I did read De vita Agricolae, but the (Hebrew) translation I read refers to that word as "desolation".
Of course, Calgacus kinda lost, didn't he? The Roman Empire fell just short of three hundred years after he lost Mons Graupius.

and I should have headed it off at the pass. So instead of saying the same thing to every responder (I've seen one, maybe two, and there may be more; I haven't read all the reactions yet), I'll say it loud and clear here:

I am not equating homosexuality and racism! I am not equating gays and the KKK!

I was using that extreme example to make a question crystal clear: Does a business owner ever have a right to deny offering a personalized service to a potential patron in order to avoid appearing to give his imprimatur to an idea with which said business owner might disagree?

So to you who are accusing me of making a false equivalence that I am by no means making, have at you.

(And Scapegrace, if I have misconstrued your reply by lumping you in with these responses, I apologize.)

Things heated up real quick, didn't it? Right then. Let's talk about your response to me first.

Thank you. I was admittedly misunderstanding your stance on the climate change issue. And, I am also glad to see that you are starting to read the scientific journals, or at very least, reputable summaries. I must admit to remaining rather ignorant on the specific details myself, so to attack somebody for not reading the primary sources would be hypocritical at best.

That being said. In this, specific instance, there really is no other side. The "other side" are scientists paid directly by energy companies to be contradictory to the accepted science to save their business. I hate using that reasoning. It dismisses potential evidence that could help see things from a new light, but the fact remains, that's just the case. I am no scientist. Heck, many of the fine details fly over my head due to current lack of understanding, so I'll defer to hS and others with greater scientific background.

Now. As for the other arguments. Starting with refusal of service and the nature of sin.

Oh boy.

You know, sometimes my being so very pro First bites me. Because, I see where you are coming from. Now, one has to make a few assumptions as to the nature of sexual deviancy in relation to same sex relationships. Namely, that it is a lifestyle choice and not genetically driven (of which there is substantial evidence for genetics, but for now, let us continue the assumption) and thus, not fully discriminatory like denying somebody for their race would be. If one makes that assumption, then... I actually kinda have to agree. Now, again, I think it's unwise from a business standpoint to do so, rather offensive to those being denied service, and morally dubious, but at the end of the day, as far as I understand, service can be seen as a form of speech. And, as such... I kinda have to defend that right to freedom of speech and religious practice. If I want the right to tell White Pride nationalists to piss off, I have to allow the right for others to deny service based on other lifestyle choices I do support. That's the dual nature of Free Speech.

However, again, we are working off of assumptions. Namely, that gays have a choice in their feelings. Surely you would not argue for a business being able to deny service to a black man, or Chinese woman, or any other ethnicity, would you? Because they have no say in what their genetics are. To deny service because of that would be horrifically wrong. If you agree, then you must concede that gays have the same right to protection from bigotry. Because again, there is rather substantial scientific evidence for homosexually, and other sexual deviancy, to be genetically determined, not socially. Thus, in my personal view, running outside the realm of Freedom of Speech, and into the same category as racism.

But, again, as the White Pride nationalist has the right to express their opinions, so to does the flat earth truther and the homophobic. They have that right to express those opinions without legal attack. That said, so too do the people who disagree have the right to tell those people that they are wrong.

I'll leave climate change alone, since I've already vented my spleen over it and others are carrying that topic just fine without me.

So, sin.

I get the Christian position that sin is sin, period. I get that a lot of Christians feel that celebrating a gay wedding would be as wrong as celebrating murder.

But the thing is, not all sin is equal. You don't try to outlaw exclaiming "Jesus Christ!" in a heated moment; you don't work to legally force people to stay in harmful marriages, or ostracize people who have affairs; you don't even try to refuse service to the many, many people who commit other kinds of sex-related sin, like having oral sex out of marriage, for instance.

Even if someone were to walk into your flower shop wearing no wedding ring and a big button that says "I am a cunning linguist!" with a blatantly suggestive mouth on it, you'd still be obligated to sell that person flowers, even if you're sure they're going to be given to that person's significant other as a prelude to getting freaky, because what they get up to in private is none of your bloody business, and it's not up to you to judge them. That's God's job. Pray for them if you want to; ask if they're interested in talking about Jesus if you want to; but if they say no, then you back the hell off. If we sexual deviants all end up getting destroyed in the Apocalypse, that choice is our right as beings with free will.

