Moontanman

I understand that but this thread was originally about homosexuality so i think the thread should be separated from the original thread. i do have some things to say but i do not wish the idea of pedophilia and homosexuality to be connected, even though I understand that is not what Marat is trying to do. Homosexuality is not something you choose to do, it's not the same as smoking cigarettes, it's not an addiction or learned behavior. It is part of you even if you choose not to engage in homosexual acts the fact that you are attracted to people of the same sex is not the same as choosing to seduce a child, a straight person can choose to have sex with someone of the same sex but that doesn't make you homosexual but preferring to have sex with children is a choice IMHO... For something sexual to be immoral it has to be something you have a choice about, not something that is part of you naturally. oral sex is something you choose to do, not a desire you are born with. i am fine with discussing sexual morality of any act or acts but i see no reason to add fuel to a fire that has raged so long, IE the assertion that homosexuals are child molesters, discussing the two things in this thread seems to give credence to that notion.

She used the "allure" of sex with her and her daughter and the promise of money to convince someone else to do the masterminding for her. To me the people who do this type of crime are of questionable intelligence to begin with, the idea that the people who she convinced to kill for her have been punished with a lesser punishment bothers me quite a bit but it's not unusual. our criminal justice system often allows a person who was only involved peripherally in the crime to be punished worse than the people who actually committed the crime. It happens all the time, drive the get away car from a crime that involves murder, even if you didn't know that was going to happen, and you can get the full measure of punishment and the person who actually did the killing can get much less if he gets the opportunity to plea bargain. i personally think it's wrong but i am seldom consulted in these cases....

Then yes, lowering the temperature of the house to liquid nitrogen temps and the materials it is made of would kill all insects living there... However there are some resting eggs of arthropods that might live through the low temps, I'm not sure if any insect eggs are that tough...

LN2?

Alien life.... first contact.... Outrageous concepts, our perception of them is often based on what humans have done as they have wandered around on our own planet but i honestly don't think that is a justifiable way to compare the possibilities to. Humans are humans, we react to similar things in similar ways, I seriously do not think that we can expect aliens to act in the same way different human civilizations have. Even if aliens have colonized the entire galaxy it is evident that either they do not have any use for planets or that they have no use for our planet. At the very least they do not mess with primitives the same way we do, humans seem to have a need to mess with anyone they believe to be inferior to themselves. It boils down to a few possibilities, aliens have no interest in other civilizations, much like social insects they either ignore or exterminate any other civilizations they encounter. It is possible they have some feeling of moral superiority and feel that they should not interfere with others in any way (this by the way is a very alien out look compared to humans) It is very possible that aliens have a significantly different point of view from ours and they simply have no interest in anything outside their own world. It is quite possible that an alien civilization might not even have the concept of individuality that we do and they only respond to threats to their gestalt. It's also quite possible that aliens are so far advanced from us that we cannot really perceive them on level high enough for us to have a clue about their existence. i have often wondered if our concept of God has it's origins in an attempt by vastly superior civilization to communicate with us in some unfathomable way. It's quite possible that there are no aliens, we are alone.... Actually i think it's quite possible to assume that we are alone in this galaxy at least if we find no evidence of aliens once we explore our own solar system throughly. Either civilizations invariably fail or we are alone... I have always been fascinated by the idea that they might already be here, if there are no aliens to impede us it would be possible for humans to pretty much occupy the entire galaxy in a few million years (actually I've seen numbers as low as 250,000 years) with technology only a little higher than our own, slow boats to the stars would allow this and such people used to living inside artificial habitats would loose interest in planets preferring their own artificial habitats. Using the materials around stars like Kuiper belt objects to build their habitats, moving from star to star as they slowly using these materials to build their numbers. Such a civilization needn't be vastly superior to us technologically, all they would really need is the desire to do it... that leads us to the idea they might be superior to us simply by being closer to being of one mind, unlike our need to control every one who thinks differently they could actually feel that new or different parts of their society deserve a chance to go their own way and artificial habitats and the slow boat method would be the beast way to allow that. in other words if you really cannot get along with the neighbors help them get their own place so they are less annoying. If you apply Darwinian methods to the idea of civilization then the ones who spread out and allow different cultures to thrive would seem to be the most likely way a civilization would thrive, civilizations who need to control every one within some narrow confines of behavior (much like us) would be more likely to destroy themselves in some way, warfare would seem to the most likely way. Personally i feel very strongly that the slow boat colonization of the galaxy is the most likely way, unless we are totally mistaken about the laws of nature and "Star Trek" type civilizations abound in the galaxy and they simply ignore primitives like us through some sort of agreement. If the slow boat colonization of the galaxy is true and we are not alone then they almost certainly are either here in our solar system or have been at some point. it's difficult to conceive that we are the first or that no civilization has existed for more than a few thousand years. So it is not just possible but probable that aliens are here or have been. Now if they are here then the question becomes why haven't they contacted us? it's quite possible that they are more similar to social insects and have no interest in others unless there is conflict. it's also possible that until humans evolved into intelligent beings they would have had no interest in us other than simple curiosity, once we began to advance technologically i can see them having some interest, i can also see them being aware that intelligent beings would at some point advance and become at least competition for the resources in the solar system. They could react by leaving the solar system in mass once it became apparent we would be "coming out". i can see them experimenting with us in an attempt to see how much of a threat we would be. such contacts would almost certainly result in us thinking they were gods (humans seem to have an inherent desire to label anything they don't understand and can't explain as supernatural) their technology and space craft would be seen as acts of god and this would have been a great way to manipulate us if it ever became necessary. Gunpowder has it's own oxidizer and guns and almost all other high explosives would work in a vacuum just as well as they do on the earth. Nuclear weapons would also work quite well in a vacuum, possibly neutron bombs might be the way to go...

