By definition, sodomy involves the rear exit.
Not really. As seen in Merriam-Webster, sodomy includes all non-coital copulation, although the emphasis is on oral and anal. Therefore, ramming a broom handle or, yes, an electric prod, up a girl's vagina is considered sodomy.
Whatever the reason, it still means that the sentence 'animals have sex to breed' is false.
Well, actually, the conclusion generally drawn there is that it's a "short circuit" by nature to reduce breeding when the environment can't support the population. But then again, it could be a matter of people seeing the conclusion they want to.
I do agree that the poor do not need personal computers. They should have access to a computer but they don't need to own one and should spend that $100+ on cloths/etc instead. A local government office should provide the computer access if they are really concerned with the poor having computer access.
Ah, but you forgot that states are allowed to impose arbitrary censorship on public computers. If we force the poor people to use library computers for access, how are they going to get to their porn? If I were more cynical, I might ask whether we really want these people reproducing rather than blowing their wad at a computer...
Smart guns conjure up a lot of fears from gun owners. There's a fear that "smart" technology might be required on new guns. There's a fear that they might be too expensive, or unreliable (batteries gone dead), or that it might be possible to disable them remotely with something like EMP. Don't laugh, it's already possible to stop many motor vehicles this way.
Bah! It's not like the invention of airbags led to them being required on all... new vehicles... Well, shit. *wry grin* I'm one of those people who's going to be buying his cars only before a certain year of manufacture. I've seen few cases where airbags helped and too many where people have to spend $800+ to replace an airbag after getting rear-ended so gently that there's not even a crease on the fender. Similarly, I think these "smart guns" will just cause more problems than they solve.
Unless they've really twisted psychology terms since I read up on them, psychopath has never had anything to do with being psychotic apart from having a common word root. (Which implies that psychologists are psychotic, right?)
Not all psychopaths are clean, methodical, and rational. The basic disorder is simply a lack of ability to relate to others. A psychopath might be the methodical hitman. It might be the truck driver who carves up prostitutes at his stops. It can be the child who drowns his playmate to find out what drowning looks like. The only way in which a certain methodicalness is a characteristic is that, to learn to blend in with humanity, they generally have to learn how to appear normal on a rule-based system.
Why they didn't go after a smaller company... Simple, the small company will fold and you won't get any money
True, but I wonder why they didn't go after the mid-sized companies without lawyers... Although I guess they could be trying for the "big enough that they'll spare some spare change to get rid of us" factor. After all, Amazon is actually returning a profit these days, right?
I am not a psychologist either, although I have played one on stage and psychology has long been a hobby for me.
I'll admit to not being entirely in tune with what the current terminology is. A lot of my base work was done with older psychology books, wherein I always saw the distinction being made that sociopaths understood the human condition and could feel remorse, but chose shouldered past such crippling emotions to wreak havoc. In comparison, a psychopath genuinely cannot comprehend emotions like remorse and compassion except as an outside observer. {cocks head off to one side} Although even within the distinction of psychopath, they sometimes distinguished from psychopaths who committed anti-social acts because they simply saw nothing wrong with it (killing a parent to hasten an inheritance or drowning a fellow child playmate to see what a drowning victim looks like) and those who claim to commit them because they feel alienated from society due to their condition.
And I seem to remember they're using yet another term for psychopaths these days to distance themself from the use of "psychopath" in the media to depict everything from an abusive husband to serial killers. Heck if I can remember what it is though. *shrug* Basically, they wanted to change the term because the word psychopath is associated with "cold-blooded murderer" in our society whereas psychopaths sometimes cause their damage in areas such as love and finances, never resorting to violence. And, for that matter, psychopaths are useful in some situations, such as covert agents. Someone able to lie, cheat, and kill without remorse is handy if they're loyal to you. And psychopaths are generally very rational people who will be loyal so long as the situation benefits them.
Do you support sex education in schools including the teaching of the proper use of birth control?
