> Most polls use the sample size to obtain a 3% or 4% error margin.
Asssuming they've done everything perfectly. Care to buy a bridge?
I looked at a sample of polls (there's a page for this on wikipedia, it was the first hit), and almost on the same day there was something like a 50% and a 59% result. Meta-analysis may give you a more reliable figure, but every individual poll is just as imperfect as every other poll on every other topic in history has been. I bet I can narrow down their errors to one of three things - sampling, sampling, or sampling.
> [...] I suspect almost the opposite. [...]
You are almost certainly closer to the US, I'm guessing inside it from your explanation, and you appear to have insights I don't have, so I defer to you. You're right that then when the squicky thing becomes widely acceptable, many who would feel repulsed would feign acceptance so they don't stick out. However, I would hope for something as simple as same-sex partnerships, albeit with a Middle-English moniker, the natural level of acceptance would be higher, and fewer would be biting their lip; in particular - few so far.
> What do children have to do with marriage anyway?
Why do you ask that here - why not just ask some of the people who defined what "marriage" is, the Catholics: http://www.catholicmissionleaflets.org/marriage.htm Read on past the childbearing part if you really want some fun (Spoiler- "Do these rules apply only to catholics?" "No.")
If your real question was "why did the Catholics link marriage and childbearing so intimately?", then ask that question instead, there are some quite simple and obvious answers. If your real question was "why is a silicon-age society basing the way it functions on notions created by an iron-age religion holding bronze-age beliefs?", then ask that question instead.
You're clearly off-base for a start. Marriage has been one-to-many for much more of our existence than this recent one-to-one thing that you're imagining is so universal.
But you must remember that every poll has about a 10%-wide error bar, and it takes a long time to smooth over the noise and really be sure such a trend has set it.
You also have to factor in to things that, as gay-marriage acceptance seems becomes more popular, people are more willing to voice such an opinion. So it might not be that attitudes themselves are actually changing, just that people are willing to be more honest in polls. (Which is an equally positive conclusion; if anything a more positive one - as it means the support was actually there in a larger segment of the population all along, it was perhaps only fear that stopped them voicing it.)
> The main reason we need marriage to have legal standing is to simplify inheritance and divorce.
The solution to the problems of resolving what goes where when someone dies without a will is to have them sign a piece of paper, indeed. However, the piece of paper they should sign is a will, not a marriage certificate.
The solution for simplifying divorce is, erm, wait a second, if we don't have marriage then there is no divorce, so there's nothing to simplify.
>> you probably don't have a well developed notion of their respective uses.
> I'm pretty sure the reason for the existence of both of them is propagation to the next generation. One or more of them also has to do with human waste.
Both are notorious for causing the brain to turn off too.
But isn't sticking up some satanist-sponsored whatevers just a step down the "it has to get worse before it can get better" path?
Most people who care about these displays aren't obsessed with the lives of others so much that they want the god-botherers to give up their religion, they simply want the displays gone. Making the first and only group who put up such a display non-ironically (i.e. without an ulterior motive) regret that they had done so is probably a useful progression. They'll have to face the realisation that they (as a group) aren't special.
The satanists are almost certainly idiots, but they're useful idiots.
I love those two highly detailed diagrams of the currents at the top of that page.
They raise an interesting hypothetical question - what would happen if we got rid of the current that loops counter-clockwise around hawaii in the static image? You get the lack of loop demonstrated in the animated image.
Fuck - catastrophic changes to the world's ocean currents in the space of only seconds!
So - which of those images actually represents the truth about the currents, and which is the lie created by a some researcher trying to make a splash in a harshly competitive publish-or-perish environment? Given that one *must* be a lie, and there's no reason to believe one is more trustworthy than the other, Ockham's razor points in the direction of the conclusion that they're both lies.
However, I'm sure one, perhaps a new third one, will magically become true as soon as Randall Munroe sticks it on xkcd.
Strange that you put the obligation that way round. That demand must match, or at least not exceed, the supply curve seems to be far more of a hard obligation. And the demand curve isn't a curve, it's a surface once you've factored cost into it.
