No. Abstinence is 100% effective. If you say you're using abstinence as a birth-control method, and then go have sex, then that's not abstinence.
It's analagous to saying you use condoms, but then don't bother putting them on. That doesn't say anything about the efficacy of condoms, it just says your lying about your birth control method.
What you (probably) mean to say is that abstinence is a hard method to keep to, and that most people fail. That while it might be an effective birth control method, it's not a suitable method for most people. Abstinence works fine, but horny people have trouble using it. Same way as how the pill works fairly well, but forgetful people would have trouble using it. Problem is, abstinence is being sold to teenagers, who are generally not inclined towards self-control.
Hormone-soaked teenager brains already have all the physiological necessities for impulse control; what they don't have is any motivation to develop it, since excuses like the above are always made for them.
Hedonistic? Yes. Hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure as the goal of life. I'd say sex qualifies. Narcissistic? Not necessarily, but it you're having sex without thought of the consequences - especially unprotected sex - then yes, I'd say it does. Self-Righteous? No. But being self-righteous makes you less likely to accept any criticism of your lifestyle, which is what the GP was trying to say.
All in all, those three qualities in a society makes it likely they will have lots of sex (hedonism), and in doing so spread disease (narcissism) , while being unlikely to change when someone tells them it might be a good idea (self-righteous).
Abstinence is the best (well, most effective) preventative measure. It's just that, like the pill and condoms, it fails when people don't actually use it. What your anecdote shows is that there should probably be a greater emphasis placed on STDs and the possibility of infection via oral sex in current sex ed.
The vast majority of China's population (~70%) are rural subsistence farmers, and not contributing particularly to carbon emissions. China is itself an illustration of the whole world in this regard - the majority of its emmissions are caused by a very small fraction of its population.
You could remove 30% of China's population and reduce it's carbon emmissions to a negligible value. Alternatively, you could remove 70% and not make a difference. It all depends on which demographic you remove.
That's why I said you could wipe out most of those populations without making a difference. Once you start targetting the minority urban demographic, you will start making a difference. That itself implies, however, that carbon emission is not simply a product of the size of population, as the GP was arguing. If it were, demographics wouldn't make a difference.
No, the real problem behind this isn't overpopulation. The majority of carbon emmissions are made by the vast minority of the population. You could wipe out most of India and China (~30% of the population) without making an impact in CO2 emissions.
Democracy = Rule of the majority over the minority Republic = Rule of the minority over the majority
A Republic (Res Publica = belonging to the people) is a system where, instead of having each issue open to a general vote, as in a Democracy, issues are decided by a small group who (ostensibly) represent the people. In a Democratic Republic, the "small group" is decided on democratically (by a general vote).
"You're free as long as you don't affect my freedom" is a Libertarian philosophy.
The actors in this entire sorry incident are tied together in their responsibility. If they weren't these two guys wouldn't be getting charged with statutory rape after the victim died.
You have a greater faith in the justice system than I do. They're guilty because they were charged, and if they were innocent they wouldn't have been? If there was really a problem with the sex, then why weren't they charged when it happened, before her death? It looks like a mad scramble to be seen doing something after the fact, rather than any pursuit of justice to me.
He knocked her up, bullied her into getting an abortion and drove her to an out-of-state abortion clinic without either my wife or I knowing about it. He then just dropped her off at the curb afterwards and had nothing to do with her for the next six months.
He was a total bastard. That doesn't necessarily mean that the people in this case were. And much as what happened to your stepdaughter sucked, it wouldn't have if she'd said no - either to the sex, or the abortion. That's not to say it's her fault, but their is partial responsibility there.
Oh? Was this done to degrade a person? Because that's not what the charge of statutory rape means. From the article, it looks like the bullying started after and in response to the sex (out of jealousy because the new girl dated the popular guy) rather than the sex being a part of the bullying in general.
It's possible they seduced her with the explicit intent of breaking her heart afterwards
Possible - but is there any evidence to support your assertion? Statutory rape is not, all other things being equal, a barbaric act. To me it looks like - after failing to act correctly to prevent bullying - authorities started looking for scape-goats to punish, which included guys who'd had sex with her. With at least one of these guys, there was no other charges levelled, indicating that he probably didn't take part in any other bullying.
