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See What does the Bible say about prenuptial agreements? Furthermore, I don't own any business. Where does the money come from? If you are a true Christian you refrain from luxuries and extravagance since they promote sins such as vanity and pride. You then work and save up like an ant. Proverbs 6:6-11 says, "Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest... A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man."

I've always wanted to get married. However, a week ago while I was in the library I overheard some women talking about marriage. One woman wanted to divorce her husband and her female friends were telling her things like, "Stay with him a little longer and wait for him to make more money before you divorce. Then you can get more out of him." I was horrified by the women talking about marriage as if it were a business or a scam. Then I heard one woman saying something that really scared me. She said, "Christian men are easy targets. Their religion forbids prenups and forces them to provide for their wives." The reason why this was scary was because I am a Christian man myself who has a net worth of $1.4 million now. I am an optimist and still believe that not all woman are gold diggers but I cannot be certain that the one I fall in love with will not be. The Bible warns that the devil disguises himself. I spoke to my pastor and he told me that indeed a Christian cannot ask for a prenup and that if I get married I'd have to accept the risks. What should I do? Should I give up on marriage completely?

The Australian media has attacked the LDP because of its policy of legalizing incest. The LDP claims incest is a victimless crime. Suppose we were to adopt a capitalist system of morality. The reason why capitalists should believe incest should be legalized is the same reason why free trade should be legalized. Evident in the failure of communism, politicians are not good at running your life. Under a capitalist system, you as an individual choose what car to buy, what stocks to buy, or whom you have sex with. If a man decides through his own contemplation that buying a Ford is his choice, then capitalists believe in the consumer given the right to choose rather than having the government force a car brand on the people. Similarly, if a father decides through his own contemplation that having sex with his daughter is his choice, then capitalists believe in the consumer given the right to choose. Of course, we are assuming the daughter is mature and old enough to consent to sexual intercourse. When I said that the “consumer” should be given the right to choose, some people might argue that sexual intervourse is not a “business” agreement. Well, what is business? Business is trade. Trade is the exchange of goods or services between two trading entities. Sexual intercourse then is trade or business because it involves the exchange of sexual services between two people. Prostitution is trade because it involves an exchange of money for sexual services. But incestual sex between mother and son is also a business trade because it involves the mutual bilateral exchange of sexual service. An argument can be made that incest can have a negative externality on any babies born because inbreeding among family members can increase the probability that heritable diseases may be expressed. The Royal Family’s decision to inbreed to keep the wealth inside the family led to subsequent births of weak children. Because of this health problem that comes about from inbreeding, I recomment the LDP legalize incest but in order to neutralize any threat of negative externality the LDP should enforce the use of condoms if the father-daughter, father-son, mother-son, etc engage in intercourse that involves penile-vaginal penetration and possibly encourage sex that minimizes the risk of pregnancy, such as oral sex, anal sex, urine sex, and so forth. The LDP is right. Incest is a victimless crime. If a father and son who are both over 18 decide to have sex then both of them are happy and no one else is worse off. What these two people (or three or more if they decide to engage in group sex) do is their own private business.

Take for the example the issue of bestiality. I have always believed that having sex with an animal is quite harmless and should be legalized. However, if I were to have sex with a goat in public, some right-wing religious person would be offended. Yet many right-wing people scream political correctness when other try to stop them offending other people whose beliefs don't fit their own. So then political correctness seems like a case of people being able to dish abuse at others but being unable to receive it.

That is your observation but I saw many pale people at university. Perhaps we need something more objective. It's like football teams. People like to wear the team colors, chant, etc, because it feels good. It feels much better to believe you're part of a group than to believe you're a lonely individual. A study by Moses Shayo shows that in countries with more inequality the poor people are more likely to be patriotic because even though they are failures as individuals by being patriotic they can believe they are one with the ruling class and take pride for other people's achievements. See http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1002186

Because many things that right-wing people are concerned about are suppressed by law, so these things can be seen as politically correct. E.g. I'm not allowed to walk around naked in the streets because I will offend religious people. Wearing pants then is a PC action. But because wearing clothes is presumably considered by many to be a right-wing thing then maybe not. Take it easy. Have you visited the Free Rice link in my signature?

