Zixar

Tom: I have always supported allowing any person to designate their own beneficiary and assign medical power of attorney. While there is the potential for abuse (Rev. Telly Vangelist convincing Grandma to deed everything to his ministry in her will, then getting her to grant him medical decision power, then telling her pulling the plug will get her to Heaven faster...) family does not always share your wishes. Better you can name someone you trust instead of who the gene pool stuck you with. But I refuse to condone extending marriage tax breaks to gay couples. Look at how broken our current entitlements are--why are older people who can afford their own health care (i.e., the rich) still eligible for tax-subsidized Medicare at 65? There is not an iota of return to society, neither tangible nor intangible, to be gained by extending marriage benefits to homosexuals. If they should adopt, they get the standard deduction for the child, plus they can file as Head of Household, which gives them the joint-married tax rate anyway. All Catholic nuns are "married" to Jesus Christ. Should they get the marriage benefit? :)--> Why shouldn't they? It's their chosen lifestyle under their religious freedom, so...?

I thought we'd covered the difference between correlation and causality...?

niKa: Try separating the social-rights issue from the fiscal issue. Ask yourself why the government gives any sort of break to married people at all? Is it a justifiable expenditure of the nation's limited tax income?

Bingo. :(--> And if they don't hit you singles with an increase, all the hetero marrieds will have to take a cut, just for them. Probably both.

Wacky: Would you really want the premium of that catastrophic insurance you'll hopefully never use to go from $4000 to $4200 overnight? That's only a 5% increase, but for what? You don't get any more coverage, yet now you have to pay more.

Turn the coin over and look at it from the other side, Wacky--why should you, as a single person, have to bear the brunt of paying those brand-new marriage benefits?Long Gone argued quite eloquently that the only interest the government really has in subsidizing marriage is the perpetuation of the society through providing every advantage for the raising of children, period. It's like why singles and childless marrieds still have to pay property taxes for schools--it benefits everyone in the long run to have educated children, even if they aren't one's own. If gays want to call themselves "married", who cares? They can call themselves Queen of Belgium, for all I care. If they can find a church or a justice of the peace that will perform the ceremony for them, more power to them. But cut them a part of an already stretched-thin government budget with no possible return to society as a whole? Forget it! If they adopt children, they already get the same tax deduction as any hetero parent does. There's just no justification for adding what amounts to be just another special-interest entitlement. The insurance companies, while not supported by taxes, work in a similar way. Single people have historically tended to be a higher risk than married people, for whatever reason. In order to offer everyone the same insurance, the singles get hit harder for premiums than marrieds, based on the current actuarial data. Since there is very little data on the long-term risk mitigation of homosexual marriage, is it fair that they should get a break at your expense when it isn't known yet whether they will turn out to be as low a risk as hetero couples? [This message was edited by Zixar on March 09, 2004 at 10:20.]

Pat: Actually, there wasn't anything wrong with your original premise, it just, like 99.9% of all hypotheses, got hung up on a detail or two. In truth, it's quite refreshing to find someone who doesn't try to defend every far-out idea they have by calling in the Death Star. :)--> Tom: No jumping to conclusions! Students must show all work for credit... :D-->

Pat: Yes, the gametes can be frozen in LN, but a small amount of an antifreeze agent is mixed in with the sample before it's frozen, much like anti-clotting agents are added to donated blood. As far as "Adam" goes, it is, after all, the generic Hebrew term for the word "man", so that verse may not have anything to do with calling Jesus a second Adam, just the second "man".(Yes, Paul wrote it in Greek, but he was a Pharisee after all.) "The first [man] was made a living soul, the second [man] was made a quickening spirit."

The problem with the "sperm in space" theory is that it would have been so thoroughly irradiated by gamma rays that it would be nothing but a coagulated protein smear in a very short time. Plus, it's the old Superman/Lois Lane problem (Larry Niven's "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" problem) If Adam's pelvic muscles could launch that one sperm into orbit, he'd have blown Eve's head off the first time they mated. Plus, you still have to have some sort of antifreeze solution to keep the sperm in so that ice crystals don't form inside the cell membrane and rupture it. Then, there's also that it would make all the genealogies in the Bible that traced Jesus' lineage down through the intervening bloodline into complete lies. No, there's just too much hassle that God would have to go through in order to preserve one of Adam's sperm cells. Besides, Jesus is the Son of GOD, and only the long descendant of Adam, so it's perfectly believable that God, as Jesus' True Father would be quite justified in making His own special sperm to get the job done, without resorting to comic-book physics.

Wonder if Donna M. is worried now that she's seen what the retirement package for former First Ladies contains...?

I'm not exactly sure. Card is a Mormon, but this sounds more like the Catholic doctrine to me. Perhaps the two groups believe the same thing about Jesus becoming sin itself in his final hours and his being forsaken by God as a result?