Christians do not treat all sin the same. The kind of sin that two (or more!) people get up to consensually, that doesn't actually harm any other person, is not the same as murder, or rape, or theft, or anything else that is (a) nonconsensual, and (b) destructive to health and property. Trying to convince others that it is is both offensive and hypocritical. Please quit it.

Oh, and yes, if the KKK guy wanted the cake guy to make a cake that said something along the lines of "Hooray for 100 years of brutally tormenting black people!", he could in fact refuse that, 'cause it would be against the law. Hate speech is not protected under the First Amendment, and I hope to whatever power there may be that we never allow that to change.

Now, on the book. I haven't read it either, so I guess we're even. It doesn't really matter, because the thing is, the racist has every right to believe what he believes and even to pass it on to his children, too, even as the public school system lauds the end of slavery and the heroism of people like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. What he doesn't have is the right to spout off about how dirty and/or sick and/or evil black people are in public, to threaten people who disagree with eternal fire and torment, or to interfere with other people's freedom to marry interracially if they want to. A racist baker would be just as obligated to sell that cake to an interracial couple as a Christian baker is to sell to a gay couple. He also does not have the right to be free from the judgement of others for his beliefs—nobody does. He may believe his racism is perfectly justified, but that doesn't make his position respectable or correct, and we don't have to put up with it in public—including public schools.

In public, under the law, everyone is equal (or should be). But that has never stopped anyone from being free to believe what they choose and live according to those beliefs in their private lives, and it never will.

Unless Trump and Pence decide to actually kick out all the Muslims, put women in jail for making difficult decisions about their own bodies, and force gay kids into electroshock conversion camps, I guess. 'Cuz, y'know, small government, right? {= |

~Neshomeh is admittedly arguing more from a place of passion than of logic, but hopes her logic is clear and present, too.

This is probably the most offensive thing I have seen said about gay people since Jacer was here. Desdendelle's comments can be attributed to ignorance, but I assume you are American and therefore should know better. Especially since the KKK targets gay people too. You are literally comparing the oppressed to their oppressors and honestly the only reason I sound so calm about it is because there's a word filter on the board.

(I'm not even going to touch the way you present gayness as in any way comparable to thinking lynching black people is awesome. Just, not with a barge pole.)

1/ Richard Lindzen. According to Wikipedia's quoting of the New York Times, "'He agrees that the level of [carbon dioxide] is rising because of human activity and that this should warm the climate.' He also believes that decreasing tropical cirrus clouds in a warmer world will allow more longwave radiation to escape the atmosphere, counteracting the warming." So his stance is that people are causing climate change and that unverified factors will counteract this.

Glancing over the abstracts of his papers (references 9 and 51 on his Wikipedia article), his data seems very lacking: the first paper claims his proposed negative feedback has not been replicated by later testing, while the second (link) says his data is not from the same radiation he wants to talk about. So no, I don't particularly trust Richard Lindzen Against The World, now that I've read what he actually wrote.

2/ No-one is claiming we're going to turn Planet Earth into Venus 2.0; that's pure hyperbole on your part. What the entire scientific system is telling you is that Earth's ecosystems are fragile. Twelve thousand years ago, the Sahara Desert was a fertile landscape; natural climate change turned it into a band of yellow acros the entirety of North Africa.

And the Earth is fine with that. It doesn't care if the Sahara's dry or if there's rainforests in Antarctica. The planet - and life on it - will survive, and flourish.

But if we destroy the ecosystem around us, if we become the Sixth Mass Extinction, then that is (to slip into Christian idiom) a vile sin indeed, a violation of one of the very first commands ever given to humanity: to rule over the Earth, not to destroy it. Worse - we're part of the ecosystem we're endangering. Our food animals, our food plants, are part of it. If we push through this incredible shift in the climate, we stand a very good chance of wiping our civilisation, and quite possibly our species, out for good.

