Dak

This is a fairly common misconception, but it's not true. There is no "arrow" of evolutionary change. There is no "direction" and also no "end" toward which it is driving.

Then what's the difference between neutral and non-neutral evolution?

Evolution 'drives' a general tendancy towards an increase in ability to pass the shannon-filter. Evolution therefore has a direction/is a driving force.

Terms such as 'increase in fitness' and 'change in allele frequency' over time kinda hightlight the fact that evolution is pushing towards an outcome/one of a limited set of outcomes. [edit]has non-base-chance tendancies towards different outcomes might be a better way of describing it? the outcomes with higher tendancies would be the 'direction'[/edit]

Be careful we don't end up having a 20-page semantic argument: 'direction' is metophorical: there is no 'arrow', which is what i was trying to avoid implying by pointing out it's not pre-determined; there is no 'goal', but there is a 'direction'. metaphorically speaking.

evolution does have a direction. it's hard to be a driving force without a direction (not a pre-determined one, granted, but evolution still drives change towards a certain end).

I always assumed that evolutionary dead-ends were pretty much as JHAQ stated; where there is not only no advantage, but a specific disadvantage, to any change, resulting in evolution maintaining the status quo and preventing any further change. But that was just an assumption.

OK, please be gentle, i'm really not good at physics.

As i understand it, there's 3 forces: strong, electroweak, and gravity.

Other forces, such as magentism, can be described in terms of electroweak (?); i.e., it's not a unique force, rather a different incarnation of electroweak, or something like that. heat is not a unique force, it's just an incarnation of movement (i.e., the amount of movement of the molecules).

But, i can't think of what motion is. it's clearly an energy, as it can be converted to/fro the other energies, so if it weren't an energy it'd break the first law; but, i can't see how it could be an arrangement of strong, electroweak and/or gravity.

I'll admit i'm not 100% sure what strong and electroweak are

So, yeah, what's motion wrt energy please?

I understand where you two are coming from, I do, really. I simply think that taking marriage away from the states is both infeasible and unnecessary. Marriage licenses give a lot of couples rights that make their lives invariably easier and I don't think abolishing marriage by the state is going to help, I seriously doubt it will make anything better.

I'm not neccesarily for abolishing marriage per se, just for abolishing the need for the state to sanction marriages. alternatively: that all voluntary marriages are automatically state-sanctioned?

The whole 'gay marriage/domestic partnerships' thing is a step in the right direction, but the fundamental problem is that the state feels that it can refuse to support certain marriages -- so, rather than the state saying 'ok, now we approve of gay marriage' i think it should say 'ok, now we dont ask wether we approve or not, we simply accommodate every 'domestic arrangement' that tax paying citizens have'.

So, i guess that could actually be viewed as the polar opposite of abolishing marraige, sorry if that confused you

(and i still think that if some strait people really feel the need to not share the name, they should be called civil unions)

not to mention you're essentially telling the states to support and provide allowances for something that is not part of the law, but should be allowed special circumstances because two people like each other. I see every 2-week relationship trying to apply for these rights, and that's a ridiculous amount of paperwork to ask anybody to sort through

maybe charge, say, $200 for a marriage with the first one for free? i.e., the more often you get married, the more expensive it'll be, whilst still allowing everyone to marry 'the one' for free (or, at least the first one). plus it'd pay for the paperwork?

...What? This is the same point that I'm arguing for

Well, I agree with you, too, then

I know we're all for getting rid of marriage at the state level and recognizing Civil Unions or whatnot, but let's face it:

 

1. There's no reason to do that

Apart from the fact that it'd remove the states power to discriminate, and thus fix alot of problems.

Incidentally, it may be helpful if everyone restated their ideal positions. I'm not sure who's standing where on this stuff anymore. I know many of us have included compromises we'd agree to, but I'm more interested in everyone's ultimate preference.

Okay, ideally you'd self-identify as married, and any accomodations that needed to be made would be made.

Just wrt gays and without getting rid of marriage, ideally you'd have what you have atm in washington, tho i'll admit i'd prefer them to be called marriages, but it's really not a problem either way as long as they're identical (which is all i've been trying to argue in this thread)

However, the moment that couple leaves Washington... Let's say they have to move to another state for work or something... Their partnership is suddenly null and void. This is in violation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause from Article IV, Section 1 of our constitution, which basically says that any rights or contracts valid in one state of the union must also be valid in the other states of the union.