I do indeed. Including, of course, a frank discussion of that most methods have side effects and/or scarily high failure rates. The only 100% effective method is abstinence and the only 99.99% effective method (with proper usage, of course) without side effects is symptothermal. There will always be people who decide to take up with a method with a higher failure rate, or one with chemical side effects, but that's people for you. Tell them that sticking a fork in a socket will electrocute them and at least one person will try it just to do it.
Other systems that have a more gradual Perm Death System (three strikes and you're out - type affairs) don't tend to have the self-nerfing evolution, and such systems have more achievement and excitement because characters perm die.
I personally liked the ideas in NERO regarding death. They use a system similar to the d20 one where there's a longish period of unconsciousness wherein one can be stabilized and revived by anyone with a minor heal spell or healing skill. After that, there's a longer period during which your spirit is near enough to your body that a Life spell (higher magic, but still quite accessible) can revive you without penalty. Only if you're left dead for a long period of time do you experience true death. In that case, you can go to a circle for ressurection where you'll drawy from the life-stone bag. Basically it starts with 10 white marbles. For every time you've been raised before, one black marble is substitued for a white one. This leads to a hard limit on deaths, but a fairly high one, but making every death a risky one. In all the times I played, I only saw one person have to go to the circle to be raised. It was actually a fairly dramatic event involving him dying some distance from town. He bled out before someone could stabilize him and no one in his party had a Life spell. What followed was first a canvassing of the town for someone who could cast Life, then an epic quest racing against time for a fabled scroll in a nearby dungeon which was unfortunately too late. True death tended to be rare, and was more often a matter of being stupid, or of pissing everyone off such that no one was willing to help you. ^_^ Although one time, while serving as an NPC, I was part of a group that nearly took out a dozen of the town's finest warriors. Spider nest, and the heroes weren't keeping very good track of who'd fallen. Wound up with two warriors outside battling us while the rest were cocooned and captured inside. They only survived because the marshall decided to take pity and reduce the number of respawns we had. Still, the prospect of possibly dying added some spice to the encounters.
I'm not so much worried about the government as industry. Alcoholism and depression are already coinsidered valid reasons to not hire / release a person. Heck, it wasn't that long ago that homosexuality was considered a valid mental health issue to fire a person over. Lastly, there's still a great social stigma associated with mental health problems, so people would probably be unwilling to fight the firing.
Part of the problem is that all of us are a bit crazy, neuroses if nothing else. Probably quoting way out of context, but Jung said, "show me a sane man and I'll cure him." Adding to the problem is that most neuroses are exacerbated by stress. There've been cases of people with OCD whose obsession started to become a fear of finding they were totally crazy. Lastly, some people go to a psychologist wanting something to be found wrong with them, whether they're looking for sympathy, obsessed with the medical field, or simply dissatisfied with who they are and wanting an excuse to say that there's a medical reason they're not who they want to be.
^_^ That said, psychologists have to make a living somehow, so I'm sure it's profitable to make sure they keep finding problems. So long as they "solve" the old ones, they can probably get away with it...
Lastly, as to your assertation of psychologists having more mental problems, I do seem to remember seeing some study along those lines. From personal anecdote, I know at least two people who went into psychology because they learned they were not psychologically normal and wanted to find out why and what can be done for it. Too, they may simply be more self-aware of the problems in their makeup (or blind to them and able to rationalize them away) due to their training. However, I'd wager that most of them have come to terms with their problems and are handling them constructively.
The problem with almost all of these tests is that they generally only catch sociopaths, not psychopaths owing to that most of them can be gamed fairly readily and the nature of psychopathology is such that they're well suited to fooling evaluators. But nevertheless, we always want to feel that there's some foolproof way to detect menaces to our life and health, so we'll always want to believe in such tests. Just witness the recent email forward that contained a quick psycho test.
There is only one person who is fit to decide whether or not they are ready to have a child and that is that person. It is not my job nor yours to tell them that they have to.
Doing so could well condemn them and that child to poverty whereas if they waited until they were ready then they would both have better lives.
That is a decision for them to make.
*shrug* The place where I disagree with you there is that the person is not simply making their decision; they're making it for the child as well. I may very well decide that it would make my life easier and keep me from living in poverty if I knifed people in alleys for their wallets. I would say that there definitely are times when we can say another person's choice is wrong, and that it's not just their decision to make.
