger issue.

The bank bailouts are going to need a lot more scrutiny, and they'll probably get it. The news this past week of Goldman Sachs giving out $10.93 billion in employee bonuses after receiving $10 billion in bailout money was staggering and threw just about everyone for a loop. And the worst part of it was, they weren't the only ones. But the changes in lending rates have already created a huge spike in real estate interest. We could see a big surge in lending soon, kick-starting the economy back into swing.

Sure, that would be something along the lines of "if the majority of the people want something then it must be a good idea". Which is certainly an understandable sentiment in a democracy, until we consider the way politics works, and the attention span and depth of interest by the general public -- then it starts to look dangerous. Some state constitutions have been amended hundreds (or if you consider complete re-writes, thousands) of times. But as we saw in California there's really not all that much difference between 50% and 60% when it comes to a motivated voting base and well-funded special interest groups. And while it's certainly possible for there to be well-funded special interest groups on BOTH sides of an issue, at the state level things tend to lopsidedly favor one one point of view or the other, because the big money has to come from the national level, and special interest groups with national focus often have more than one situation to deal with at a time. That makes it a game of timing and logistics, which is a VERY long way from what the framers intended. So a lot of people who follow this sort of thing feel that a better focus is what has to be done to get an amendment on the ballot in the first place. This is a major area of legal study, with a lot of history behind it, but in a nutshell states typically allow 2-3 different methods for bringing an amendment to the voters: 1) Legislative process. The state legislature passes a motion to amend the constitution, which typically requires a 2/3rds majority. 2) Special administrative process. The governor or some sort of appointed committee decides to do it, typically with input from the public (hearings, petitions, etc). This approach is sometimes referred to as the "constitutional convention" method. Some states do not have a process like this. 3) Public referendum. This is the problematic one, and it typically consists of a public petition. There are various formulas used to determine whether sufficient public interest exists to warrant a vote on an amendment (some of them quite bizarre). In some states the legislature has to write the amendment, or "conform it" to meet certain requirements (such as environmental and/or economic impact statements). In other states the governor appoints someone to do this. If memory serves, some states have actually dropped the problematic "public" approach completely. Others (like Florida) have recently imposed new restrictions designed to limit the sheer number of these motions that are brought forward each year. (I read somewhere that Coloradans had a whopping 53 amendments to consider this past November, but I think bascule or Phi for All posted that that was not correct. That number stuck in my head but it may have been some pundit's exaggeration for effect.) It's worth keeping in mind that eliminating the public approach, or even limiting it, doesn't eliminate the influence of special interest groups on the process -- it can even increase it. If you're a special interest group and all you have to do is convince 30 or 40 legislators to go along with what you want, your job may be pretty easy. It's funny how these things always seem to boil down to how much attention people are able or willing to give to an issue.

As most of you probably know, I am NOT a huge fan of the mainstream media. I think they've earned their status amongst the dregs of society's disrespected professions, alongside used car salesmen and divorce attorneys. But I don't think it's right to blame them for the political choices that a country makes. And I think that tendency derives from several very flawed and detrimental notions: 1) That people are stupid, and tend to do what they're told. 2) That there is always a correct position, and that the job of the media is to get on the right side of the issue. 3) That the press is qualified to determine the truth in all cases. (e.g. "We can put a man on the moon, but we can't figure out who leaked Valerie Plame?") And the thing is, it's a lesson we seem incapable of learning. Fresh off the pasting it got over WMDs and Iraq, the press is now being attacked by the right for allowing the election of Barack Obama! Check out this awful video, in which Joe Scarborough screams about how we "just don't know!!!!!" about Obama and Blagoyavich (sorry, I am NOT going to learn how to spell that man's name). Then a reporter for the NY Times points out that the information is all under lock and key, and that the story IS being reported on -- actively. So the idiot just goes on to say "well we know nothing about Blago, Emmanuel..." (names half a dozen Obama appointees). OMFG! http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=ydpr8zQukU Now yeah, Scarborough is a conservative and outraged rants are his stock in trade. What I'm saying is that this point of view, this practice of beating up on the media for "not investigating" is actually just doublespeak and cover for really saying "you're an idiot for not agreeing with me". And it's FRIGHTENINGLY common. Conservative forums are slathered in posts these days about how the American public is about to discover buyer's remorse and creating the most conjectural conspiracy theories imaginable about Obama. Why not? When do we ever tell people that this is BAD for the country? Don't we in fact, constantly, 24 hours a day on three different networks, do the exact OPPOSITE? (And all hail Jon Stewart for championing the fight against THAT demon!) In conclusion let me just add that over the next couple months we're going to hear from LEGIONS of left-wingers who are going to parade about saying "I told you so" about Bush and "it's too bad the media didn't bother to report it". They're wrong to say that (the latter part anyway; they can feign prescience if the wish), and they're hurting us all by doing so. And I say we put a stop to it right now, before history repeats itself yet again.

Interesting. I didn't know about this either. Thanks for the heads-up!

I'm not setting aside the CO2 question -- I'm agreeing that it's not met by filtering technology. I'm asking why we can't do filtering technology anyway, so that the air will be cleaner until such time as the coal plants are eliminated. Wait, what's the difference between "improving the quality of the air" (outputted from a smokestack) and "reducing the pollution produced by them"? I don't mean to get overly technical, but I'm confused. Also, the point this guy used to raise (and it seemed to be supported by all the mechanical engineers I knew at the time, who were always talking about easy tower packing methods they learned in school) is that it's NOT expensive. They were saying that it's CHEAP. I mean relatively speaking, of course.