Well, would a same-sex marriage be recognised in different states? Iirc, some (most?) states specifically have laws against same-sex marriages?

If they would be recognized, then yeah, i guess calling it something different has genuinely bad effects.

(the thread started with a suggestion that other states adopt washington's model; i suppose the federal government adopting it, or simply allowing gay marriage, would fix that problem)

You would probably benefit by reviewing these:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_and_responsibilities_of_marriages_in_the_United_States

http://www.equalitymatters.org/equality_matters/static/full_reasons

http://www.factcheck.org/what_is_a_civil_union.html

Nah, if you want to make your case, you're going to have to pick one of the 1,138 marriage entitlements that domestic partners don't get

from one of your sources:

Massachusetts is the only state in which gays can legally marry, due to the 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that said the state constitution didn’t support discriminating against same-sex couples that wanted to wed. Like states that grant civil unions, Massachusetts extends all the state benefits of marriage to same-sex couples; unlike in other states, gay couples also can be issued a marriage license. However, married gay couples still are not eligible for federal benefits.

If i'm reading it right, gay domestic partners are entitled to federal benifits in washington, making it more 'marriage in all but name' than massachusetts' gay 'marriage'.

Good to hear from you by the way. I always enjoy your logic.

You too. I think we probably both have the same views on this -- i.e., the way i'd actually do it is to remove the need for the state to approve of marriage -- if any people want to register as married they can, at which point any accomodations that need to be made by the state (right to make medical desizisions if you're incapasitated, inheritance law, etc) are made. end of problem.

I still wouldn't mind if people wanted to call them 'civil unions' tho

Aide memouirs from someone who can't spell:

I must admit that I find that people use these words interchangeably and I am not trying to be pedantic but I just wondered when people get confused about the words: "loose" and "lose"?

If an 'o' comes loose, it might fall off and get lost

Your and You're - one of my biggest peeves...

punctuation: the apostrophy replaces something that isn't there. hence, you're == you are.

your is the other one (i.e., possessive).

there, their and they're - my second biggest peeve...

they're == they are. their and there I just remember i suppose.

One that most people get wrong is when to use "that" vs. "which."

'which' allways follows a comma (?)

The 'wether' homonyms bug me. are we talking wether tis nobler, or wether tis sunny?

we're talking about DPs in washington

And i'm a bit tired, so 'essentially' just snuck it's way in there for no reason whatsoever. as i read it, in washington, DPs have the same status as marriage. If anyone knows of any differences (espescially iNow) feel free to share.

---

actually, to clarify: yes, elsewhere, i'm sure refusing to call gay marriages marriages could have some actual legal ramifications that make the gay 'not-marriages' genuinely lesser, and thus discriminatory

It presumes your "marriage" concept is some special institution where membership is restricted to opposite sex partners only.

well, in washington state, it is!

Ergo, same sex couples are "excluded" from that institution

from the institution that, for better or worse, it has been desided is an opposite-sex partners only affair. Kinda makes sense, at least they have their own version:

and any partnership they have is a "subclass" of it... not as good... separate... and for no justifiable secular reason.

Justify the bit i emphasized above. And 'subclass' while we're at it. why must DPs be a lesser subclass of marriage, and not an equivelent alternative? Espescially as they appear to be objectively indistinguishable in all but name.

Your logic appears to be:

1/ I am considering DPs to be lesser than marriages

2/ therefore it's bigoted

I disagree with 1, essentially.

How about inheritance? Or for a partner to make medical decisions for the other when they are not conscious to do so? The institution of "marriage" is referenced in those laws - hence the consequences of "rights" descending from a "privileged" institution.

 

So, it can harm same-sex unions because they will not enjoy the same set of consequential rights as married folks - and only because of not calling it "marriage".

From the article linked in the OP, in washington both of those were already afforded to gay 'domestic partnerships', with the recent legislation adding more rights to bring domestic partnerships up to essentially the same status as marriages, in all but name.

Hence, being treated differently.

Or called differently. What, objectively, is the difference between the gays' 'domestic partnership' and the straits' 'marriage'?