And while I know you didn't mean it this way, I found your comment about "then they would both have better lives" ironic given that the dead child didn't have a chance to have any life, let alone a better one.
As for a lack of choices, people are lining up year after year to adopt children. Yes, it means that you have to go through the process of a pregnancy, then give your child away. It's awfully inconvenient, but in every abortion case, there's at least two lives being affected.
A concession speech is not a legally binding construct - it is a political move, not a legal one.
If nothing else, didn't Gore concede the last election before they decided to recount Florida over and over again?
I say we ban church weddings. If marriage is an interest of the state, why should the church be the arbiter of who weds? [Yes, I'm being sarcastic. But I do think it's a good idea. You can marry in the church if you want, but if you want it to be legal, you have to go to city hall and stand up next to Adam and Steve.]
*shrug* How different is that from the current state of affairs? All that a church wedding does is get you wedded in the eyes of the Church. Heck, a few systems don't even require a wedding to be married. Even the Catholic system only requires the two people getting married and one witness. The actual secular Church involvement is largely bookkeeping, recording the marriage and ensuring that it's legit (no bigamy, close blood relationship, shotgun wedding...). You can be wedded in the name of whatever church you choose, and as many times as you choose, but until you get your marriage certificate signed by city hall, you're not married in the eyes of the State. I'm cool with that. The religious ceremony involves spiritual bindings and the legal ceremony involves legal bindings. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Give unto God what is God's.
*shrug* It's like arguing Biblical interpretation or even math or science. You have to have some base assumptions before you can follow the conclusions. For a true believer, the eternal bliss of the afterlife is much more important than any temporary happiness on Earth. No, God doesn't want us to be miserable, but if it comes down to doing what you want or doing the right thing, you're expected to do the right thing.
And if you argue that one should only enforce your beliefs on oneself, you're forgetting that the Bible has a line saying that allowing your fellow man to proceed to damnation by doing nothing or saying nothing condemns you as well. To me, speaking one's mind in a rational and non-accusational manner is sufficient, but there are those who believe that one must act by enforcing laws on morality, even on issues which do not effect them directly.
You may claim that the base assumptions are irrational. However, I don't think there's a way to prove it either way.
I seem to remember seeing a statistic showing that the further west a state was, the less voter participation occurred due to the other time zones having already had an extra hour or two to vote and build up convincing majorities. Ideally, one could release numbers within one's own state or so. You know that your votes may make a difference there. You're all on the same time zone and don't know the non-local results, so there's no sense of overwhelming odds from the popular vote. However, I suspect the news channels would still tally up results using plants in each of the states, simply to justify their existence. Better would be to not release any figures until all results are in. Kind of similar to the non-disclosure of grades in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
On the other hand, that could make fraud easier, as you don't see suspicious swells or dips in the voter count. *shrug* Six of one, half a dozen of the other, and Seven-of-Nine.
Eh, I support the right of everyone to vote no matter what their nutty reasons. I guess I just want people to stop and ask themselves what they're voting for. Are they voting because they truly believe their rationale? Are they voting because they feel that everyone should vote? Or are they being guilted into it by people suggesting that everyone get up off their ass and vote?
If people feel strongly about voting, by all means they should do so. But if you don't want to, don't feel you have to. Or just vote on the issues you care about.
^_^ My maternal grandmother used to work as a barmaid. When my mother (second-eldest child) was a baby, my grandmother would often sing songs to amuse and calm my mother. She stopped when she figured my mother was old enough to start picking up the songs. *wry grin* Then, one day, she happened upon my mother absent-mindly crooning "The Barmaid and the Baker's Son" to her dolls...
Not really directly answering your question, I know, but the pineal gland is often considered to be the "third eye" due to its resemblance to retinal material and that it appears to be light-sensitive in producing melanin. A google search will provide some informative resources and not a few crackpot pages "proving" the power of the pineal gland.
