alanschu

All right, for my grand finale of posting on this forum. Lets start from the beginning: I'm curious where you dug this fact up? I think it's a logical conclusion that one can make, but history has taught me that "commonsense" notions are not uncommonly incorrect. http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_chil.htm The fact behind these conflicting statements is that most pedophiles are not homosexuals! Or to put it another way, most homosexual molestation is not done by homosexuals. One study involved 175 male adults who had been convicted in Massachusetts of child sexual assault. They found that none of them were homosexuals; all of them would fit the description of a fixated child molester. http://www.mcgill.ca/studenthealth/informa...erhealth/myths/ Studies have shown no correlation between a man's sexual orientation and a tendency to sexually abuse children Child molesters tend to not be classified as either homosexual nor heterosexual, and restrict their sexual attraction to children, and are often attracted to both boys and girls. No it doesn't. You're making a logical fallacy here. You say that it is a common fact that biology and sociology that group behaviour can influence individual behaviour, and then state that homosexuality must fall under these conditions. Environmental factors include things like "harsh postnatal conditions" and "low morale and downward mobility." Environmental influences go far, far, far beyond social influences. They typically refer to anything that happens outside of the womb and outside of genetics. You're misinformed because those "documented cases" don't actually demonstrate people switching their sexual preferences. Those documented cases are quite often homosexuals that have repressed their homosexuality (there's a social environmental effect) to avoid stigmatization and alienation. Furthermore, it is also not uncommon for these homosexuals to actual have heterosexual relationships, and even marry and have kids. The desire to fit in and be accepted is exceptionally strong. But deep down they are still homosexual, ashamed of their attractions and willing to do anything to stop it. This would also include homosexual males that enter reparative therapy. If someone is openly ashamed of their lifestyle (here's some more social environmental pressures), seeking consul to repress it isn't that difficult. It also ignores bisexual individuals. Hanging around gay people can influence you. You may like the food that they eat or the music that they listen to. Hanging around gay people will not make a heterosexual gay. Just because you're not saying it doesn't mean that that is not the foundation of your opinion. My example of the Catholic Priest was used because Catholic priests were sexually abusing little children. If you're concerned about homosexual males (which typically aren't child molestors) molesting your children, then you should also be concerned about Catholic Priests molesting your children. In fact, given history, you should be MORE concerned with a Catholic Priest doing it, because they seem to be doing it more than homosexual troop masters. That's why I cited the example. You HAVE judged them. YOu have falliciously judged homosexual men as being more likely to be a child molestor. This is not true! Furthermore, you then support the BSA in their decisions to refuse admission to homosexuals as a "precautionary measure." I am just baffled by this statement. You want to know why I think homosexuality is right? Well, for the record, I don't think homosexuality is right. Nor do I think it is wrong. I find it utterly absurd to think you can try to place something like that as being either right or wrong. It just is. For homosexuality to be "right" or "wrong" is to put some sort of morality associated with it. Given that homosexuality exists throughout nature, I'll even say that homosexuality is natural. But I'm not going to be absurd and claim that it is either right or wrong. It'd be like claiming that being white is right, and chinese is wrong. Or that being Christian is right, and Islamic wrong. Or even something simple, like right-handed versus left-handed. As for the organizations you mentioned, I have no beef with them. And I wouldn't have any beef with the BSA if they weren't actively trying to promote myths about homosexuality. If one of your organizations was say a woman's group, that exluded men, and then justified it on false information, and used the group to spread false information about men, then I'd be significantly less understanding. At the same time, the groups you mention are examples of minorities as well as a heavily disenfranchised part of our society (women). I can recognize those groupings as being places to find support in dealing with the difficulties of living in a different culture, or looking for support in dealing with systemic inequalities between male and female. I also doubt they're getting huge amounts of public dollars from the government. Another concern I have with the BSA, is that they are teaching children (whom are exceptionally impressionable) that homosexuality is indeed "wrong." Not really. Homosexuality is typically considered a sin by religious people. If you have people that have strong religious convictions and believe that homosexuality is "wrong" and hence, a sin, it's not too surprising that they wouldn't want those people in their group. Especially when their handbook says The Boy Scouts of America maintain that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing his obligation to God as well as comments in court hearings such as "If a youth comes to a Scoutmaster and admits to doing wrong, like stealing, lying, cheating or vandalizing, the normal procedure is to counsel the youth privately and sympathetically...If the youth admits to being a homosexual, the Boy Scouts' policy is to instantly terminate his association with Scouting." http://www.religioustolerance.org/bsa.htm Note, Quotes are now bolded and italacized, since I've hit the limit for quote tags. You're also now making the mistake of generalizing them by saying that many are racist. You don't know that, so don't say that. Heck, you don't even live in the U.S.! I don't know that? How would you presume to know that I don't know that? Simply because of the (absurd) statement that I don't live in the United States? Never mind the fact that you probably don't know where I grew up. As for them not being racist, tell that to the Native Americans. I'm sure they are huge fans of the heavy amount of stereotyping of natives that boy scouts commonly do. And prior to the Mormon Church becoming the powerbrokers of the BSA, the Mormon-sponsored troops did indeed have troubles with racism. I was never affiliated with the boy scouts, so I can't speak for their organization. So despite the fact that you were never affiliated with the BSA, you felt it prudent to point out that I don't even live in the US? And from Colrom: It would be refreshing to see you follow your own instructions to others more often - with or without the accompanying disrespectful language. Okay then: http://webpages.marshall.edu/~woods18/homosexuality.htm http://www.gapimny.org/newsletter/older_issues/10myths.html http://www.dignityusa.org/faq.html http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american..._of_LDS_in_Utah http://stereotype.drumhop.com/ http://www.religioustolerance.org/bsa.htm http://chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/M...4Abernethy.html http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/49488 http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_chil.htm http://www.mcgill.ca/studenthealth/informa...erhealth/myths/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/...ey-pillard.html http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_fixe.htm And those ignore books, such as DNA and Destiny: Nature and Nurture in Human Behavior and other fun little things I have read up on when scouring my University's libraries. And on a final note, later everyone. This board just frustrates the **** out of me, and I am finally done with it. Have a nice life.