Establishment Clause. All laws must have a relevant, secular, constitutional purpose... most commonly, the prevention of harm to others or their property. I understand you are not a US citizen, but we have this nifty thing called a constitution to protect against exactly what you've suggested above.

Again, how is calling it other than marriage 'harming' gays? And the reasoning need not be (tho admittedly probably is) religious btw, so appeals to secularism/establishment clause don't neccesarily hold. And I don't think that the constitution requires all marriages be called marriages any more than it forbids it: give me a relevant, secular justification why gay marriage is required to be called marriage (bearing in mind equal != identical).

At the very least, it cuts off a potential way of abusing the Est. Clause to overthrow the legislature by claiming that, due to the traditional link between marriage and religion, the state should keep its nose out.

Incredulity is not a valid form of argumentation. It's treating them differently, implicitly as a subclass, and this should be obvious to even those who agree with the differential treatment.

how is it treating them implicitly as a subclass?

btw, 'i dont see how' != 'i dont believe'. 'ignorance is not a valid form of argumentation' would have been more apt, but i was kinda thinking you'd perhaps clarify how, exactly, calling it 'domestic partnership' or whatever is treating them as inferior.

I am defining discrimination as the differential treatment of people for no legitimate, relevant, or secular purpose.

yeah, well this is where 'i just don't care' comes in: they're not, in effect, being treated differently, just called a different name.

Why settle for anything less than actual equality?

Why indeed: but, what is actual equality? is it totally favouring the gays, or is it being fair to gays whilst making a small concession to people who feel that the 'sanctity' of 'their thing' is being challenged? calling it by a different name is a small thing, that makes no real difference to gays, but placates some people by making them feel that 'their thing' isn't being screwed with (whilst the gays get a carbon-copy of said thing anyway).

Like i said, if you want equality, why would you totally favour the gays over the bigots? is it just because you don't like bigots, or is there a legitimate, relevent, secular reason why people in an (alleged) democracy shouldn't have their needs and desires pandered to if doing so doesn't have any real effect on anyone else?

I further posit that any perspectives which argue FOR differential treatment are unsupported, lacking of legitimate purpose, and are thus based solely on ignorance, bigotry, and should not be tolerated.

So, what, I'm an ignorant bigot?

oh, and this [Everbody wins] I don't think I'll ever to agree with however. That would be absolutely ridiculous, it's like saying as long as you submit to the fact that you agree you're inferior, we'll give you rights because we're that nice. It doesn't work that way - if one group of people get's a set of rights simply for being alive, I see no excuses for denying anyone else.

But it's just a name. I don't see how it's treating people as inferior?

Actually, no. It's not fair, at all. It's discriminatory. It forces same sex couples to be called differently for no legitimate, relevant, secular reason.

So? While it is, technically, discriminatory (by definition), in a world where lezbians are 'correctively raped', gay men are beaten to death, and just 30 years ago it was a prison-able offence to be gay, having to use a longer, more cumbersome name for their marriage should be an easily tolerable discrimination.

Anyway, there's no actual law stating that you can't call it marriage. imo, best bet now is not to force anything on anyone, just let peoples' natural lazyness lead them to abandon 'domestic partnership' in favour of 'marriage'.

It's only "fair" to those people too myopic to realize that there's no difference between two people of different sex sharing their life together and two people of same sex sharing their life together.

Of whom there are a lot. Let them have their semantics, that they may pretend it's not happening, Espescially if it helps things actually progress.

It's about as "fair" as saying that black people can have all of the same rights as white people as long as we call them negroes.

Sounds fair to me. Black people get what they want (equal rights), whilst other people get the edge taken off of it by calling it a different name. Everybody wins.

Why should the needs of gay people be prioritized over those of bigots? Or vice-a-versa? This way, some homosexuals have to be slightly annoyed at the different name, whilst some heterosexuals have to be slightly annoyed at the fact that it's now a bit harder to pretend homosexuals don't exist; it seems to be the absolute minimum overall annoyance, which would, by definition, be 'fair'.

Unless you want to prioritize the gay people over the whiney faggots, and set everything up for them? Why, if everyone's equal, would you do that? Surely, in the interests of not being hypocrites, we must accept that the whiney faggots are real people too even tho we don't like them and think that they should be shot, and that they have equal expectations to have the country set up in their benifit, and with a right to expect slight concessions from other people if it makes them much happier? (genuine question)

so... domestic partnership is marriage in all but name?

pretty much every single argument against gay marriage is still 'valid' then (well... of the same validity as before, at any rate).