Incidentally, this is part of the reason why all those silly old puritanical Americans encourage delaying sex
Puritanism was a British movement, and began before there was an America (well, a USA anyway). Delaying sex in any case has little to do with puritanism - which had more to say about marriage, and sex in general, than sex at a young age. We started delaying sex when we started mandating a 10-year education before adolescents were given any responsibilities. Having retarded their maturity, we then had to try and force restrictions on their sexuality to match - and it generally doesn't work that well.
Now the response I expect from you is that 'it's only emotionally significant because we're puritans about it!'
Statutory rape, not rape. The latter is done against the will of one participant; the other is when a court decides that the will of the participants is not applicable.
No, no it doesn't. Juries can decide a party is not guilty, despite what the law says, but they can't decide they are guilty without a law being broken. If there's no law being broken, the Judge generally cans the case before it gets to the Jury. If it gets past the Judge despite not actually being a violation of a law, then the problem's with the Judge, rather than the Jury.
The one thing about these foods that I don't agree with is that the poor need to eat them because they can't afford food that is good for them. That's a load of rubbish.
It's not because they're cheap. It's because they're cheap and easy. Poorer people generally need to work longer hourers to earn enough to get by. If they're part of a family, then both parents generally need to work in order to support it. It's hard to come home after ten hours on the job to face preparing and cooking a fresh meal.
Also, canned vegetables are generally artificially sweetened.
As a former "pirate" I do not think this will work. Most "pirates" just want free stuff.
I disagree. As a former "pirate" myself, I think there are two types of pirates. There are those who'll try and collect every byte they can, and brag about their music collections, and there's those who actually want the content. I stopped when iTunes became just as, if not more, convenient to use than trawling IRC channels for FTP details (and when I found a reliable way to strip iTunes DRM as soon as I'd purchased a track).
If you buy a song on iTunes, delete it/lose it, and then want to redownload it from iTunes, are you able to? No.
Um, yes, yes you can. I lost my purchased audio to a dead harddrive, sent an email to iTunes, they flicked a bit that determined whether my purchases had been downloaded yet, and next time I connected to iTunes, they all came flooding down. I had to put up with a bit of backup tut-tutting in the email response from them, and they don't advertise it as a feature, but they'll let you do it without any dramas (as long, I assume, as you don't abuse it).
Um, you are. Or at least, you could be. The restrictions on federal funding are on embryonic stem cell research. Embryonic stem cells are interesting for their pluripotency. Adult stem cells are interesting because they don't trigger rejection. Generally, nobody has any problem with adult-stem research.
Huh? "Not publishing to the web" does not equate to "Censoring the web". If the ACTA document was up somewhere, but US citizens somehow couldn't access it, or if the US government shut down Wikileaks when they put it up, then that would be censorship.
Google isn't the internet. Google is a US company, and it's subject to US laws. Nobody is stopping US citizens from visiting websites run by non-US companies, which would not be subject to US laws. In China, however, you would simply be prevented from viewing any site that was not controlled (explicitly, by law, or by some other agreement) by the Chinese government.
The US is trying to control the world through treaties and trade agreements, not by web censorship.
They don't get to "make allowances" for how nice people are, they get zero say in the sentencing.
No, they do. Juries get to decide whether there will even be a sentancing, by voting either Guilty or Not Guilty. Juries are not required to give a reason for their vote. Although often the judge will tell them they can only consider the law, this is not the case, and has not been since the inception of America.
Juries have the right to vote Not Guilty for no other reason than the promptings of their own conscience. The fact that officers of the court routinely try and suppress knowledge of this right is an indication of the fact that they know the law is going against what the common man believes is right.
They're too busy wrestling crocodiles to enter politics? I haven't met anyone who was particularly in favour of banning R18+ games. Political problems in Australia seem to be different to America. In America, from what I read about it, you tend to have two highly-agitated extremes abusing the hell out of each other. In Australia, you tend to get politicians doing whatever the hell they want, because the public generally only responds with apathy.
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No. Abstinence is 100% effective. If you say you're using abstinence as a birth-control method, and then go have sex, then that's not abstinence.
It's analagous to saying you use condoms, but then don't bother putting them on. That doesn't say anything about the efficacy of condoms, it just says your lying about your birth control method.