And I don't have tolerance for those that state unequivically on behalf of a group that they don't belong to, and have the audacity to state that opinions from the "insulted" group are wrong. I'm not the one embarrassed. As for my "mob," you've already joined the mob of people that feel that their opinion is higher than that of others, and are willing to speak on their behalf because they are incorrect. I am reminded of the White Man's Burden. I did. The really awesome part is that you don't seem to care that despite her hardcore religious conviction to covering her face, she had no problems not covering it during interviews.

Actually I'm not sure that that is true.

It does?

Schizophrenia also does not mean multiple personality disorder, which is referred to as dissociatve identity disorder and sometimes multiple personality disorder.

It's ironic that you're continuing the press an issue that many of those to whom this would actually apply to, feel is a moot point. I think you're embarassing pretty much everyone else by continuing to press this issue, even when those that are most affected aren't actually insulted, nor are they making an issue out of it. It's a typical pink response, of which people like yourself feel you should champion the rights of others, even if those other people don't feel their rights have been infringed upon, because it makes you feel better about yourself. You're just like pretty much the rest of the University population I have the pleasure of seeing every day of the year. But hey, stretch things out to compare it to the Holocaust for dramatic effect.

Games on my RADAR at the moment are NWN2, MTW2, and Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

http://www.mentalhealth.com/dis/p20-pe02.html

Like Alanschu said in the spam forum, if they were going to put it in, wouldn't they have put it in NWN1? Then again, there were a lot of things with NWN that they had apparently planned to connect to BG that they never got around to doing. Got a different team this time around that might be very interested in including BG touchstones. We have a week to get our hopes up. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, the different team has even less ties to Baldur's Gate and Imoen than the previous team did, so I'd be much more suprised if they included Imoen (a character Obsidian/Black Isle did not create) into NWN2 because of BG2 (a game that was distributed by Black Isle, but created by Bioware). I'd be surprised if the NWN2 team was more interested in linking their game to an older Bioware game.

I think that that may be possible, but family planning seems to be correlated with economic security though. THere isn't a huge amount of births in places like the USA and Canada, but Africa is quite high.