Refusing to hit the return key doesn't actually make it all one paragraph.

Cheater

So the question is, is it morally acceptable to force a random bystander to keep another human being alive at his own expense for nine months?

Assuming an equal chance of being the one with borked kidneys or the kidnapped one, yes, because you down-grade a 1/x chance of dying into a 2/x chance of being inconvienienced for 9 months (tho some kind of opt-in system would be more moral imo). This breaks the analogy tho -- women have 0% chance of being the foetus, and a non-0% chance of being the 'bystander'.

I don't know, Syntho-sis, how many "potential humans" are lost because women menstruate before becoming pregnant? How many potentially great minds have been lost to humanity because we don't all constantly procreate from puberty onwards?

IIRC, one in three foetuses naturally miscarry, which is way above the abortion rate anyway. You'd think that people would address the natural holocaust before the occasional artificial murder or two.

I think I read about the chances of an identical person being born in the region of 10 to the power of 30. So if you wait long enough and have all the DNA patterns stored on enough ID chips as a comparison - you never know....?

By the time it would (statistically) have happened, evolution would probably have caused at least one of the alleles to have dropped out of the population, making an exact duplicate impossibleish. (OK, with mutation you could regain the allele, but it's still pretty unlikely).

nah fair one.

i've got some gum, but don't want to use it for some reason. i'm gonna try not to have any niquotine, but if i fail i'm gonna fail by caving in to gum, not fags.

so, 'barrack the majick negro' == 'barrack the majick nigger' in the US?

hmm... in the uk, 'nigger' is the rude version of 'negro', which is a somewhat dry technical term.

wierd. makes the question different from a UK perspective

^yeah, me too. i think i'm gonna have a pouch of drum in my pocket at all times, just to calm me down

Jan 2`nd? don`t you mean Jan 1`st?

I thought the "tradition" for resolutions was dec 31`st at midnight onwards.

or at least for Me that`s when I`ll be putting out my last one.

so I have just over 9 hours left!

aah, but i fully intend to be hung-over as shite tomorrow, and don't feel like adding to my woes by not smoking

also, to combat 'the fear' i'm gonna smoke as much as i want on the 1st of each month, so i can chill out and not worry about 'never smoking again'.

i recon i'll do that once then not bother again, but whatever psycological tricks work, eh?

Use of the word negro is only allowed if you're speaking spanish or some other romantic language, and I think I'm more offended about their ignorance and inherent bigotry in finding humor in this than I am about the song itself.

the word 'negro' is offensive in america?

if so, what do you use when talking about the negro race?

yah, me 2 after 12 years... when i wake up jan 2nd, no more smoking

with u on the nervousness, i think it's possibly similar to 'the fear' of heroine withdraw... the thought of never having another fag is a tad scary, for some reason...

hmm... I wonder if PETA see the irony that they've 'cried wolf' and lied so much that now we're reluctant, even with video proof, to accept that animal cruelty is happening? (not saying you're wrong -- totally agree that animal welfare groups are unreliable sources)

oh, just noticed: "Both Videos and Animal Cruelty Photos by Courtesy of PETA"

hmm...

iNow: guns represent an initial outlay, plus they're banned in china; anyway, we don't know how much profit these people are making per hide -- maybe a nickel per hide is a lot.

----------

"Because", say the chinese, "it's easyer to skin a live warm animal that's convulsing in agony than a dead body"

I doubt they were their exact words, but maybe struggling means that the animal helps pull itself out of it's own hide? (one of the more disturbing things i've ever had to think :-/ )

the only elaboration i could find on the site is:

A bullet or lethal injection is too expensive and the skinners say it’s easier to rip an intact fur from a live warm body rather than one that is dead and inert.

no sources or anything.

tbh, as these are apparently just common-or-garden workers doing this, i'd assume that it's being done in the overall easyest way -- i.e., it's probably either easyer to skin alive, or it's easyer to skin alive than to kill humanely then skin a corpse

Soooo... it's not going to be stickied anymore? All we have to do is leave it stickied in Announcements (a good place for announcing bans) and just bump the New User Intro thread afterwards.

 

Viola.

no reason you couldn't sticky it in GD.