What you (probably) mean to say is that abstinence is a hard method to keep to, and that most people fail. That while it might be an effective birth control method, it's not a suitable method for most people. Abstinence works fine, but horny people have trouble using it. Same way as how the pill works fairly well, but forgetful people would have trouble using it. Problem is, abstinence is being sold to teenagers, who are generally not inclined towards self-control.
Pick a religion. Throw in concepts of honour, duty, continuation of the species, leaving one's mark on history, pleasing others, etc, etc.
Hormone-soaked teenager brains already have all the physiological necessities for impulse control; what they don't have is any motivation to develop it, since excuses like the above are always made for them.
Hedonistic? Yes. Hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure as the goal of life. I'd say sex qualifies.
Narcissistic? Not necessarily, but it you're having sex without thought of the consequences - especially unprotected sex - then yes, I'd say it does.
Self-Righteous? No. But being self-righteous makes you less likely to accept any criticism of your lifestyle, which is what the GP was trying to say.
All in all, those three qualities in a society makes it likely they will have lots of sex (hedonism), and in doing so spread disease (narcissism) , while being unlikely to change when someone tells them it might be a good idea (self-righteous).
Abstinence is the best (well, most effective) preventative measure. It's just that, like the pill and condoms, it fails when people don't actually use it. What your anecdote shows is that there should probably be a greater emphasis placed on STDs and the possibility of infection via oral sex in current sex ed.
The vast majority of China's population (~70%) are rural subsistence farmers, and not contributing particularly to carbon emissions. China is itself an illustration of the whole world in this regard - the majority of its emmissions are caused by a very small fraction of its population.
You could remove 30% of China's population and reduce it's carbon emmissions to a negligible value. Alternatively, you could remove 70% and not make a difference. It all depends on which demographic you remove.
That's why I said you could wipe out most of those populations without making a difference. Once you start targetting the minority urban demographic, you will start making a difference. That itself implies, however, that carbon emission is not simply a product of the size of population, as the GP was arguing. If it were, demographics wouldn't make a difference.
Way to cut off half of a parenthetical phrase and change the meaning of my sentence.
Republic = Representative Democracy = Minority over Majority
Democracy = Direct Democracy = Majority over Minority
No, the real problem behind this isn't overpopulation. The majority of carbon emmissions are made by the vast minority of the population. You could wipe out most of India and China (~30% of the population) without making an impact in CO2 emissions.
Democracy = Rule of the majority over the minority
Republic = Rule of the minority over the majority
A Republic (Res Publica = belonging to the people) is a system where, instead of having each issue open to a general vote, as in a Democracy, issues are decided by a small group who (ostensibly) represent the people. In a Democratic Republic, the "small group" is decided on democratically (by a general vote).
"You're free as long as you don't affect my freedom" is a Libertarian philosophy.
The actors in this entire sorry incident are tied together in their responsibility. If they weren't these two guys wouldn't be getting charged with statutory rape after the victim died.
You have a greater faith in the justice system than I do. They're guilty because they were charged, and if they were innocent they wouldn't have been? If there was really a problem with the sex, then why weren't they charged when it happened, before her death? It looks like a mad scramble to be seen doing something after the fact, rather than any pursuit of justice to me.
He knocked her up, bullied her into getting an abortion and drove her to an out-of-state abortion clinic without either my wife or I knowing about it. He then just dropped her off at the curb afterwards and had nothing to do with her for the next six months.
He was a total bastard. That doesn't necessarily mean that the people in this case were. And much as what happened to your stepdaughter sucked, it wouldn't have if she'd said no - either to the sex, or the abortion. That's not to say it's her fault, but their is partial responsibility there.
Oh? Was this done to degrade a person? Because that's not what the charge of statutory rape means. From the article, it looks like the bullying started after and in response to the sex (out of jealousy because the new girl dated the popular guy) rather than the sex being a part of the bullying in general.
It's possible they seduced her with the explicit intent of breaking her heart afterwards
Possible - but is there any evidence to support your assertion? Statutory rape is not, all other things being equal, a barbaric act. To me it looks like - after failing to act correctly to prevent bullying - authorities started looking for scape-goats to punish, which included guys who'd had sex with her. With at least one of these guys, there was no other charges levelled, indicating that he probably didn't take part in any other bullying.