Much of the vision restoration literature has been lacking in definitive proof of vision restoration. It turns out that the problem of evaluation of vision is harder than it seems. That said, I believe there are some good potential biological approaches to rescuing vision, possibly involving stem cells, but I have my own ideas about that and am not talking just yet.....:-)
I would assume that they also account for the possibility that people believe the therapy will work and therefore convince themselves they're seeing better. (Perhaps they're working harder at it, making it more tiring but apparently better) And, for that matter, on all these stem cell therapies, I would be curious as to a comparison between implanting the stem cells and simply doing the surgery up to that point and inserting something else. I remember a Discover magazine article involving a study like that, treating Parkinson's with stem cells and with simply doing the implant process. They had very similar results, which is to say, some people improved greatly and others had no effect, but in the same proportions with and without the cells.
That said, I have my doubts about studies ever being done like this. For one, as with any placebo setup, you basically have to deceive some patients into thinking they're getting therapy when they're not (made worse here because surgery is inherently dangerous compared to the "sugar pill" approach to placebos). Secondly, most medical research is being sponsered by companies and interest groups. Which study is more likely to be published, the one showing amazing results from application of stem cells, or the one showing that it doesn't matter what's injected?
*shrug* I also remember reading some articles saying that these ladies are also plagued by a world which involves color clashes and such that are not even noticeable by the rest of the population. I would say that unless there's a specific advantage in seeing this 4th color, they're probably, if anything, slightly handicapped in that they'll always be a little out of tune with the people only seeing three colors. And could you imagine being a child trying to explain to your teacher that there really is another color on the wall? Can you imagine the counseling visits? Of course, then again, many color blind children get by for years by convincing themselves that there actually is a difference in the single color they see. Humans are amazing adaptable creatures, particularly mentally.
Slashdot Mirror
By definition, sodomy involves the rear exit.
Not really. As seen in Merriam-Webster, sodomy includes all non-coital copulation, although the emphasis is on oral and anal. Therefore, ramming a broom handle or, yes, an electric prod, up a girl's vagina is considered sodomy.
Whatever the reason, it still means that the sentence 'animals have sex to breed' is false.
Well, actually, the conclusion generally drawn there is that it's a "short circuit" by nature to reduce breeding when the environment can't support the population. But then again, it could be a matter of people seeing the conclusion they want to.
Ignore the fact that I've bought lottery tickets in the past... {sneaks away quietly}
No. That happens when there's population overcrowding.
Ah, but you forgot that states are allowed to impose arbitrary censorship on public computers. If we force the poor people to use library computers for access, how are they going to get to their porn? If I were more cynical, I might ask whether we really want these people reproducing rather than blowing their wad at a computer...
Smart guns conjure up a lot of fears from gun owners. There's a fear that "smart" technology might be required on new guns. There's a fear that they might be too expensive, or unreliable (batteries gone dead), or that it might be possible to disable them remotely with something like EMP. Don't laugh, it's already possible to stop many motor vehicles this way.
Bah! It's not like the invention of airbags led to them being required on all... new vehicles... Well, shit. *wry grin* I'm one of those people who's going to be buying his cars only before a certain year of manufacture. I've seen few cases where airbags helped and too many where people have to spend $800+ to replace an airbag after getting rear-ended so gently that there's not even a crease on the fender. Similarly, I think these "smart guns" will just cause more problems than they solve.
Not all psychopaths are clean, methodical, and rational. The basic disorder is simply a lack of ability to relate to others. A psychopath might be the methodical hitman. It might be the truck driver who carves up prostitutes at his stops. It can be the child who drowns his playmate to find out what drowning looks like. The only way in which a certain methodicalness is a characteristic is that, to learn to blend in with humanity, they generally have to learn how to appear normal on a rule-based system.
Why they didn't go after a smaller company... Simple, the small company will fold and you won't get any money
True, but I wonder why they didn't go after the mid-sized companies without lawyers... Although I guess they could be trying for the "big enough that they'll spare some spare change to get rid of us" factor. After all, Amazon is actually returning a profit these days, right?
