In My Memory

YT,

Saryctos, Because of course, no homosexuals ever want kids of their own, and all heterosexuals do. Just down the street from me, a pair of lesbians have been married for almost 50 years, and they spend all their time playing with their grandchildren. One of my sisters and her husband are a voluntarily childless couple, they dont want kids. Which one of those couples is guilty of cheapening the definition of marriage? Believe me, NOBODY thinks marriage is about having children, which is part of the reason why there are no lobbying groups trying to revoke recognition of marriage for voluntarily childless couples, couples too old to have children, or couple who are infertile. No one wants to revoke those marriages, but NARTH, American Family Association, Focus on the Family, Christian Coalition, and a number of very powerful groups single out homosexuals out of all other types of marriages, even homosexual couples with children themselves. None of the arguments against gay marriage have anything to do with being against childless couples, its an irrational prejudice against homosexuals. The truth of that statement is punctuated by the fact that 95% of gay marriage opponents (including the ones who say "marriage is for having children") also oppose gay adoption.

You probably dont even need to use a temporary array or even a do loop: myArray(9) = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 For I = 1 To 9 RandomIndex = (Rnd * 8) + 1 'rnd * 8 chooses between random numbers between 0 through 8. The + 1 bumps 'the choice to 1 through 9. If I <> RandomIndex Then myArray(I) = myArray(I) Xor myArray(RandomIndex) myArray(RandomIndex) = myArray(I) Xor myArray(RandomIndex) myArray(I) = myArray(I) Xor myArray(RandomIndex) End If Next Using the xor operator 3 times like that switches two numbers without having to use a temporary variable. I win this thread Thanks Aeternus for improving the pseudocode *huggles*

Two gays getting divorced threatens the sanctity of two straights getting divorced! Oh nooos!

Stephen Colbert I didnt see that one coming

"You are Norman Bates from Psycho. You live the life a of a psychopath, you are impulsive, emotionally distraught, and probably homicidal." Oh dear

Luke, Oh dear Please accept these cookies as a token of apology. *** bestows cookies ***

Edit: Misread CPL Luke.

I dont know what the code is, but try using two arrays like this: - One array holds values 1 through 9, the other array is empty. - Create a for loop that selects RND * Ubound(Array1) and inserts its value into Array2. Delete the selected index, move everything up to fill the gaps (you might be able to do this easier by making Array1 into a dictionary object). - The process above repeats itself until Array1 is empty and Array2 is a shuffled set of unique numbers. The advantage above is that you only iterate through your loop 9 times. Otherwise, you trap yourself having a do loop with a nested for loop (this do loop creates a random number, the for loop goes through all the indexes to make sure its unique). Also, you shouldnt use 9 labels call lbl1, lbl2, lbl3, etc. Create a control array instead.

You could try wandering through the desert until you stumbled upon a magic lamp, and then wishing for a flying carpet. Or if you're in a really playful mood, a big big slingshot.

I usually take advantage of the heat as a time to wear cute miniskirts and dresses that I cant wear any other time of the year. Also, my car gets very hot sometimes, so I bought a cooler full of dry ice and put some under the driver seat and it cooled down the whole car

Severian, Need phobias? Have some of mine Bugs have always been my thing, ESPECIALLY cockroaches, and ESPECIALLY spiders, and moths, butterflies, beetles of any kind, and also most crustaceans. And when I was a little girl, I used to be so afraid of the dark or being alone. I lived in a house that had a basement like this: ------------------ | | Top floor | | ====| ------------------------------- | = | | | Stairs | | = | | | | |------------------------------------- \ \ Laundry \ \ Room \ \ \ \--------------\ After you came down the stairs, there was a long long hallway, and then a laundry room all the way to the back. And it was a big laundry room too, about 25 x 25 ft, and the washer/dryer was all the way in the back... You dont know how much I absolutely DREADED going down there, because I always thought something was down there and I could always feel something watching me. I had a pretty set routine: throw laundry basket down stairs, throw it in washer, RUN!!!!!!!