Incidentally, this is part of the reason why all those silly old puritanical Americans encourage delaying sex
Puritanism was a British movement, and began before there was an America (well, a USA anyway). Delaying sex in any case has little to do with puritanism - which had more to say about marriage, and sex in general, than sex at a young age. We started delaying sex when we started mandating a 10-year education before adolescents were given any responsibilities. Having retarded their maturity, we then had to try and force restrictions on their sexuality to match - and it generally doesn't work that well.
Now the response I expect from you is that 'it's only emotionally significant because we're puritans about it!'
And out comes the straw-man.
Statutory rape, not rape. The latter is done against the will of one participant; the other is when a court decides that the will of the participants is not applicable.
Having sex is a barbaric action?
No, no it doesn't. Juries can decide a party is not guilty, despite what the law says, but they can't decide they are guilty without a law being broken. If there's no law being broken, the Judge generally cans the case before it gets to the Jury. If it gets past the Judge despite not actually being a violation of a law, then the problem's with the Judge, rather than the Jury.
The one thing about these foods that I don't agree with is that the poor need to eat them because they can't afford food that is good for them. That's a load of rubbish.
It's not because they're cheap. It's because they're cheap and easy. Poorer people generally need to work longer hourers to earn enough to get by. If they're part of a family, then both parents generally need to work in order to support it. It's hard to come home after ten hours on the job to face preparing and cooking a fresh meal.
Also, canned vegetables are generally artificially sweetened.
As a former "pirate" I do not think this will work. Most "pirates" just want free stuff.
I disagree. As a former "pirate" myself, I think there are two types of pirates. There are those who'll try and collect every byte they can, and brag about their music collections, and there's those who actually want the content. I stopped when iTunes became just as, if not more, convenient to use than trawling IRC channels for FTP details (and when I found a reliable way to strip iTunes DRM as soon as I'd purchased a track).
If you buy a song on iTunes, delete it/lose it, and then want to redownload it from iTunes, are you able to? No.
Um, yes, yes you can. I lost my purchased audio to a dead harddrive, sent an email to iTunes, they flicked a bit that determined whether my purchases had been downloaded yet, and next time I connected to iTunes, they all came flooding down. I had to put up with a bit of backup tut-tutting in the email response from them, and they don't advertise it as a feature, but they'll let you do it without any dramas (as long, I assume, as you don't abuse it).
Um, you are. Or at least, you could be. The restrictions on federal funding are on embryonic stem cell research. Embryonic stem cells are interesting for their pluripotency. Adult stem cells are interesting because they don't trigger rejection. Generally, nobody has any problem with adult-stem research.
Huh? "Not publishing to the web" does not equate to "Censoring the web". If the ACTA document was up somewhere, but US citizens somehow couldn't access it, or if the US government shut down Wikileaks when they put it up, then that would be censorship.
Google isn't the internet. Google is a US company, and it's subject to US laws. Nobody is stopping US citizens from visiting websites run by non-US companies, which would not be subject to US laws. In China, however, you would simply be prevented from viewing any site that was not controlled (explicitly, by law, or by some other agreement) by the Chinese government.
The US is trying to control the world through treaties and trade agreements, not by web censorship.
They don't get to "make allowances" for how nice people are, they get zero say in the sentencing.
No, they do. Juries get to decide whether there will even be a sentancing, by voting either Guilty or Not Guilty. Juries are not required to give a reason for their vote. Although often the judge will tell them they can only consider the law, this is not the case, and has not been since the inception of America.
Juries have the right to vote Not Guilty for no other reason than the promptings of their own conscience. The fact that officers of the court routinely try and suppress knowledge of this right is an indication of the fact that they know the law is going against what the common man believes is right.
Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age discusses this to some extent
They're too busy wrestling crocodiles to enter politics? I haven't met anyone who was particularly in favour of banning R18+ games. Political problems in Australia seem to be different to America. In America, from what I read about it, you tend to have two highly-agitated extremes abusing the hell out of each other. In Australia, you tend to get politicians doing whatever the hell they want, because the public generally only responds with apathy.
I wasn't trying to refute the OP. Funnily enough, I was trying to refute the person I actually replied to, who said:
"Horse drawn carriages were never called cars"
and gave an incorrect etymology of the word car.