I'll admit to not being entirely in tune with what the current terminology is. A lot of my base work was done with older psychology books, wherein I always saw the distinction being made that sociopaths understood the human condition and could feel remorse, but chose shouldered past such crippling emotions to wreak havoc. In comparison, a psychopath genuinely cannot comprehend emotions like remorse and compassion except as an outside observer. {cocks head off to one side} Although even within the distinction of psychopath, they sometimes distinguished from psychopaths who committed anti-social acts because they simply saw nothing wrong with it (killing a parent to hasten an inheritance or drowning a fellow child playmate to see what a drowning victim looks like) and those who claim to commit them because they feel alienated from society due to their condition.
And I seem to remember they're using yet another term for psychopaths these days to distance themself from the use of "psychopath" in the media to depict everything from an abusive husband to serial killers. Heck if I can remember what it is though. *shrug* Basically, they wanted to change the term because the word psychopath is associated with "cold-blooded murderer" in our society whereas psychopaths sometimes cause their damage in areas such as love and finances, never resorting to violence. And, for that matter, psychopaths are useful in some situations, such as covert agents. Someone able to lie, cheat, and kill without remorse is handy if they're loyal to you. And psychopaths are generally very rational people who will be loyal so long as the situation benefits them.
Do you support sex education in schools including the teaching of the proper use of birth control?
I do indeed. Including, of course, a frank discussion of that most methods have side effects and/or scarily high failure rates. The only 100% effective method is abstinence and the only 99.99% effective method (with proper usage, of course) without side effects is symptothermal. There will always be people who decide to take up with a method with a higher failure rate, or one with chemical side effects, but that's people for you. Tell them that sticking a fork in a socket will electrocute them and at least one person will try it just to do it.
I personally liked the ideas in NERO regarding death. They use a system similar to the d20 one where there's a longish period of unconsciousness wherein one can be stabilized and revived by anyone with a minor heal spell or healing skill. After that, there's a longer period during which your spirit is near enough to your body that a Life spell (higher magic, but still quite accessible) can revive you without penalty. Only if you're left dead for a long period of time do you experience true death. In that case, you can go to a circle for ressurection where you'll drawy from the life-stone bag. Basically it starts with 10 white marbles. For every time you've been raised before, one black marble is substitued for a white one. This leads to a hard limit on deaths, but a fairly high one, but making every death a risky one. In all the times I played, I only saw one person have to go to the circle to be raised. It was actually a fairly dramatic event involving him dying some distance from town. He bled out before someone could stabilize him and no one in his party had a Life spell. What followed was first a canvassing of the town for someone who could cast Life, then an epic quest racing against time for a fabled scroll in a nearby dungeon which was unfortunately too late. True death tended to be rare, and was more often a matter of being stupid, or of pissing everyone off such that no one was willing to help you. ^_^ Although one time, while serving as an NPC, I was part of a group that nearly took out a dozen of the town's finest warriors. Spider nest, and the heroes weren't keeping very good track of who'd fallen. Wound up with two warriors outside battling us while the rest were cocooned and captured inside. They only survived because the marshall decided to take pity and reduce the number of respawns we had. Still, the prospect of possibly dying added some spice to the encounters.
I'm not so much worried about the government as industry. Alcoholism and depression are already coinsidered valid reasons to not hire / release a person. Heck, it wasn't that long ago that homosexuality was considered a valid mental health issue to fire a person over. Lastly, there's still a great social stigma associated with mental health problems, so people would probably be unwilling to fight the firing.
^_^ That said, psychologists have to make a living somehow, so I'm sure it's profitable to make sure they keep finding problems. So long as they "solve" the old ones, they can probably get away with it...
Lastly, as to your assertation of psychologists having more mental problems, I do seem to remember seeing some study along those lines. From personal anecdote, I know at least two people who went into psychology because they learned they were not psychologically normal and wanted to find out why and what can be done for it. Too, they may simply be more self-aware of the problems in their makeup (or blind to them and able to rationalize them away) due to their training. However, I'd wager that most of them have come to terms with their problems and are handling them constructively.
The problem with almost all of these tests is that they generally only catch sociopaths, not psychopaths owing to that most of them can be gamed fairly readily and the nature of psychopathology is such that they're well suited to fooling evaluators. But nevertheless, we always want to feel that there's some foolproof way to detect menaces to our life and health, so we'll always want to believe in such tests. Just witness the recent email forward that contained a quick psycho test.