I thought I was going to die today Most people dont know, but I am the most insectphobic person ever. I run and scream like a little girl whenever I'm around them or see them. So today, around 6:30 AM, I was driving home from work and I had the windows rolled down, and the radio turned up loud, and I was minding my own business. Then at a stoplight, this huge insect (a grasshopper about 2 inches long) flies into my car and lands on my dash, and it scares me half to death, but I cant pull over to shoo it out of the car. The bug is just hanging out, looking at things go by through the window, so I wasnt worried about it... until it turned around and faced me... and started crawling straight toward me... and then little pieces of me start to die inside... I'm dont take my eyes off the bug for about a minute, and unconsciously I'd accelerated the car to about 70 in a 55. And then I look up and there is a line a cars at a stop light so I STOMP on the breaks and the car squeals, and I was so glad I didnt hit the person in front of me. And then the bug crawled toward the driver-side window, so I'm leaning waaaaay far over to the passenger-side trying to keep the steering wheel straight and I'm almost in tears So I find a good place to pull over, I put on my hazards and a few minutes later the bug flies out of the window. When I sit back in the seat I think "did it just rain or something" because the seat was just SOAKED, same with my skirt, same with my shirt, and my face was completely red. And I swear I would have had a panic attack if the bug had landed on me. The whole experience made me so upset. So in conclusion, bugs are scary, and I need someone to hold me now.

Severian, Plants dont feel anything, thats the difference, they dont have mental experiences. Why is this even an issue? Please dont even try to argue that plants feel pain, because theres no earthly way you believe that in the first place -- you know for a fact that we are in agreement that plants lack of sunlight is not significantly comparable to anything felt be animal creatures. We agree with each other with respect to plant pain, so nothing can possibly be said to bridge a gap between our moral systems to make them agree even more. You're going to have to reason better than that. Whats the argument that says evolved things can only be evolved things period and never correspond to moral characteristic? This is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen in my entire life, do you mean to tell me you dont make moral decisions without taking happiness and suffering in consideration? I'd really have a hard time believing that, because I'm pretty sure if someone tied you to a chair and started torturing you for hours on end, you wouldnt think to yourself "what moral objection can I possibly have? is it the fact I'm being tortured, or is it because I'm not going to make it to work on time today?". More importantly, you havent even attempted to show that I've wrongly argued anything, you havent even attempted to provide a superior ethic, you havent provided anything except to quibble about things which we are already in agreement or to call me an athropocentric despite the fact that I support efforts to fight anthropocentricism. Seriously, if you have a superior ethic, I'd LOVE to hear it more than anything. You wouldnt believe the sacrifices I make everyday to adhere to my moral principles (not just being a vegan, but also the huge amounts I give to charity, letting anyone stay in my house for the night, and supporting environmental causes whenever I can, etc) even when theres no legal consequence for not being a vegan, even when I miss out on a lot of things like spending holidays with my family because they murder animals everyday of their lives --- seriously, if everything I do is actually morally wrong, I'd really like to be corrected, and I'd be very interested to hear your superior ethic if you really have one. I thought I held pretty consistently that its only relevant to talk about moral characteristics in so far as they're affected, and that theres no point in talking about other characteristics that dont affect the outcome of a moral equation.