CorporateSexOffenders.com has labelled YouTube as the most dangerous site for harboring pedophiles. See http://www.corporatesexoffenders.com/?archive=159 Don't you think this disgust at pedophiles is good reason to limit free speech?

PC is avoiding insult to socially disadvantaged people. Therefore, if I avoid saying something that is derogatory to women, that is PC because women are disadvantaged. But if I avoid saying something derogatory to men, that is not PC? Is attacking PC just an excuse for bashing people who are socially disadvantaged? For those to advocate PC based on this idea, why is it okay to bash the disadvantaged and not the non-disadvantaged? Wouldn't this result in a might-makes-right system? If we live in a might-makes-right system then since government rules through power then government has the right to enforce any PC system it wants. So I would like to see some person who is against PC to clearly define why it is he does that. Being against PCness doesn't seem to make much sense.

If we drop goats in a dictatorship and if citizen have sex with the goats, the dictator may not be pleased and may punish the citizens. I think it's more effective to bring those citizens into America where they can have sex with goats without government interference. Today of course bestiality I think is illegal.

Before we talk about political correctness it must be defined because many people seem to use the term and not even know what it means themselves. They cannot even understand why they used the term. I am guessing it has been used many times by other people as a pejorative term that people jump on the bandwagon. Political correctness is just being polite and trying not to offend others. In this case I think some political correctness is good. For example, I wouldn't walk around naked in public because of the offense to families. Political correctness is about making people happy even if you're lying a bit. For example, if you saw an non-attractive young schoolgirl, would you go up to her and say, "You are ugly." Many people who say they are not politically correct attack those who attack Christmas. This I think is silly because Christmas itself is politically correct since it involves lying about Santa Clause to little children to make them happy. In fact, religion itself is politically correct. Instead of modifying words to make people happy, religion modifies all perception of reality to make people happy.

Legalizing bestiality will give a shining example to radical Islamic theocracies of freedom and individual choice. A thriving animal sex industry has "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" written all over it. Individuals have the freedom and right to pursue happiness and animal sex will enable that for many people. Animal sex is fully consistent with Americanism. Nothing will express or symbolize American individual freedom more effectively than a man humping a goat.

Many people say that non-human animals, e.g. goats, cannot consent to sex. But I think they can. Even though goats and human are part of different species, the theory of evolution states we are all related (at least we all share a common ancestor and genetic relatedness between humans and many animals is very high). Basicaly, we can all understand each other in the Animal Kingdom. Many owners of pets can understand if their dogs or cats are happy, sad, or angry. If you started having sex with a goat, it is fairly easy to tell whether the goat is happy or sad. If you suspect the goat is sad and doesn't want to have sex, you could stop and try again another time. Trying to respect the animal's choice then increases the probability that the goat will enjoy the sex, which makes bestiality even more moral than killing for food. Legalizing bestiality can also have significant economic benefits. At the moment because bestiality is illegal, there is a missing market. Those humans who want to have sex with non-human animals cannot do so, and so there is a deadweight loss from government intervention since a potential trade between animal supplier and consumers who want sex is not realized. The demand from consumers who want animal sex will result in growth in a new industry sector that caters to supplying animals ready for sex. These companies that specialize in, say, human-goat sex will hire workers, pay taxes, satisfy consumer demand, and contribute to GDP growth. To all those that raise health concerns, in the same way that the food industry today has hygiene standards and competition among providers to increase quality, so too standards of animal preparation and presentation in the animal prostition industry can be made and competition among animal sex providers can increase quality and drive innovation and technological advancements. For example, scientists can genetically engineer orifices in, say, goats that maximize pleasure to the consumer. They do this by experimenting in labs different variables like surface texture, hardness, etc. This means that consumers can achieve better sexual intercoarse, therefore increasing aggregate consumer welfare. The biotech advances made in bestiality reasearch may even be transferable to other areas in the same way that space exploration advances can be applied to other areas. Most people think killing animals for food is fine. If killing animals for food is fine, why not have sex with them? Not many people eat human children. Nutrition from meat is done for long-term pleasure. More generally, people harm animals for their own sake. If eating animals is immoral then raping them would be as well following the logic I presented. I concede that.

