Dak

that was confusing... the very old thread that i was reading suddenly became the new thread that had linked to it topological weirdness aside: my user name means that i'm cack at choosing names, and rely on the 'randomly hit keyboard till something useable turns up' method. If i had to choose again, it'd be: ;lkjasdfo;ijasdf;lkjsadf;lkjwerpiu... werpy?

WARNING extremely graphic video: apparently, in china animals are skinned alive because it's easyer to remove the fur whilst they're alive. now... my initial reaction was that it's barbaric and inhumane... but then i thought, hmm, the dog didn't seem to be writhing in pain that much... certainly not as much as i'd've expected. and it wasn't sedated i don't think because it made a pretty good attempt at biting the skinner half-way through. so, yeah: how much does skinning alive actually hurt? I'd suppose that skinning severs the nerve-endings, which could make the whole process less-painful? but still... (obviously, they could have done the dog a favour and at least killed it afterwards...) [edit]actually, i'd like to clarify that i'm not saying this is ok. i'm just wondering wether it's not quite as bad as it seems?

we could move it from announcements into general discussion, where it'll get bumped off of the 'most recently posted to thread' podium by something else. what with there being a lot of posts to GD 'n'all.

No, but 'legislating from the bench' through common law -- including recognising that the meaning attached to words has changed since the law was written -- is the point of the judiciary are you sure? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Law#Evolution_of_common_law_to_meet_changing_social_needs_and_improved_understanding

umm... but (re-)interpreting the meaning of legislature in such a way that is consistant with current views and the current interpretation of other laws, espescially constitutional laws, is the entire point of the judiciary... most countries consider seperating the task of legislating from the task of interpreting legislature to be a neccesary check-and-balance (elsewize, it'd be one body that sets it's own rules and then has to make the call as to wether it's following it's own rules). re: some kind of non-marriage 'civil union', that's how it's done in the UK: http://www.thesite.org/sexandrelationships/couples/marriage/planningacivilpartnership

everyone knows WWII could have been avoided with more hugs. ParanoiA: out of interest, would you describe your views as: a free-market/anarchistic approach will, ultimately, grant liberalism better than legislative methods? if so, i'd be interested in a thread about it so i can probe your views, iff'n you want?

pointless? or would it measure something like your ability to control variables and/or deviance?

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/usercp.php can't you see who get you rep there?

No, but a free society can remove certain freedoms from minority members, unless you remove their freedom to do so (similar, in principle, to 'you can't have both freedom from indiscriminate rape and freedom to rape indiscriminately); unavoidably, some people, somewhere, somehow have to lose rights. 'free society' is unatainable. This is how it would ideally work imo: 1/ we all agree to have a democracy 2/ BUT, we all recognise that we're minorities in certain ways. if we allow ourselves to, we'll just all suffer from bigotry. alot. 3/ therefore, we agree to certain rules (of our own democratic choosing) that we have to follow wrt dealing with minorities, what we can't do to them, what reasons we'll need, etc. even against the majoritys will (this is still democratic, as we democratically choose to do this) this is done for our own selfish reasons, to protect us from the majority whilst we're the minority. 4/ then we follow these rules 5/ do we enforce these rules? well, yeah... elsewize there was no point. the whole point is that it's in our best interests to not allow bigotry like this, even when the majority wants it, because we're all minorities in some ways... so, we don't allow it, right? 6/ if we change our mind, we can cancel that rule. if we agree to keep our noses out of each others marriage, and, then, whoops, we don't really want to let poofs marry, then we'll either ALL have to give up the protection of our marriages to allow us to persecute poofs (risking: no divorce, harsh penalties for adultary, loosing spousal rights, nothing other than standard M+F+2.4 family, etc etc, and, when you've excluding that many people, maybe the 'standard' family unit isn't so standard after all), or, if we ALL wouldn't tolerate the loss of that right, then none of us loose it. elsewize, it's not really doing its job of protecting us all whilst we're the minority. without step 5, look what happens: step 4 doesn't happen (this whole 'overall desirable not to be bigoted; in each particular case, desireable to be bigoted' is a tradgedy of the commons, so obviously we mostly won't want to follow the rules in each individual case) thus rendering step 3 pretty pointless, and turning step 1 into 'we all agree to a mobocracy'. in mobocracies, we're all oblidged to be 'normal' and average (YUUUUUUUUUK!!!). hardly your ideal free society, don't you agree?