Severian, Now you're just being silly, I explained both of those claims in a lot of detail immediately below the portion you quoted, but your comment about those claims being unjustified implied you didnt even read it... even though you responded directly to those justifications immediately afterward. How could the labels "short explanation" and "long explanation" be so unclear? I would think the meaning of the word suffering is so obvious that it doesnt even need defining, especially since you've probably experienced suffering, but just for fun, lets say suffering is any aversive experience that usually corresponds with pain or negative emotions like sorrow or unhappiness. Now, lets connect suffering to morality using a little metaethics: when we talk about intrinsic values and disvalues, we are talking about things worth pursuing or avoiding for the sake of those things without reference to other entities. Pain experiences are worth avoiding for the sake of avoiding the pain experiences themselves, so pain is intrinsically disvalueable. Nothing could be simpler True enough, but I dont think its relevant. Why is it necessary to produce a complete set of intrinsic values when we only want to talk about happiness and suffering? Or maybe my ethic is cat-centric, and I value the characteristics only because cats have them... *sigh* Why would this be a bad thing? Because starvation is torture' date=' and my life has value as an experiencing subject of a life with goals to pursue and I desires my own continued existence. [b']Jim[/b], I've never seen anything so silly in my life I think its really evident that the author of that article isnt familiar at all with animal rights philosophies for a few reasons: First, take utilitarianism: its a principle that values minimizing the harm that we cause and maximizing the pleasure, the philosophy was fathered by Jeremy Bentham. Here's what Bentham has to say about favoring human interests above animal interests: Jeremy Bentham supported animal rights, and he opposed favoring human suffering over animal suffering. That excerpt appears in almost every book on animal rights I've ever read, and theres no way the author of the abstrat could have missed it if he was the least bit familiar with animal rights literature or utilitarian philosophy. Even still, modern utiliarians like Henry Salt, R M Hare, and most notably Peter Singer all argue for animal rights based on utilitarian principles. The minimization of suffering is a key objective in the animal rights movement, and its also a very basic principle of utlitarianism. Second, take Contractarian positions: one of the interesting things about social contracts is that they necessarily exclude animals from being members of the contract, because animals arent rational beings and they cant consent to contractarian rules... but infants arent rational beings either, they cant consent to contracts either, so they are afforded no more moral protection than any animal by contractarian tradition. That reason, among others, is why social contract philosophies died at the turn of the 19th century. Contract philosophy was revived in 1970 by John Rawls, who articulates a position roughly like this: - Imagine what kind of society a group of self-interested beings would create if they were hidden behind a veil of ignorance. If we imagine the beings dont know their future sex, race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, etc., and we ask those beings to select and agree on forms of social institutions, we would imagine that group would choose institutions most fair to everyone; therefore, we have a basis for appreciating social institutions on purely rational grounds. Of course, Rawls isnt an animal rights activist, because he allows for his group of rational beings to know their future species which undermines his whole veil of ignorance idea in the first place; if we take Rawls idea to its logical ends, so that the rational beings dont know their future species either, then we have a rational basis for appreciating animal rights, and more importantly it would be evident that animals rights and human rights are fundamentally drawn out of the same principles. Third, take Kantian tradition. Currently, a philosopher Tom Regan has ressurrected Kantian tradition, where he extends Kantian philosophy that states we only have direct duties to moral agents (rational beings who can make moral decisions) to include direct duties to moral patients (non-rational beings like infants and animals). Regan's philosophy is very complicated to explain, but a good summary of it is available here (I recommend reading his book to get a better picture). Finally, their are just too many non-sequitor leaps between saying "animals cant appreciate opera" and "its ok to kill animals to serve human interests". Aside from the fact that animals lack no more "uniquely human experiences" as their mentally similar human counterparts, animals and humans share many important interests that have almost nothing to do with uniquely human experiences at all. Animals and humans have an interest in being free from torture, having something to eat rather than starving, having freedom of movement, having shelter, and so on; wheres the argument that says causing two being identical amounts of profound suffering for identical durations of time have drastically different moral consequences because one being enjoys opera and another being doesnt? I dont think its justified to weight moral characteristics that arent even affected in a moral equation at all. The author, I suspect, is using linguistic sleight of hand, and he probably argues that humans having some experiences makes them entitled to better treatment in all respects. However, thats an inferior ethic with respect to the following: we treat creatures similarly in so far as they have similar capacities, and we can entitle some creatrues to particular rights if they have capacities which other creatures lack. Simple demonstration: men and women are moral equals with respect to the capacity to suffer, be rational, and practice moral reciprocity, but only women are entitled a right to an abortion. With respect to uniquely human experiences, we can take animal suffering just as seriously as human suffering, but we can also say humans are entitled a right to vote and listen to opera because they have the requisite capacities that animals lack. In this way, we can rationally afford animals and humans equal moral status with respect to their similar capacities, and they have unequal moral status with respect to their differing capacities. What could be simpler

Severian,

Basically any place on the globe where I'm standing is the greatest place on earth

What makes your website different from the boards that already exist, like EvC Forum?