In the first Science of Discworld book (from memory), there is a perfect quote which sums up this position: "We can't destroy the planet. We might just be able to save ourselves."

3/ But let's assume we don't feel the least bit of guilt about genociding entire branches off the tree of life, and that we all decide locusts are the best meat or whatever. In four pictures, here's why allowing the planet to warm - regardless of whether it's our fault - is still catastrophic.

1 & 2: Arctic sea ice minimum in 1979 and 2015. The graph plots said minimum. Note that since sea ice floats, this is not causing an increase in sea level.



3: Antarctica, noted for being covered in 6.4 million cubic miles of ice. Note that, as yet, this has not started receding in the same way (I blame the heat-sink effect of it being on land), but that it exists on the same planet as the North Pole.



4: Maps of North America and Europe if all that ice melted and precipitated a ~58 meter sea level rise. I've helpfully marked my house on the Europe one (it's underwater).



This is an extreme - or rather, it's an endpoint. As I said in point 2, it's happened before - during the Cretaceous, when most of Europe was an island chain, and North America had an ocean running through the middle of it. But even a fraction of that sea level rise - when, not if, Antarctica gets in on the mass melting act - will be an unimaginable disaster for places like, oh, the cities that America has built all along its coasts?

4/ Copernicus: actually, it used to be the enforced religious opinion that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Copernicus was a priest who struggled with that fact his whole life, and only published on his death bed because of it. Galileo wrote essays which convinced most scientists, and led to him being tried by the Inquisition, banned from writing or teaching his theory, and being placed under house arrest. So no, Geocentricism wasn't the majority opinion - it was a religious doctrine which scientists had not yet researched. Do you want to try and claim that climate change hasn't been looked into...? Thought not. ;)

(If you're interested in Copernicus and Galileo, by the way, I cannot recommend Dava Sobel's books A More Perfect Heaven and Galileo's Daughter highly enough. She makes it clear - particularly in the latter, which is built around letters from his Catholic nun daughter - that both men were deeply religious, and didn't have the slightest intent of breaking with the Church - they just wanted to discover the truth about the universe around them.)

hS

... since I'm no scientist, but I will argue ethics with you:
Mr Valastro should not discriminate against a Klansman. In a proper democratic country, regular citizens do not take the law into their own hands; if said Klansman is a criminal he should be taken care of by the authorities, and in the meanwhile should be able to buy a cake like everybody else. (The case where the authorities don't address the Klansman's crimes is a different kettle of fish.)
In general: there's no such thing as a right to not be associated with somebody, and there is a right to not be discriminated against, especially when it comes to things you don't choose like sexual orientation (if you think you can choose sexual orientation: do you honestly think you could turn bisexual if you'd want to?).
A religion (any religion) is like a dick: it's cool that you have one, but you shouldn't be waving it around in the street and you definitely shouldn't be shoving it down people's throats without their permission, especially children.

Please take a closer look at what I said in response to Seafarer. Both times, I conceded that climate change is a real thing. I nowhere said that it was a hoax.

And one has to have less than one functioning brain cell to deny that rising sea levels are currently a threat to coastal communities and low-lying island nations—meaning that those affected must receive appropriate aid. So obviously, it would be small comfort to say from an ivory tower, "The current warming is part of a greater cycle," even if the argument is true. (Note that I am not trying to make this argument here.)

As I said before, my point of disagreement is not with the existence of climate change, but with the narrative that "if something isn't done, WE'RE GOING TO COOK OURSELVES TO DEATH!!1!!!11!"

As I conceded to Seafarer, I am clearly ignorant of the literature on both sides, and given your first-hand experience about it, I have all the more reason to actually start reading sooner rather than later.

But what I do know is that there is literature on both sides. And that was all I wanted to say in the first place: if there is an argument on the other side, then deal with the argument; do not resort to demonizing the other side as a shortcut to reasoned discussion.

You're right. For some people, it's already here.

Thinking about this (because once I got the bit between my teeth I just couldn't stop), I remembered a couple of articles I read recently in Scientific American, and then I found some more that I hadn't read. First, "The Ominous Story of Syria's Climate Refugees," which discusses climate change as one of several causes of the Syrian migration.