That was ParanoiA. I see your point. It's a good argument. Hey that's not fair -- I didn't say that it wasn't important because it doesn't impact me. I said that life isn't perfect, and this isn't as important as the larger issue of getting this divided society working together and allied towards common goals. I don't disagree with you that the majority is coming around, and I also think we can tackle more than one problem in this society at at a time. What I'm saying is that there's more than one way to handle this, and I disagree with the suggestion made in this thread that it should be handled via ideological confrontation and judicial fiat. If opposition is coming around, then why would you want to smack them on the face and treat them like children? Have you already forgotten what they're capable of? Dude that's the situation we've had in Florida for decades. Every time we'd go to the polls there'd be a cartload of the things. They finally changed it this year to make it harder to get amendments on there -- you need a 60% majority but there are other ways (legislation). It's still too easy, IMO. Apparently this is a problem in a lot of states.

This thread is a total sausage fest.

I'm actually a lot more concerned about what the activated right will do, re-incensed by "activist judges", than I am about a few thousand people who can't get "married", but are in no other way harmed. Gays aren't slaves, they're missing a specific freedom. Welcome to life -- aren't we all missing some specific freedom or other? Way it goes. I think banning gay marriage is wrong, but I also think that in talking about enforcement solutions that are against the will of the majority we are hyperinflating the importance of this problem. We can afford to solve this one gradually over time, and there's a tremendous benefit to doing so. So that's what we should do, in my opinion.

iNow touched on that above, talking about the cost of "retooling" coal plants. But it's really not that hard to stick a filter in a smokestack. I think the figure we used to bandy about was $10 million to outfit every single smokestack in the state of Florida with a stack of woven mesh that would catch most everything (this was 10 years ago). I realize that doesn't deal with carbon disposal, but wouldn't that be a good thing to do while we're waiting for nuclear, solar and wind plants to be built?

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Well blerg! Seems like we really ought to do something about that, given that we all seem to agree that coal is going to continue to be used for the foreseeable future! I appreciate the reply.

Wups, definitely don't put square brackets around variables -- they're only for use when you actually write a query in a text string. Sorry that I wasn't very clear on that. I'm not fully read-up on this thread, but there is a potential problem with this code snippet: SELECT Title FROM Table1 WHERE '" & cboCode.value &"' = '" & Table1.Code & "' This is one of those really confusing areas of VB. It's close but you don't actually need single quotes for this. Here is the correct approach: myVariable = "SELECT [Title] FROM Table1 WHERE " & cboCode.Value & " = " & Table1.Code Note the LACK of quotation marks at the end. In plain english, the string initially ends after the space following the word WHERE. The ampersand then appends the variable cboCode.Value. Then another ampersand appends " = " (a space, an equals sign, and another space), after which another ampersand appends the final variable (Table1.Code). There's no need for a quotation mark on the end because we've already closed the string. Make sense? In other words it breaks down like this: myVariable = "SELECT [Title] FROM Table1 WHERE " & cboCode.value That's not a valid query, of course, but it would be a valid concatenated string to the VB compiler. The rest of the statement is just attaching a comparison to the above: & " = " & Table1.Code That tells the Access engine to compare the two values in the query. See how the quotation marks are actually carrying the space-equals-space string to Access? The rest of the above snippet is actually addressed entirely to the VB compiler for processing. The ampersands are concatenation triggers to VB, not comparison cues to Access. The result of all of this is that Access ends up receiving a query that looks like this: SELECT [Title] FROM Table1 WHERE somenumber = someothernumber Is that what you want? If that's not working you may want to take a look at what cboCode.value is -- is that a "title" value from the database? Because your query is comparing titles -- if cboCode.value and Table1.code.value aren't titles, that's not going to work. Edit: Scanning back over the thread, it looks like DoG touched on this back in post #15 but with some minor issues producing another error. There is a time when you do have to use single quotes to isolate things within a string, but that's not necessary here because we're using the "variable =" approach. Also he may be correct about needing a semi-colon at the end of the SQL statement. I dimly recall Access being a stickler for those (with most SQL you only need it if you're adding a second SQL statement immediately after, in the same transaction), so try adding that to my code above if it doesn't work as writ. If that's the case attach the following to the end of the statement: & ";" (Sorry if any of the above was overly obvious -- I got overly literal just in case any of this was unclear.) (done editing)

That's an interesting bit of history, thanks! In terms of it being a "weapon" in this argument (as iNow put it), I think if it's intended as an historical precedent then it's a bit iffy, since there were numerous pre-Christian cultures (such as the Romans) who didn't allow it (and perhaps others that did -- Greek, perhaps?). So it strikes me as not so much a historical precedent, but rather a point about Christian hypocrisy. More useful, perhaps, in debates about the role of religion in modern times. We're getting a bit far afield from the subject of the thread. Let's see if we move back towards the subject of the inaugural address. Speaking of hypocrisy, here's an interesting article from the LA Times today about Hollywood stars upset over the selection of Rick Warren. They're so cute when they're outraged, aren't they? Rofl. Because, you know, gestures are so much more important than actions. I'm giving them one right now. It's a shame they can't see it. That's the problem with the Big Tent. Everyone has their little agenda, and sometimes they don't match up. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-et-cause20-2008dec20,0,5410722.story