I honestly think that pedophilia needs to be discussed in another thread, homosexuals have suffered far too much already due to erroneously being connected with child molesters. I was sexually active from about 3 years old so i can also talk about this with some experience but still one instance does not a bell curve make. make a new thread if you want to discuss sexuality of children...

I don't know where you got that from but a gun will indeed work in space as a nuclear device will. You might have to get the nuke closer the the object you want to destroy but a nuclear weapon would indeed work in space. Guns will also work in space, why wouldn't it?

I do indeed agree, the idea that homosexuals would disrupt military life is not reasonable and is not based on the reality of the situation. I think it's necessary here to point out that pedophilia is shown to be harmful to the children, children do not have the same ability as adults to make the decision to give consent. The whole thing boils down to consenting adults, children cannot be said to consent. I think it's reasonable to give complete rights to people who are adults and whose actions are between consenting adults and who do not harm anyone. The problem is when you get into sexual conduct, the idea of appropriate sexual conduct is rooted deeply in religion, almost all laws against a particular sexual act is based in the idea that religion has the final say on what is right and wrong. Once we get past the idea that religion can define sexuality we will be much better off as a society.

Jackson, you are the most disingenuous person i have ever tried to talk to, you have no need for the truth and only your own world view counts. you make lots of claims and nearly all of them are based in your own self serving world view which has little or no connection with reality. You repeat things that people have shown you to not be true over and over as though repeating them will somehow make them come true. Your views are homosexuality are nothing but homophobia and based on ideas that have been over turned and this has been pointed out to you many times. I see no reason to continue to discuss anything with you.

Is this what you are talking about? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive if so it takes negative energy and negative mass not dark matter....

Nuke em... Nuke em good....

Well if it's true it could be because in many animals females can reproduce with out the need for males...

I'm not trying to trip you up, my quote was from your own link and it specifically said that the ancient giant centipede was a herbivore, it also confirmed that oxygen was a big factor. Tripping you up is not how this works, i thought you wanted to discuss the possibility of large arthropods not play games of one up manship. if you want to discuss the possibility of large arthropods a new thread should be started as this is off topic in this thread ...

From your own link they were plant eaters so they shouldn'have stopped insects from getting larger. oxygen would have been the biggest problem. Moontanman, on 25 September 2010 - 07:24 PM, said: insects should have been able to compete with the big centipedes and millipedes, they certainly do now. the giant centipede was a plant eater not a carnvore....

I agree, she was perfectly aware of what she was doing but I have to wonder about her daughter...

No I didn't take what you said the wrong way, nor did I take what he said wrong, my wife read it too and took it the same way... he insinuated my son was lying and while my son is not perfect I am quite sure he was not lying in this case...

The best thing would be to entrap them into a crime but not be involved your self other than turning them in. Having sex with your girl friends mom is just weird dude.... I gave up hating along time ago, it's counter productive and only hurts your self...