otoh, if their voters calm down then there'll be less democratic pressure on them to act aggressively/rashly to please their angry voters. I always thought some kind of 'knee-jerk' rule, where, under certain circumstances, you could forbid paliament to discuss an issue for a month or two, would result in saner legislature.

shit, I got that and my name's normal (but I did have a fluffy blond afro (not on purpose)). If it's not for his name, it'll be for something else: people are dicks. i'd be more inclined to blame the bullies than his parents, or mayhaps the parents of the bullies. Actually, thinking about it, with neo-nazi parents i'd assume he's more likely to be tormentor than tormented. If not, maybe he'll have more sympathy for gays, jews, etc? who knows?

It's just a name. he can change it when he's older. I hope you two are being intentionally ironic...

Unless they're quoting established science which has been through the peer-review process, in which case we can pretty much take it as given that it is, at somewhere along the line, in actual fact based on some form of supporting data. right? So... iNow and bascule are narrow-minded pseudoreligious prejudiced people, you're either insane or just plain stupid, and climate scientists are a bunch of theoretical catastrophe lovers how about we drop the snarkyness before another thread that pertains towards climatology implodes.

hmm... is that photo an allusion to roosevelt please?

<random thought dump> hmm... what do you mean by greed? Is the desire to improve one's circumstances greed? If so, i'd assume every economic model includes greed as a motivator, except possibly slavery and the voluntary models... see here for the reasons why people volunteer for magistrate duty (they're all unpaid, apparently ). but... would you include 'warm fuzzy feeling', 'sence of accomplishment', 'fun' etc as 'improving ones circumstances'? in which case, i'd guess every model includes greed (but, if you define it that loosely, it becomes somewhat meaningless). I'd guess, as i understand the models, the main motivators to work at all | work harder are: capitalism -- fear (no work = no money = no food) | greed (for personal profit) volunteer -- altruism? fun? sense of duty? 'someone has to'? learning/self-improvement? | same? communism -- fear | none? open source -- sate personal need/profit (your contributions will get better without any further input from you)/fun/probably the same ones as 'volunteer' as well | same? parecon -- fear | greed (same as capitalism -- work = money) If you define greed as 'go get a bigger slice of the pie', then i'd guess that'd be abscent from voluteer, open-source, communism (probably to it's detriment), and possibly a few others? hmm... 'work harder' has two components -- put more effort into your job, and innovate (so that the same work yields greater results). 'put more effort in' would require either that the person derives some kind of pleasure from doing so (fun, sence of accomplishment), accepts it as 'his duty', elsewize does it for either reward or punishment avoidance. innovation could potentially be done open-source style? motivated by lazyness (a little effort here to efficencyize will lessen our workload in general)? greed? resource-allocation for innovation would have to be done... by commity? by one's reputation/prior performance? democratically alloted? or, by rich peoples' greed to become richer? hmm... lessee... capitalism has rich and poor people. so does parecon. so, in these models, presumably 'greed' plays a large part in motivating workers to get more money by doing whatever gets them more money (the main argument in favour of parecon is that, apparently, it guarantees that poverty and richness are both voluntary options, available to everyone, that can only be achieved by working easyer/harder). communism and open-source don't have poor people, so presumably greed plays no|lesser part in these models? then there's what greed motivates you to do. OK, it's 'make more money', but how do you make more money? as i think iNow's touched on, under capitalism, at least with big buisness, you can make more money without improving society (entailment, leaverage governmen, provide a better seeming but poorer product, risk life because it's cheaper to get sued (Ford, BP), hollywood account people out of their profits, hoard, withhold (rather than provide) services pending payments, etc). also, under capitalism it's required that people can accurately determine what's in their best interests, which isn't always the case (cheap crap that breaks, for example, and anything that could arguably benifit from internalization taxes), and is susceptible to tragedy of the commons. under more state-controlled models, presumably the only way to make more money could be rigged to be 'do a genuinely better job'? and, you could, by throwing our lots in together, presumably avoid TotC? etc? otoh, regulation of capitalism could achieve similar maybe (corporate murder, internalization taxes, trading/advertizing standards, etc). I dunno. </speculative waffle>