> When people like Bill Gates, Citi, [...] are all on board the "physical money is bad" train, I don't trust it one fucking bit.
Thank you for including good ole Bill on that list. As an igtheist, it really riles me when he is held up as being altruistic. Noone who promotes Monsanto is doing anything positive for the world.
Agreed, but there are some very close analogies. Recipe books are explicitly mentioned, for example, and they even mention secret ingredients, or "opaque types" as some programmers call them.
There's even real-world precedent now, and if anything they're more in favour of the copier than the copyright owner (e.g. google's repackaging of linux kernel headers).
> On youtube it downloads the whole smash including the webM html5 streams and all available vid size pieces of a vid including any mp3 or other audio files.
> Best stream ripper out there IMO.
These two sentences seem in direct contradiction. The best one would only download your preferred media format, not all the poorer-quality, larger file size, or unviewable content.
Google Flights? Wasn't that just Google buying ITA? Picasa? Wasn't that just Google buying Picasa (there seems to be a clue pointing in that direction in the name) Google Wallet? So Google didn't acquire TxVia, and E-Micro's patents, they developed everything in-house?
Slashdot Mirror
I adblock to hell and back - what am I "worth"?
You might think so, but see the counters against it that are documented in that article.
Paraphrasing one of them - "it's not the same, a god's so much bigger than a teapot, so it's easier to believe he exists".
Paraphrasing another one (or perhaps the same one?) - "blurble blurble, I'm an idiot".
Not just for statements of (a)religion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKcJ-0bAHB4
> Most polls use the sample size to obtain a 3% or 4% error margin.
Asssuming they've done everything perfectly. Care to buy a bridge?
I looked at a sample of polls (there's a page for this on wikipedia, it was the first hit), and almost on the same day there was something like a 50% and a 59% result. Meta-analysis may give you a more reliable figure, but every individual poll is just as imperfect as every other poll on every other topic in history has been. I bet I can narrow down their errors to one of three things - sampling, sampling, or sampling.
> [...] I suspect almost the opposite. [...]
You are almost certainly closer to the US, I'm guessing inside it from your explanation, and you appear to have insights I don't have, so I defer to you. You're right that then when the squicky thing becomes widely acceptable, many who would feel repulsed would feign acceptance so they don't stick out. However, I would hope for something as simple as same-sex partnerships, albeit with a Middle-English moniker, the natural level of acceptance would be higher, and fewer would be biting their lip; in particular - few so far.
I'm sure the Singing Revolution/Baltic Way would like their recognition too.
I still find it odd that some citizens are so proud of something (the 2nd amendement) that is only of use when things are totally fucked.
Has it never occured to them to not let things get quite so fucked in the first place?
I'm not pretending anything about wikipedia.
I'm certainly not pretending that it's a reliable source of information.
Are you?
> What do children have to do with marriage anyway?
Why do you ask that here - why not just ask some of the people who defined what "marriage" is, the Catholics:
http://www.catholicmissionleaflets.org/marriage.htm
Read on past the childbearing part if you really want some fun (Spoiler- "Do these rules apply only to catholics?" "No.")
If your real question was "why did the Catholics link marriage and childbearing so intimately?", then ask that question instead, there are some quite simple and obvious answers. If your real question was "why is a silicon-age society basing the way it functions on notions created by an iron-age religion holding bronze-age beliefs?", then ask that question instead.
> man and woman
You're clearly off-base for a start. Marriage has been one-to-many for much more of our existence than this recent one-to-one thing that you're imagining is so universal.
> rising 2% per year
But you must remember that every poll has about a 10%-wide error bar, and it takes a long time to smooth over the noise and really be sure such a trend has set it.
You also have to factor in to things that, as gay-marriage acceptance seems becomes more popular, people are more willing to voice such an opinion. So it might not be that attitudes themselves are actually changing, just that people are willing to be more honest in polls. (Which is an equally positive conclusion; if anything a more positive one - as it means the support was actually there in a larger segment of the population all along, it was perhaps only fear that stopped them voicing it.)