Here's a thought provoking (positive) review for the film: The Passion of the Christ--Three Reviews and a Letter

Here's the Associated Press story: Jackson to make The Hobbit Jackson says he wants Ian McKellan to reprise his role as Gandalf (no word on Ian Holm as Bilbo) but there's a legal question to be hashed out between New Line and MGM over distribution rights. Jackson will spend the next 2 years working on his King Kong remake anyway, so it should be settled by the time he's ready to begin production. Kewl.

George talked about gravity, others talked about magnetic fields, but there's something most folks don't take into account--nothing about the Moon is changing during the month except its position. What that means is that the Moon will be in the same place overhead at least once every day. That time shifts by about 50 minutes a day, but all that means is that the same "influence" the Moon has on you at midnight on the day it becomes full is the same influence that the one-day-past-full Moon will have on you tomorrow night at 12:50am, and the same as the previous night's Moon did at 11:10pm. Same mass, same general distance, same gravity. If it's some sort of syzygy influence, (i.e., the relation between earth, moon, sun) then the true full-moon straight-line effect would last less than an hour at the precise instant of fullness, and only over that particular spot on the earth where the moon would be on the meridian. So, you can pretty much rule out any gravitic or orbital influence altogether.

I'd like to ask all those supposedly disinterested, impartial, neutral third parties that have seen fit to point fingers at me here if they even read what I wrote to excathedra on the evening of March 3rd, and her subsequent reply to me the next morning? Well, let me try it again, then. Maybe this will help: I did not know that excathedra would react the way she did to my original statement. I did not think it was any great secret that she and I do not see eye to eye, and I certainly did not think she would be as hurt as she was by the way I phrased it. Had I known, I certainly would not have worded it as I did. I am truly sorry that she was hurt by what I did. For my part, I did not intend for it to be accusatory, malicious, or anything other than matter-of-fact. I thought that the analogy would be an illustration that would be instantly and personally identifiable to her, but I erred in that I did not take into account that her particular trauma would be exacerbated by the tiniest semblance of negativity. I thought that I had qualified it sufficiently with "particularly" to move the emphasis away from our contentions in the past and on towards the second part of the comparison. Yet another lesson learned in "no one ever reads things quite the way you wrote them." So, excathedra, I apologize if what I said sounded hurtful, mean, or malicious to you. That was not my intent at any time, and I'm sorry that my lapse caused you any undue grief. I'll address the rest of this weekend's issues in the morning.

Hap: All right, how about "prejudged my complicity" or "prejudged my motivation" instead, if you don't like "guilt"? No, it hasn't been worked out privately. That should be obvious. Paw never says much, but he'd tell me to stop if it had been. And I'm also certain that if Pawtucket ever gets fed up with me, this thread will be locked and buried in the archives somewhere. So, if you won't say that Pawtucket doesn't deserve an apology, and so far, no one else will either, on any side of the conflict, doesn't that pretty much tell you what the truth of the matter is? Even if I were twice the "hateful, "stalking" monster that Rocky's branded me, his words are still there in black and white and blue. Yet, apparently there's no positive defense for them anywhere to be found. I don't care if you or anyone else thinks I'm some sort of colossal ******* for standing up for Pawtucket, I really don't. The longer this crap goes on, the more people put up with it, the greater chance it will happen again, and again, on a wider and wider scale. Why? Because it already HAS, from previous conflicts. We all get the kind of community we deserve, in the long run. If you won't stand up for Pawtucket when he's clearly been wronged, what makes you think you deserve to ever have anyone stand up for you? Anybody? How about just declaring open season on everybody, then? We're all big boys and girls, right? Yet, look at how many people immediately leapt to excathedra's defense when all I said was that I didn't particularly like her. And Pawtucket doesn't deserve an apology?

Of course, it is always easier to see under a full moon, too. That could account for some of it... :)-->

Ex: George Aar once posted this link about it. It's pretty good. Full Moon at skepdic.com

Galen: Aren't all the flip charts reproduced in the full PFAL syllabus in the back of the Advanced Class syllabus? I know they aren't all in the orange book, but I seem to remember the expanded syllabus having more of them.

Dot: It was Pontius Pilate (the nearly-bald guy) who wanted to let him go in the film. Caiaphas was the guy with the beard who started up with the "Give us Barabbas!" chant, etc.

Is that what you got with your hostility towards Pawtucket, a cathartic thrill? Are we all just playthings for your amusement, Rocky? How noble.

Hardy-har, Tom.

Long Gone: Point taken. Rest assured that this is the last time I'll ever tell the board I reported a post. Cripes, some folks would have gone easier on me if I'd announced I like stomping puppies to death.

"Christ didn't come to give us the willies--he was a booster!"