That would make sense since conservatism means sticking with tradition and doing what has already been done, and so it doesn't really require any thinking. You simply emulate what is already done. What clothes do I wear? Just wear what they wore 100 years ago. Don't bother with evolution or science, just look to the bible. On the other hand, liberalism means freedom, so you allow yourself to freely try new ideas and not be restrained by tradition. Hence in the world of clothing you are free to try the latest trends and in science you experiment with the latest hypotheses to fine-tune established knowledge.

Which board games do you think are best for children to play if you want them to develop their minds? Deterministic, perfect-information board games like chess or Go can be good for developing reasoning and creativity skills but these games do not teach about randomness or imperfect information. In the real world we adults have to deal with randomness and imperfect information a lot, so maybe games like monopoly are better?

I've just been watching Enemies of Reason by Richard Dawkins. I want to talk about something that I have seen quite a bit of. There seems to be many people turning towards atheism and I suspect they are doing it not because of any deep thought about the topic but for the same reason that many people turn to religion, i.e. identity, image, belonging, and authority. In his documentary Enemies of Reason, Dawkins loves to go on about a war between reason and superstition. Creating in viewers' heads the idea of a war creates a distinction between good and evil. The next step is to characterize the good and the evil. Dawkins loves to talk to really bizarre psychics and people who speak in tongues, etc and then contrast this with men and women in white suits using high-tech equipment. This then creates imagery of what good and evil look like so that followers can easily identify, distinguish, and feel belonging through conformity. This is what religions do. Christianity creates an image of virtue, of the good Christian man or woman and then contrasts this to sinful things like drugs, gay sex, etc. Politicians do similar things when appealing to nationalism, creating flags to give physical manifestation to the state. Many Christians are very comfortable with their beliefs, yet if they are introduced to the teachings of Scientology about aliens spirits hijacking the bodies of humans, they scoff as if this is absurd. Yet their own Christian beliefs are as supernatural whether it's transubstantiation or raising of the dead or the God who is three but one. It is obvious that these Christians didn't really think about it this way. The Scientology belief of aliens and thetans create imagery that is incompatible with the imagery they are conditioned to believe is good. Likewise, many atheists I'm sure will see something weird, e.g. people talking about strange forces and strange languages, and they happen to be wearing strange clothes, so then the imagery here is incompatible with the imagery of the silent men and women in white coats using high-tech machines and so instinctively they reject. What I'm saying is that the criticism many give to Dawkins of being an evangelizer may be worth considering. Although most Christians may not admit it, I'm sure many of them like being Christians so they can act Christian, show other people they are Christian. It is a matter of image and pride, even though such prideful and vein behavior is sinful. Likewise, many of the followers of reason I fear may be flocking towards atheism not because of reason but because they are victims of their own irrationalities. As evidence of my claim that Dawkins has adopted the elements of religion, look at his website where he sells t-shirts with A symbols on it. How is wearing this A around any different to a Christian wearing a crucifix necklace?

Do you agree with what is said at the Wikipedia article on hard sciences below. The Wikipedia article seems to suggest that there is no distinction between hard and soft sciences. It is largely imagines or at least the distinction has no scientific basis. One perceived difference supporting the distinction is the degree to which conclusions in different fields are controversial within those fields. Some believe that conclusions from physics or chemistry tend to be less controversial among physicists and chemists, versus how much of political science is controversial among political scientists. However, in most physical sciences there has been extensive debate about issues like whether atoms exist and whether randomness is inherent in subatomic particles. Russ Roberts from George Mason University claims that although many people romanticize about the objectivity of the so-called hard scientists, many physical scientists constantly engage in controversies and arguments[1]. There is much difficulty distinguishing between soft and hard sciences because many social sciences like economics use the scientific process to formulate hypotheses and test them using empirical data, i.e. econometrics. Furthermore, many social scientists engage in experimental work within the field of experimental economics. In most cases the methodology used by practitioners of the so-called soft scientist are the same as those used by practitioners of the hard sciences and the only difference is the object studied. Physical scientists tend to look at atoms, energy, waves, etc while social scientists tend to look at societies, individuals, firms, etc. In all experimental or empirical sciences there is a need to set up experiments. One necessary feature of experiments is the need to control for all factors. It may be hard to control for all factors in an experiment because the experimenter may not account for all factors. This problem exists in the social sciences and the physical sciences. To establish causation the experimenter needs to have a control group where only one variable, the variable of interest, is changed, and all other variables held constant. The difficulty is in how to control for all other variables when there could potentially be infinite variables.