And while I know you didn't mean it this way, I found your comment about "then they would both have better lives" ironic given that the dead child didn't have a chance to have any life, let alone a better one.
As for a lack of choices, people are lining up year after year to adopt children. Yes, it means that you have to go through the process of a pregnancy, then give your child away. It's awfully inconvenient, but in every abortion case, there's at least two lives being affected.
A concession speech is not a legally binding construct - it is a political move, not a legal one.
If nothing else, didn't Gore concede the last election before they decided to recount Florida over and over again?
*shrug* How different is that from the current state of affairs? All that a church wedding does is get you wedded in the eyes of the Church. Heck, a few systems don't even require a wedding to be married. Even the Catholic system only requires the two people getting married and one witness. The actual secular Church involvement is largely bookkeeping, recording the marriage and ensuring that it's legit (no bigamy, close blood relationship, shotgun wedding...). You can be wedded in the name of whatever church you choose, and as many times as you choose, but until you get your marriage certificate signed by city hall, you're not married in the eyes of the State. I'm cool with that. The religious ceremony involves spiritual bindings and the legal ceremony involves legal bindings. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Give unto God what is God's.
And if you argue that one should only enforce your beliefs on oneself, you're forgetting that the Bible has a line saying that allowing your fellow man to proceed to damnation by doing nothing or saying nothing condemns you as well. To me, speaking one's mind in a rational and non-accusational manner is sufficient, but there are those who believe that one must act by enforcing laws on morality, even on issues which do not effect them directly.
You may claim that the base assumptions are irrational. However, I don't think there's a way to prove it either way.
On the other hand, that could make fraud easier, as you don't see suspicious swells or dips in the voter count. *shrug* Six of one, half a dozen of the other, and Seven-of-Nine.
If people feel strongly about voting, by all means they should do so. But if you don't want to, don't feel you have to. Or just vote on the issues you care about.
^_^ My maternal grandmother used to work as a barmaid. When my mother (second-eldest child) was a baby, my grandmother would often sing songs to amuse and calm my mother. She stopped when she figured my mother was old enough to start picking up the songs. *wry grin* Then, one day, she happened upon my mother absent-mindly crooning "The Barmaid and the Baker's Son" to her dolls...
Brain fart with the spelling. The pineal gland produces melatonin, not melanin.
Not really directly answering your question, I know, but the pineal gland is often considered to be the "third eye" due to its resemblance to retinal material and that it appears to be light-sensitive in producing melanin. A google search will provide some informative resources and not a few crackpot pages "proving" the power of the pineal gland.
I would assume that they also account for the possibility that people believe the therapy will work and therefore convince themselves they're seeing better. (Perhaps they're working harder at it, making it more tiring but apparently better) And, for that matter, on all these stem cell therapies, I would be curious as to a comparison between implanting the stem cells and simply doing the surgery up to that point and inserting something else. I remember a Discover magazine article involving a study like that, treating Parkinson's with stem cells and with simply doing the implant process. They had very similar results, which is to say, some people improved greatly and others had no effect, but in the same proportions with and without the cells.
That said, I have my doubts about studies ever being done like this. For one, as with any placebo setup, you basically have to deceive some patients into thinking they're getting therapy when they're not (made worse here because surgery is inherently dangerous compared to the "sugar pill" approach to placebos). Secondly, most medical research is being sponsered by companies and interest groups. Which study is more likely to be published, the one showing amazing results from application of stem cells, or the one showing that it doesn't matter what's injected?
*shrug* I also remember reading some articles saying that these ladies are also plagued by a world which involves color clashes and such that are not even noticeable by the rest of the population. I would say that unless there's a specific advantage in seeing this 4th color, they're probably, if anything, slightly handicapped in that they'll always be a little out of tune with the people only seeing three colors. And could you imagine being a child trying to explain to your teacher that there really is another color on the wall? Can you imagine the counseling visits? Of course, then again, many color blind children get by for years by convincing themselves that there actually is a difference in the single color they see. Humans are amazing adaptable creatures, particularly mentally.