SkepticLance, I think you overstate the nutritional risks, because I'm the only vegan in my family, and I'm also the most healthy. My sisters, my mom, and my aunts are all anemic, but my iron is perfectly fine. There is a lot of iron in spinach and other dark leafy plants, watermelons, sunflower seeds, black peas, almost every kind of whole grain cereal, and so on; and more importantly, a lot of the food you can buy from vegan suppliers is already fortified with B12 and iron, so its not even much to worry about in the first place. The only "irregularity" I had was slightly less painful menstral cramps, but that was it. Everything else including my normal menstrual cycle was fine. Actually, in my experience, iron deficiency doesnt have anything to do with being extreme. I'm a very strict vegan for ethical reasons (no animal products, no commercial clothing or food brands like Coca-Cola or Gap, no chain stores, no products produced outside of the US), and I'm proud to be the most extreme vegan I know. And I plan to live for another 100 years, as long as I still look good in skirts The only time I've ever seen anyone have health issues is when they buy into fad diets or spiritualism, especially raw food diets and fruitarian diets. Believe me, there are books out there that say "menstruation is the bodys natural defense against itself, its flushing toxins" so women try all these kinds of diets to make them stop menstruating. And I try to say "no, menstruation is a *good* thing, its a sign of health!", and women reply back with a Deepak Chopra quote about how certain foods maintain good alignment of their chakras. People who put all their trust into Zen Kundalini or whatever spiritual journey their on almost always get very sick. The trick to staying healthy is just keeping a good variety of foods in rotation, which comes naturally for most people (who wants to eat the same thing night after night?). 800 million hindi, 20 million Buddhists, 5 million UKians, 5 million USians, and millions of aussies, and myself manage just fine on a vegan diet everyday, so it cant be that hard to stay healthy on an ethical diet

Pangloss,

Gib65, I've been a very strict vegan since Aug 1999, and I'm very healthy, and I can safely say there arent any nutrients in animal products that you cant get from a vegan diet The B Vitamins are found in yeasts, seaweeds, and raw veggies; protein is found is basically everything; calcium is abundant in dark leafy greens. The key to being healthy on a vegan diet is planning, until you get a routine going. Also, it doesnt hurt to take a supplements if you need a safety net. I actually took vitamin supplements for a few months until I felt comfortable with my own routine, and just like MattC I dont even think about the foods I cook anymore. Basically, the idea that you cant get protein from veggies is a health myth. Theres quite a bit in soy, nuts, seeds, beans, legumes, bagels, brocolli, rice, peanut butter, potatoes, whole grain cereals. Everything has protein in it, so much protein that its really a non-issue for every vegan I've ever met. And almost everything thats a good source of protein is a good source of iron too, especially stuffed peppers (yum!)

Oldtobor, One night, you leave the house with 50 dollars and head to the bar, and soon after you get really drunk on vodka mixed with strawberry juice, like really really drunk. ... so you wake up the next morning, you dont have any idea what happened in the last 8 hours, and you dont know why you have 200 dollars in your pocket now, or why your mouth tastes like talcum powder, or why theres a dead man in a clown costume laying beside you. Its a miracle!

AzureDarling, definitely, because she wears much shorter skirts

Je ne parle pas réellement français du tout, je suis juste en utilisant un programme gentil de traduction que j'ai trouvé en ligne. Mais je pense la plupart des personnes sont aller juste jeter un coup d'oeil au-dessus de mon poteau, sans prendre la peine de le traduire, et pense à eux-mêmes, "l'OH mon dieu, elle peux parler français aussi, je pense que je suis dans l'amour!". Ainsi, ouais, si vous figurez hors de celui je n'ai pas écrit réellement ceci, ne dis pas n'importe qui. Laissez-nous subsistance juste il un secret entre les deux de nous. C'a été un message de moi, le port de jupe vegan, à vous, le lecteur humble

I've moved this thread from Religion and Philosophy to Speculations, where I feel its more appropriate