I have read a news article that claims that listening to music while exercising boosts intelligence. I would like to know whether this boost in intelligence is permanent or just temporary. I would like to know if only classical music works or whether rock, rap, or other music or even non-music like audio interviews would have the same effect. Do you have to use earphones while listening to music or can you use speakers located far away from you? Does it matter?

I won't post the link here, but I'll just say that a simple search for "young porn" gives a site that takes barely legal girls and then digitally enhances the images to make the girls look more like children, e.g. making the skin smoother, having the girls dress up in kiddy clothes, have teddy bears, etc lying around, and having the girls' hair done up in pigtails. Scientific studies have shown that men are highly attracted to females who has faces that have childish features such as large eyes; smooth, healthy, and clear skin; and absence of hair. Pedophilia then could be seen as an extreme form of an instinct that men already have in the same way that the desire to be raped is an extreme form of an instinct that women already have for men, i.e. the female desire for male domination.

Let me criticize some of my ideas to try push the adversarial process. One problem with my idea is that victims in legal child porn may not consent to the release of videos of them in public. A victim of child abuse may suffer greatly if videos and images of the sexual abuse were made public. To protect these people, the government would have to obtain consent from victims. The victims will be reminded that the child porn will be made legal because of the belief that legalization will reduce further child abuse. In an act of altruism to future generations, the victims of child abuse may consent to the videos being available to the public. In the event that no child abuse victims consent, the government may have to turn to virtual child porn. Another problem is that the existence and availability of child porn may create demand for more child porn. Even if there is a national database of public child porn, an individual may not want to watch the same videos over and over again. They demand new child porn, which will create supply, which will result in more children being abused. This argument does not apply to virtual child porn or child porn fiction because the creation of these do not involve the abuse of any actual child. If one piece of child porn fiction results in an increased supply of child porn fiction, the creation of child porn fiction comes not from actual abuse of children but from the imagination of child abuse by the writer. It could be argued, however, that even virtual child porn and child porn fiction can induce greater demand for actual videos depicting child abuse or even actual physical contact when children. But then again just about anything can induce demand for child sex, including child photography for clothing catalogs, nudism photography, etc, and banning anything that a politician believes might induce greater demand for child porn may pose a threat to freedom of expression.

There is evidence that Internet porn reduces rape. According to Lansburg, "A 10 percent increase in Net access yields about a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes. States that adopted the Internet quickly saw the biggest declines. And, according to Clemson professor Todd Kendall, the effects remain even after you control for all of the obvious confounding variables, such as alcohol consumption, police presence, poverty and unemployment rates, population density, and so forth." Lansburg even claims that the release of violent movies reduces violence and crime. The hypothesis for this result is that the availability of pornography allows sexually aroused people to satiate their desires indoors in front of a computer. If the pornography were not available, the individual would have to look for an alternative outlet for his sexual desires, and these alternative outlets may involve the rape of innocent women. Likewise, there are those who have a desire for violence, and violent movies may satiate that desire indoor in front of a television screen. The violent individual then doesn't need to express his anger and violence in public. Child porn is banned presumably because its creation involves the abuse of a child. Legalizing child porn may stimulate its production, which leads to more child abuse. Suppose the government banned the production of further child porn to prevent any further child abuse yet kept a national database of child pornography that already exists. This national database of child porn is freely available to the public so that members of the population with pedophilic tendencies can satiate their desires in private without actually harming any children. Because no new child porn is produced, no child is abused. Because pedophiles consume existing child porn, this will perhaps decrease child molestation in a way analogous to the decrease in rape and crime following the release of porn and violent movies. What is required for this argument to be sound is evidence that availability of child porn results in less child molestation. Some will argue this is not the case, that child porn actually encourages pedophiles to act on their instincts. However, if the government takes the policy philosophy that they should ban anything that can encourage someone to do something illegal, then shouldn't violent movies also be banned because they can encourage people to murder?