Second, "Governments Should Plan for Climate Change Migrants." I note that "22 million people were displaced by extreme events in 2013, led by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines" as opposed to "In the early 1970s, the total number of people displaced [by extreme events] was only about 10 million."

Third, this series about Bangladesh and climate migration.

TL;DR: Rising sea levels, storms, floods, and drought caused or exacerbated by climate change are forcing people to flee their homes and flock to areas that are already overpopulated. This is happening now, not 50 years from now. If sad polar bears don't move you-and-others-like-you to support decisive action against climate change, perhaps the plight of millions of human beings will?

~Neshomeh

P.S. I think the root of many of our problems is overpopulation. I don't believe in forcing people to limit their reproduction by means of something tyrannical like the One-Child Policy, but I do believe in making birth control and sex education freely, broadly, publicly available so we can all make smarter choices about how many humans we add to the viral load population. By extension, I also believe in supporting women's rights and education in particular. When women are educated and empowered to take control of their bodies, their entire community benefits. I don't have a link to back up that statement, but can I slide by with an It Is Known this time?

...I can use xkcd, And RationalWiki. And other actual scientific bodies.

If you reject actual science in favour of YouTube conspiracy theorists, I see no reason to entertain any of your other views, regardless of their merit.

And of course an HTML fail rears its ugly head. There are two links: one to the NPV homepage, and one to a YoouTube video. The second link is at the words "this video".

This has a demographic breakdown of the popular vote, at least. Not sure how it'd translate to electoral votes, but hey! 55% Clinton among millenials isn't bad.

Approximately 50% of our population believe that non-white people are crack-snorting criminals who are stealing their jobs and also mooching off their tax dollars at the same time somehow.

Hell, some of these people might not even know they're racist, because it's all in code. It's hard to fight that.

... Going on about "code" probably sounds like some whackadoo conspiracy nonsense, but it's true. If you analyze the populations in question when we talk about people on welfare, people who go to jail for drug-related crime, illegal immigrants "taking our jobs"... it's mostly people of color, because they are marginalized and poor and have fewer opportunities that come at greater cost than the rest of us.

Maybe now it'll come out into the open again, and maybe we'll be able to do something about it. I don't know.

~Neshomeh

Here and here. Have a beloved piece of my childhood. Share it with your young friends and relatives. And if you like that, there's more! Some of the concepts may be a bit outdated, but it's a start. And I still have a soft spot in my heart for the Bell Laboratory Science Series, too. MASSIVELY outdated, but the basics are still fairly sound, at least.

Also, if you want something a BIT more contemporary, Bill Nye the Science Guy is now on Netflix. I binge-watched all of it not so long ago. ^_^

~Neshomeh

He's cutting Education funding anyway, right? So Carson won't be able to do anything.

hS, silver lining (which is probably toxic metals)

I knew you'd show up with the correct terms at some point. ^_^

have shown you that despite my initial poor choice in sources, I should be taken seriously.

As for Alex Jones, I honestly had no idea who he was before your post, nor that he was a noted conspiracy theorist. I do not travel in those circles. My older brother (who is no conservative) shared that video on Facebook, and I, proud as I am about my heritage, already prone to believing the worst about Clinton, and ignorant of who was doing the talking, took it as incontrovertible truth. I know that that is no excuse for not having done more digging into who it was that I was listening to, but at least you now have some context.

Yes, it was Director Comey who first recommended that Clinton not be prosecuted. However, the final decision on whether to prosecute belongs to the Attorney General (who is the head of the Justice Department), not the head of the FBI.

So in my haste (the post was made at 11:16 PM New York time), I wrongly truncated the facts.

The point that I wanted to make was that even though there were possible grounds for a prosecution, it appeared that the fix was in to ensure that Clinton would get away scot-free.

I have to admit that I was misled in part.

Long story short, the conservative talking points were 1) that Clinton ignored calls for help in Benghazi, and 2) that Clinton misled the American people by saying that the attack was part of a spontaneous protest instead of a coordinated terrorist attack.

As far as the first talking point is concerned, this article from the fact-checking website Politifact, shows that it's clear that saying that Clinton ignored cries for help is patently unfair. So I admit that I've been misled.