few points to the video: * arguably, the worst oppression of a majority was in places like victorian (capitalist) england * USSR: arguably, the lot of the russians immediately improved under communism before becoming worse. otoh, they wouldn't have won the war were it not for the industrialisation caused by communism. * despotic communism (like in the USSR) isn't the only communist model (you could allways have, say, democratic communism) * communism isn't the only non-capitalist model * nazi germany was a capitalism * not all non-capitalistic models require centralised (e.g., governmental) control * the choice isn't strait capitalism or other: you could have a hybrid model, with, e.g., capitalism on a small-buisness scale, and some other model on a larger scale. * most of our countries dont have a 100% capitalism: there are usually sociocapitalist and socialistic elements, with a large volunteer aspect to the economy (including the majority of the magistrait service in the UK). open-source can be thought of as an economic model (albeit limited to pure information).

Are you sure you're not just being bitten again? Is the bump over an easily-accessable artery? some itchy bumps do reoccour, e.g. scabies, herpies, poison ivy (they're all iirc btw) tho i've not heard of them reoccouring in exactly the same place. (IANAD)

No, that's the point -- those things are natural (even for humans), it's just that natural != good. I'd personally say that the question really is: how is gay love harmful, hence something that should be stopped, and/or how does it's naturalness matter?

public gay sex is also dissallowed (as is public heterosexual sex) minor acts of gay/straitness are allowed (kissing, holding hands, petting etc), but, then, its not as if you have to cover head-to-toe in public either. so, slightly off comparison imo. gayness, straitness, and nudism are allowed in the privacy of one's own home. so... not really any bias as such?

Awww Evolution usually hijacks systems that are designed for one thing and presses them into service for another. Saves having to evolve from scratch I suppose, and allows multiple mechanisms and systems to 'share parts'. So, I'm not suprised that something as old and important as sex gets pressed into service for, e.g., social bonding.

couldn't you make a little electro-mechanical device that, upon pulling the trigger, rapidly wiggled a lever back and forth? screw that to the trigger guard and, when you pull and hold the added trigger, the gun's trigger gets squeezed by the wiggly lever rapidly enough as to make it functionally automatic. mass production should be possible, even on the sly, mainly out of plastics? or, surely you could cannibalise something so simple from another cheap device and simply attach it to the trigger-guard? so, yeah, i'd have to agree.

i'm not exactly a weapon-technician, but wouldn't the truly dedicated psychopath fork out the extra money for an assault weapon made with different metal, that could sustain as high a ROF without the need for a barrel shroud?

doesn't that go entirely against the principle of being merciful against childeren? With a very few exceptions, there are no 'adult' and 'child' crimes: only crimes, adults, and childeren. e.g.: you're not allowed to have sex with an under 16 year-old even if they say you can, because they have been deemed legally not responsable for their sexual actions; therefore, for legal consistancy, under 16 year olds can't be tried for rape (in the UK) as that would contrarily imply that they were sexually responsable for their actions. hence, if a 15 year old rapes, they get tried for assault, as they're not responsable for the sexual aspects of their transgression. similarly, under 18 year olds can't legally buy alcohol, because they're 'too young to be trusted to drink responsably'. But, it's a crime for an adult to sell alcohol for a child, and alcohol can be confiscated from a child, but it's not illegal for a child to own/imbibe alcohol (too young to be deemed responsable wrt alcohol -- if you were going to treat them as responsable, you'd have to allow them to drink, see?). hence, it's legally enforced that kids can't drink whilst adults can, but it's still not a 'child crime' as compared to an 'adult crime'. other examples exist, such as, e.g., slapping (illegal/legal dependant on situation, with different requirements to be legal when slapping a kid than an adult). but still no adult v. child crimes. childeren are treated differently in defference to the fact that they're childeren, and so less responsable for their actions -- they have not yet reached the point where 'they should have known better'. so, the law (usually) takes a less punative, and more rehabilatative, stance. hence -- trying an 8 year old as an adult == stupid.

thanks. You can sort of get that in English: where in line are you? which prime number is five?

sort of like "kolikátý line you?" (i'm fifth in line) or "kolikátý five primes?" (five is the third prime number)? something like that?