I am myself a libertarian. I don't claim to have the entire logic of libertarianism fully worked out, but what attracts me to libertarianism is simply the fact that I find freedom, choice, and non-coercion aesthetically pleasing. I am sick of hypocrisy and inconsistency and want a world of peace and happiness. When I see someone being beaten against his will then I don't feel right. However, if that person consented to it, e.g. suppose he competed in a boxing match and consents to being punched by his opponent, then I feel much better. Libertarianism can be summed up in the following statement: "You are free to do whatever you want so long as you don't reduce other people's freedom to do whatever they want." Libertarianism holds that pursuit of happiness is moral. Sex in pursuit of happiness is selfish and also moral. Sex between humans and non-human animals or any trans-species intercourse has the additional benefit of zero risk of pregnancy, meaning there is no worries about having to rush to the abortion clinic the day after. Some people criticize bestiality, saying that non-human animals cannot consent to sex and therefore sex with animals goes against their freedom. This may be true, but if we uphold this idea then killing animals for food would be immoral as well and we should all be vegetarians. When humans kill animals for food the animals certainly don't consent to being killed. Killing an animals is done at the expense of the animal's will and for the pleasure of meat-eating humans. When you kill an animal for food, the animal almost certain doesn't consent to being killed because by the laws of evolution all animals try to live and not die. Animals gain pleasure from sex because sex as a behavior is favored for in human evolution. Most animals gain pleasure from sex although many may not enjoy it if they do not consent. The bottom line is that when an animal is killed there is almost a zero percent probability that the animal consented to being killed. However, when an animal is the victim of sexual intercourse, there is a positive probability that it consents and enjoys the sex. Therefore, based on expected probabilities alone, raping an animal is likely to do more to increase the animal's welfare than killing it for food. If pleasure if the basis of morality (e.g. if we adopted a utilitarian system of morality) then if killing animals is moral then it follows that raping animals is also equally moral if not more moral because the animal victim of rape is more likely to enjoy being raped than being killed. Therefore, sex with animals is good.

At the Wikipedia entry on Drug Rehabilitation it says the following: "With regular use of many drugs, legal or otherwise, the brain gradually adapts to the presence of the drug so that the desired effect is minimal. Apparently normal functioning of the user may be observed, despite being under the influence of the drug. This is how physical tolerance develops to drugs such as heroin, amphetamines, cocaine, nicotine or alcohol. It also explains why more of the drug is needed to get the same effect with regular use." This suggests that as you smoke, say, 10 cigarettes a day, your brain develops tolerance to it and to get the same amount of satisfaction as you did when you first started smoking you need to increase the amount you smoke, maybe go up from 10 cigs per day to 20 cigs per day. If you smoke, does this happen to you? Does this hypothesis sound right? Is there any scientific evidence for this ramping up of smokes?