You can pack far more muscle on the outside of a bone than you can inside a tube, think if our bones were on the outside of our bodies, the tubes would be very thin, if the tubes were thick enough to hold all the muscle they would have to be much heavier. You are correct in that one of the reasons for 28" dragon flies was oxygen, during the time of their lives the oxygen levels were thought to be close to 33% and a higher atmospheric pressure as well. Arthropods cannot compete on a one for one basis with vertebrates, vertebrates cleared the land of large arthropods due to being much stronger and due to better breathing apparatus but even if the breathing was equal vertebrates would still win due to the stronger bones and bigger muscles. Some insects by the way do actively breath, wasps do for sure as do other very active insects. The giant crab i showed in an earlier post is going extinct because it cannot compete with rats, it's much bigger than rats but the rats are winning... Giant flying insects were probably doomed by flying vertebrates as well, big insects are easy prey for mammals and reptiles. The big centipedes and millipedes died out too as vertebrates took over the land, they just can't compete but insects should have been able to compete with the big centipedes and millipedes, they certainly do now. Now if vertebrates hadn't evolved, and they didn't have to, we might have very large arthropods, I'm betting no where near as big as vertebrates, but they wouldn't be able to compete with modern vertebrates if exposed to them, a tiny shrew can catch and over power insects much larger than it's self. vertebrates rule do to inherent superiority of internal skeletons... Having said that, i have to admit a major overhaul of arthropod body plans might allow relatively large arthropods but it would be difficult to say how big but they wouldn't resemble what we think of as arthropods very much i bet... BTW the largest insect in the world is the giant cricket... actually most of the really big insects are all close to the same size...

So what are you saying? That second hand homosexuality is harmful? You can't seriously equate homosexuality with choosing to smoke? As long as homosexuals don't engage in sex on base or on duty your comparison fails totally... So you are insinuating my son is lying? fuck you, he got his ass kicked so hard he was hospitalized and only his superiors could have known and told his "friends" officer and a gentleman my ass! More total bullshit So one of the prerequisites to joining the military is that you don't have to associate with homosexuals? This is true and it did not cripple the military any more than allowing a person who is gay to serve would, as long as his behavior in public and or on base is simply human then you have no argument other than homophobia... What does sexual harassment of women have to do with this? And what does this have to do with homosexuals? So homosexuality is immoral? how are the people we are fighting going to know if a soldier is gay, do they have fag tattooed on their forehead? you are still totally clueless about gay people.... As I said before DADT is bullshit, the least excuse can result in a person being investigated for their sexuality, DADT is totally inadequate, the only prerequisite should can the person do the job and leave their sexuality outside much like your smoking....

I appreciate the military very much, i support them totally but i think this issue is being touted by a few bad apples and people who genuinely do not understand the issue. The popular image of the fagot as a infeminine sorry soul who lives to seduce straight men needs to be rebuked. yes there are gays like that just like there are straight men who only live to force women into submission. Why would men like that be used to label all men, straight or gay?

All criminals think they are intelligent enough to get by with what ever it is they plan, they seldom do...

Still it's interesting and funny....

No more intelligence than it takes to think you can commit crimes and get away with it...

I agree it is a copout, a similar thing was said about blacks in the military, it would undermine the group to have to live in close quarters with black people... and yes pangloss i would think his superiors violated both don't ask and don't tell... the military is always looking to ferret out gays, any suspicion at all is used to kick them out...

I am sorry i misunderstood. Yes you are almost certainly correct. Then why didn't they? They had many times as much time as vertebrates did to do so... Arthopods due to several things not the least of which is the cube square law, cannot reach the size of vertebrates and remain as active as vertebrates can. largest land arthopod the coconut crab It's big but very clumsy and vertebrates are quickly driving them to extinction... Um because it's internal and not external? Your skull is not a supporting part of your body, it only has to hold the brain. Athopods have been around for many millions of year longer than vertebrates but we have hogged all the large animal spots for ourselves. Lower gravity and higher oxygen content and you might get large exoskeleton animals but not on the Earth... Social insects have been around far longer than vertebrates but not even fire has been "discovered" by social insects despite over a hundred million years of social living. It's quite possible that such a scenario was helpful to the development of life on the earth...