As far as the second talking point, though, there is some basis in fact. As factcheck.org puts it: "But, at this point, we do know that Obama and others in the administration were quick to cite the anti-Muslim video as the underlying cause for the attack in Benghazi that killed four U.S. diplomats, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. And they were slow to acknowledge it was a premeditated terrorist attack, and they downplayed reports that it might have been." Here is the full article.

Everybody underestimated the ability of the GOP to get its followers to march in lockstep. The revulsion at Trump and Trumpists was evidently public handwringing by people who had no intention of voting any other way. And since they had power at state and local levels, because for some reason the American left is really, really bad at voting down-ballot, they were able to gerrymander and suppress and initiate ridiculous laws based on fear; not the fear that there was going to be fraudulent conduct at the election, but fear that their party was going to lose. Even when its Presidential candidate is on trial in December for child molestation and its VP candidate wants to run mains electricity through the genitals of queer youth.

The disenfranchised tried to vote for a better future, and were systematically denied the opportunity to do so. I can't believe this is the case in America, wherein democracy is one of the most sacred principles - oh, wait, yes I can, because American democracy is only a sacred principle as long as everyone involved is a white man. Or orange man, as the case may be.

Love does not inherently trump hate. Voting trumps hate. Throw yourselves into activism. Throw yourselves forward. I plan on running for local government in my constituency and I urge you all to do the same. We win when we can do what the right does - take control and get people voting down-ballot en masse. Then we can break the back of the GOP, a party so in thrall to its worst excesses it might as well replace its policy lab with a meth lab. Then, and only then, can people who view voting as a lifestyle choice rather than a means of making the country better one soul at a time chuck ballots at Jill Stein and Gary Johnson and every other nonentity with not a snowball's chance in a blast furnace of forming a bloody government.

The American people are derelict in their duty, which is the duty of all humanity, to create a better world. The greedy and the stupid have won today. Now is the time for anyone who genuinely believes in the idea of America, in the ideal of a democracy run for the benefit of the people it governs rather than corporate institutions, to get out and be active. I said it after the 2015 general election, I said it after Brexit, and I'll say it again:-

This fight is over. The fightback begins now.

Kaitlyn said this morning that they're far more widely spaced over there than they are here. Here, you can usually find multiple per town; they're always in walking distance, and there's so many that I've never had to wait in any sort of line.

I didn't really believe her, not properly. That just sounds like an utterly appalling setup for the planet's flagship democracy. But I guess it's true.

Yuck.

hS

Some of those are legit; some of them are frankly horrifying. But I take your point.

However, mine also still stands: I am frankly furious at the people who had every chance of voting, but just couldn't be bothered.

hS

And yeah, you need the changes. This system was thought for a country too vast for knowing quickly the results, and that stopped to be a problem a long time ago.

Direct universal suffrage is sorely needed. And several turns of election to make sure nobody goes in this Oval Office without the majority of the country behind them.

Way back in the golden age of 2010, we in Britain had a moment of balance. The Labour and Conservative parties both failed to win a majority in the general election, which meant the Liberal Democrats - the only functioning left-wing we had - held the power to shape the next four years. Should they form a coalition with the larger, but right-wing Conservatives, or should they stick to their principles and form one with Labour?

They chose the Conservatives. And then they did absolutely nothing to moderate the Conservative government that followed. They demonstrated conclusively that even the most idealistic politicians want nothing more than to get into power and stay there.

So no, I don't believe the Republican Congress will let Obama appoint a new justice to spite Trump. I don't believe they'll do a single blessed thing to stop Trump once he's in. And I don't believe for a single instant that they will alter an electoral system that just handed their party the win - except to try and bias it further in their favour while they have a solid grip on the reins.

hS

Both of these decisions were a moment of monumental stupidity, that no sane person having done a minimum of research would have taken.

We can only hope these idiots don't drag down the world with them, and that with each new failure of them, their position in public opinion will be utterly destroyed.

I'm sure there must be a word for it - a specific word for the American political system, where it must(?) have happened before.

Believe me, if I wanted to make jibes about 'one-party state' and the like, I could come up with them all by myself.

hS