It's very strange to witness so many people ranting and raving about how much they hate Paris Hilton, yet at the same time so many people are eager to know what she is up to. I am sure there are many people who both admit hating her and are curious about her at the same time. When I first heard about Paris Hilton it was from the sex tape scandal. I have seen the sex tapes myself. It's nothing special. I never watched the first episode of The Simple Life when it came out on TV. I went to watch with my brother the movie House of Wax, which had a Paris Hilton death scene. I am a car enthusiast. I first became interested in Paris after learning that she drove a Bentley Continental GT. She has since sold her Bentley and gotten herself a Mercedes McLaren SLR worth about half a million dollars. Of course, I don't automatically like someone just because they drive an expensive car, but this sparked my curiosity, so I watched some episodes of The Simple Life, which happened to be on. While watching the fourth season of The Simple Life, I started to notice that Paris is not really that dumb. Rather, she displayed signs of creativity. For example, in one episode her hosts, the Contreras Family, wanted to go camping in the wilderness. Instead, Paris drives the Toyota minivan all the way to a nearby Hilton hotel. Paris tells the family to go camping in the hotel instead. The family, including the two little boys, were disappointed at not being able to go camping in the wilderness. Saddened by the family's disappointment, Paris told them to go out to the cafeteria to eat. What Paris did next was stunning. While the family was away, she ordered truckloads of stuff to be delivered to the hotel room where they were staying and she completely changed the hotel room into a forest. The room had a tent, real trees, an animated fire, wood, and even stuffed animals. It wasn't as real as the real wilderness, but it was close enough, and it illustrated the lengths that Paris would go to to please the children. This event shows not only how creative Paris is but also how kind and generous she is. Paris's creativity is further proved in later episode in which she directed a music video about the difficulties of being a mother. Nicole Richie's purpose during the fourth season seemed to be to shock people with rude language, and Nicole provided the lyrics for this music video, which was obscenity laden. Paris, on the other hand, tried to dilute the negativity of the lyrics by infusing the visuals with humor. She succeeded, and the host family was extremely grateful for her attempts. Paris Hilton, it seems, is a misunderstood girl. In prison when she said she had been acting dumb all the time, it came as no surprise. Those who know her should know that she is smarter than what the mob would lead people to believe. Some criticize her for not achieving anything substantial in her life and not earning her celebrity status, but for me and many others Paris is a simple and sweet girl who excels in just being herself.

Hi, everyone, I don't know how to type mathematics, but I have a scanner. I have a function L_A and it is an integral. I want to differentiate this function with respect to A. I already have the answer written but what I don't know is how it was obtained. Just by looking at the answer I can sort of see some sort of pattern, and I have written what I think is some sort of rule on the second half of this page, but I still don't really know what kind of differentiation rule is used here, so if any smart people here know it would greatly help me thanks!

One of the arguments for nationalism is that if you allow different groups to live together then conflict will erupt. For example, Jews and Muslims living in the Middle East just don't seem to get along. The answer, according to nationalists is to divide people up so they can live among their "own people." Jews live among Jews and Muslims live among Muslims. Every day I hear about homophobia. Most people in the world are religious and most people tend to follow an Abrahamic religion, i.e. Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. The Abrahamic religions all seem to denounce homosexuality. Throughout history this has been the case. Sometimes I wonder why so many Christians hate homosexuals because it seems to go against the teachings of Christ of the New Testament who taught about love and tolerance, etc. But anyway, because of the influence of the Abrahamic religion, it is not surprising that many people are homophobic. If Jews and Muslims can't get along and the answer is to separate them into their own nations, then why don't we apply the same concept to the conflict between homosexuals and heterosexuals? If homosexuals and heterosexuals cannot get along then why not just create a separate nation for homosexuals? Maybe slowly change an existing nation (e.g. America) into one that is fully tolerance of homosexuals or establish a country where homosexuality is actively practiced and is declared as the state sexual orientation. There are many pedophile activists around and many pro-pedophile organizations like NAMBLA. Pedophile activism has created a lot of controversy, as you can imagine. There are websites like Perverted Justice that tries to bait pedophiles and shame them using public humiliation. Another site that I think is strong on child protection is Warriors for Innocence. These people claim that they are the "only thing that stands between evil and the innocent." Given that there seems to be so much conflict between pro-pedophiles and anti-pedophiles, why not just allow pedophiles to have their own country where they can do whatever they want? This may not work because, for most people, even just the thought that a child in another country is abused causes discomfort. However, even an extremist Muslim who believes that some child in Israel is reading the Torah instead of the Koran might cause discomfort as well, so if nationalism applies to religion then why shouldn't it apply to sexual orientation?