Actually, it does change it. I don't want "private companies" that are pretty much publicly funded, doing whatever they want with tax payer dollars. And I certainly don't want them using taxpayer money to promote intolerance. I honestly don't know how you're okay with this, unless you yourself are intolerant of homosexuals, because no matter how much you spout off that they are a "private company," they receive more public funds than many public companies do. The instant you A-OK'd their decision to not allow them to do so you certainly did imply that. Especially when considering that sexual abuse upon little boys is NOT restricted to homosexual men (in other words, yes, heterosexual men have committed sexual abuse on little boys as well...not just homosexual men). Start citing your sources bub. Besides, nurture != choice. It's not all biological, but there is zero evidence that hanging around gay people makes you gay. That's because you've been woefully misinformed. Probably from church related sources. As I just said, there is no evidence that hanging around gay people makes you gay. (And even if it did.....why is that necessarily a bad thing?) I see no logic or reasoning. I see you towing the company line of your religion. It's the same type of logic and reasoning that says don't leave your children alone with a Catholic Priest. And at this point, I would greatly appreciate it if you never called anyone a hypocrite again. A "precautionary measure?" Precautionary against WHAT? You're still buying into the church's dogma that one, homosexuality is bad, and two, that homosexuality is contagious. You say you don't judge a person's character by their sexual preference, yet A-OK the decision of a company heavily funded by taxpayers (i.e. not as private of a corporations as say, every other private corporation out there) to ban people specifically because they are homosexual. And no, they aren't banned because they as a "precaution," they're banned because the Boy Scouts of America are a right-wing conservative group, that highly values the church (in fact, it is heavily, heavily supported by the Mormon Church). Because they exercise the exact same judgement on athiests. No Athiest troop masters. No athiest boy scouts. Then you say you judge people based on their actions, when the actions of the Boy Scouts of America is to discriminate based on religious, racist (yup, many of them are racist too), and sexual orientation. Unfortunately, it's a recent phenomenon. When the Mormon Church started to really get involved, they added to the Scout Oath that people must have a duty to God, and morally straight. It's odd that allowing homosexuals and athiests wasn't a problem before the Mormon Church hijacked the organization, and utilized it's popularity and pervaisiveness to spread its intolerance. But I suppose banning people because they are athiests is just as precautionary as banning them because they are homosexuals. Face it, the BSOA are an elitist club. Which would be fine, if they were actually a private corporation. But they receive mountains of public funding, and frequently utilize public schools (which are not allowed to host elitist, discriminatory organization) as host locations for their troops. The BSOA are still cashing in on their history, and people are ignorant to the recent changes that have gone on at the highest levels. And it's perfect for those in charge of the BSOA to perpetuate their intolerance, because they have the good history of the Boy Scouts behind them. Fortunately, it's getting tougher for them to receive public funding and gain access to publicly funded instituitions as people learn more about the current state of affairs of the BSOA. They used to be a good club, but it's sad that they've become what they are today.

I believe 2.3 Kelvin or so is the temperature everything will reach. Though, as you say, entropy doesn't destroy matter.

If she didn't appear in NWN, I wouldn't hold my breath about seeing her in NWN2.

Well, with the impending death of our planet in 5 billion years, we better think of something!

Money well spent...hehehe.

I'm well aware of this. It existed in Baldur's Gate 2 as well. You were the one that commented about the name and how it made it easier to do the trilogy, not me. Maybe, maybe not. Because, as I said, the issue still existed even in Baldur's Gate 2.

I could see the advantages of having the rewrite. However, I'm not convinced that it'd be impossible to do for XP. Though I don't have any idea what the differences are between the two operating systems.

Because they didn't have the cap room to go after Sykora!!!! Woo!

This is the problem, given the huge amounts of public dollars they get, in addition to huge exceptionally cheap access to public venues. I'd have zero problems if the Boy Scouts of America were purely a private corporation. EDIT: And just to clarify, you get excessively defensive when someone points out something bad about CHristianity and then applies to all Christians. Do you afford homosexuals the same respect?

Such as? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What do you mean "such as?" If they create their own IP, then they've created something new. There couldn't be any sort of "such as" because there's nothing to compare it to.

I'm not familiar with it. I have heard of the concept of folding space, which IIRC is a man made wormhole. I'm not sure how one can expect to maniuplate whole chunks of space-time though.

Eberron would at least be different, but I'm curious why they'd have to be constrained to a D&D RPG.

ERrrr, not exactly.

Well then you just need to be concerned with the exceptional gravitational pulls. Quantum singularities are incomprehensibly massive, and will have incomprehensibly huge gravitational forces attached to them. Same goes for those worm holes. As for warp travel, I'm still not convinced that you're going to be able to travel faster than light. While time dilation would let you get to Alpha Centauri in a relative instant (assuming you could travel roughly the speed of light, which would take incomprehensible amounts of energy), if you went there and back, 8.6 years would have elapsed on Earth (this is the foundation of the original Planet of the Apes movie). Don't forget that science fiction is still fiction. Stuff like wormholes and whatnot are still entirely theoretical. I'm not sure how it'd actually be possible to bend and maniuplate space-time, and especially to keep things stable.

I'd rather they make a game that is better than the Baldur's Gate games, in a brand new, fresh setting that I'm not already pretty familiar with.