> The main reason we need marriage to have legal standing is to simplify inheritance and divorce.
The solution to the problems of resolving what goes where when someone dies without a will is to have them sign a piece of paper, indeed. However, the piece of paper they should sign is a will, not a marriage certificate.
The solution for simplifying divorce is, erm, wait a second, if we don't have marriage then there is no divorce, so there's nothing to simplify.
Your argument is completely hollow.
It's you that needs to be rectified - the Lord Jesus diode for our sins!
> Atheism has long been a basic component of Marxist-Leninist communism.
Bread has always been a basic component of Christian communion.
That is not a logical reason for atheists to vilify bread, and likewise your above assertion is not a logical reason for you to vilify atheism.
>> you probably don't have a well developed notion of their respective uses.
> I'm pretty sure the reason for the existence of both of them is propagation to the next generation. One or more of them also has to do with human waste.
Both are notorious for causing the brain to turn off too.
But isn't sticking up some satanist-sponsored whatevers just a step down the "it has to get worse before it can get better" path?
Most people who care about these displays aren't obsessed with the lives of others so much that they want the god-botherers to give up their religion, they simply want the displays gone. Making the first and only group who put up such a display non-ironically (i.e. without an ulterior motive) regret that they had done so is probably a useful progression. They'll have to face the realisation that they (as a group) aren't special.
The satanists are almost certainly idiots, but they're useful idiots.
I love those two highly detailed diagrams of the currents at the top of that page.
They raise an interesting hypothetical question - what would happen if we got rid of the current that loops counter-clockwise around hawaii in the static image? You get the lack of loop demonstrated in the animated image.
Fuck - catastrophic changes to the world's ocean currents in the space of only seconds!
So - which of those images actually represents the truth about the currents, and which is the lie created by a some researcher trying to make a splash in a harshly competitive publish-or-perish environment? Given that one *must* be a lie, and there's no reason to believe one is more trustworthy than the other, Ockham's razor points in the direction of the conclusion that they're both lies.
However, I'm sure one, perhaps a new third one, will magically become true as soon as Randall Munroe sticks it on xkcd.
imports 42.2 TWh
exports 49.9 TWh
(net imports) -17.7 TWh
That subtraction has a 10 TWh error in it
> Supply must match the demand curve
Strange that you put the obligation that way round. That demand must match, or at least not exceed, the supply curve seems to be far more of a hard obligation. And the demand curve isn't a curve, it's a surface once you've factored cost into it.
Oh, I think this new one's more inaccurate - if the earth's a 10k*10k grid, then I presume they think it's a doughnut.
> When people like Bill Gates, Citi, [...] are all on board the "physical money is bad" train, I don't trust it one fucking bit.
Thank you for including good ole Bill on that list. As an igtheist, it really riles me when he is held up as being altruistic. Noone who promotes Monsanto is doing anything positive for the world.
Agreed, but there are some very close analogies. Recipe books are explicitly mentioned, for example, and they even mention secret ingredients, or "opaque types" as some programmers call them.
There's even real-world precedent now, and if anything they're more in favour of the copier than the copyright owner (e.g. google's repackaging of linux kernel headers).
> On youtube it downloads the whole smash including the webM html5 streams and all available vid size pieces of a vid including any mp3 or other audio files.
> Best stream ripper out there IMO.
These two sentences seem in direct contradiction. The best one would only download your preferred media format, not all the poorer-quality, larger file size, or unviewable content.
If I was copying an encyclopoedia, then I wouldn't be copying an API. Please try to stick to one argument.
Google Flights? Wasn't that just Google buying ITA?
Picasa? Wasn't that just Google buying Picasa (there seems to be a clue pointing in that direction in the name)
Google Wallet? So Google didn't acquire TxVia, and E-Micro's patents, they developed everything in-house?
There are probably more...
If that's the case, then simply re-indent it.