StrangeSox

To be fair, my phone sits on my computer plugged into the USB charger while I'm at work. But I honestly don't notice it when I'm out-and-about. How often are you consciously aware of your wallet in your pocket, or your car keys? My clothes aren't baggy, either.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 30, 2012 -> 11:57 AM) The interpretation of this law has to coincide with the times...often it does not. In modern times, air-superiority is a reality...and those civilians on the ground "should" be afforded the right to some sort of self defense mechanism against this. The idea behind this amendment is the people could conceivably defend themselves from a government run astray. In current times, that would necessitate the need to keep and bare arms that include SAM's...otherwise how would you defend yourself against a military that would clearly have air superiority? The amendment was also added at a time when there was no standing army and the militia was an essential component of national defense. It was reasonable and affordable for civilians to acquire the same weapons as the military. Even a billionaire today couldn't field more than one top-line fighter, let alone an aircraft carrier full of them.

Maybe you guys just have small hands and pockets. I never notice my Droid X2 in my pocket.

Scalia has an interesting take on the 2nd amendment. While recognizing some limits imposed by the phrase "keep and bear arms," such as restricting the right to hand-carried weapons only (somehow?), and also noting that the founders clearly believed in other restrictions such as on head axes, he believes that things like surface-to-air missiles may be protected by the 2nd amendment. This represents an obvious deficiency in his jurisprudence to me. If your Originalism leads you to the conclusion that restrictions on certain types of axes are ok but restrictions on rocket launchers might not be, you should probably re-evaluate your philosophy.

Well there's an answer to why people shouldn't just accept civil unions. They're not the same thing.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 30, 2012 -> 11:19 AM) The visitation/hospital issue is f***ed up to begin with. When my wife and I had our kid a few weeks ago I didn't even have the same rights as she did. The baby was considered hers in everything that we did there, so much so that when my wife wanted to walk around the halls, she was instructed to take the baby or the nurses had to take him to the nursery. I wasn't allowed to stay in the room with him by myself. I was able to watch him be born, I had a tag on my hand that said I was the father, but I couldn't be alone with my own son. Now imagine you were your wife's civil-unioned partner instead. You may not have even been let into the delivery room. ps congrats!

Like I said, I don't actually agree with that 'solution' because it creates numerous problems. But it does solve the denial of equal rights problem.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 30, 2012 -> 11:03 AM) But it's a legal contract. How do you have a legal contract without the resources of the state to enforce it. It's specifically a state license and document right now, kinda like a corporation. You can have the state enforce all sorts of non-state contracts, though, like the loan you took out for your house. Anyway, I wouldn't agree with removing marriage from government because I think it serves a useful legal function in that regard, but I do agree that it needs to be either fully and freely available to all or not a part of government at all. The current situation is a violation of peoples' rights.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 30, 2012 -> 11:00 AM) That's a violation of federal law. Do you mean discriminate in the marriage context? Sexual orientation isn't a protected class. It's perfectly legal to fire someone for being gay in a majority of states.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 30, 2012 -> 10:52 AM) What don't they have right now? If they're considered to be a spouse what are they missing out on? They're not legally considered married. Read the article for some examples, and there are many more. It needlessly complicates everything and adds a huge layer of confusion when dealing with any company or institution that has policies for married people but not for civil-unioned people. Benefits get denied, wills get complicated, hospital rights get denied, etc. etc.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jul 30, 2012 -> 10:44 AM) There's a difference for those folks (the majority in the country) that view marriage as a religious thing, not just a government benefits thing. That's the problem with this issue. Gay people want something that's against religious belief, instead of being satisfied with civil union benefits. Gay people want access to the same secular government institutions as straight people. They currently do not enjoy that access in most states, and as we all know, separate-but-equal doesn't work. People should never be satisfied with lesser rights than others.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 30, 2012 -> 10:42 AM) At the end of the day, you have to go to one extreme or another. Either the government needs to get out of the marriage business, or it needs to quit discriminating. It doesn't need to be making a religious statement. If churches want to restrict marriage, that is their prerogative, not governments. Agreed 100%.

Where they've been tried, like NJ, we've seen that "separate-but-equal" civil unions are not, in fact, equal.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jul 30, 2012 -> 10:06 AM) It seems like for years we heard about how much our vehicles and driving behaviors had to do with this, and yet I seem to remember reading a few times that CO2 emissions from vehicles is but a small part of the problem. If you separate industry/business and power plants into two categories, then transportation is the single-biggest contributor to CO2 emissions.

Well I think you've highlighted two important and correct aspects there: messaging is important, and people will be motivated to ignore or deny a problem that is too large to actually do something about; and denialists (not the same as skeptics) require an unreasonably high level of evidence before they'll be convinced, and those goalposts will keep moving every time we get close.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 30, 2012 -> 09:54 AM) If you went by the evidence published in peer-reviewed journals, you really wouldn't write things like "It's not clear that CO2 is the only driver"...because we have good evidence that it's the strongest driver throughout geologic history, we have good evidence what the other factors are, we have good evidence what the magnitude of those factors are, and we can put together a very coherent picture here. Right, it's not like it's just Maddow vs. WSJ editorials screaming "AGW!" "NO IT'S NOT!" The results of the science itself are what's sounding the alarm bells. It's the global scientific community, virtually every scientific body in the world, that's saying warming is coming, it's coming quick, it's our fault and we need to do everything we can to mitigate the damage. Opposition science is funded, but then people like Muller and BEST come away with the conclusion that things really are every bit as bad as the IPCC says, if not worse.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 30, 2012 -> 09:51 AM) Perhaps that's because they're editorials in a financial newspaper, not published peer review studies in scientific magazines/newspapers or journals? Which is why I reserve the right to mock them for being the hacks that they are!

The WSJ editorial pages aren't doing any science.

tl;dr WSJ editorial pages are terrible on many subjects and I reserve the right to mock them

That was more a shot at their terribly hacking article from January that we discussed here which had a companion piece in the Daily Mail that denied that the planet is even warming (there's more links to people taking apart that editorial in follow-up comments): But as Balta explained back then and then recently, the facts are speaking for themselves, and they're overwhelming clear that CO2 is a driver and that anthropological sources of CO2 are the main driver of current warming. As more data is collected, vetted, and mined, we find more and more support for AGW. Yet we do not see any evidence of this reflected in mainstream discussions of the topics. As was noted back in January, the WSJ was eager to publish an editorial full of oft-refuted arguments by denialists but rejected an article signed by hundreds of scientists at NAS. I was specifically condescending towards the WSJ's editorial pages because they're replete with terrible arguments on all sorts of subjects, not just AGW. As you said, it's important to be open-minded and to accept what the evidence shows you. That was the the point of Balta's post! The BEST study group started out as a bunch of skeptics but in the end have been overwhelmingly convinced that AGW is very real and very much a threat. But we don't see that acknowledged by the WSJ or guys like Anthony Watts (Watts Up With That, leading denialist blog); hell, Watts was all gung-ho about BEST until their results came up, and then he backpedaled like crazy. I honestly see little difference between the denialist movement and creationism, which is why I'm skeptical(!) that letting the facts speak for themselves will ever convince those who simply refuse to accept reality.

I spent four days in Yosemite in June. Coulda spent four months.

I'm confused by the notion that the "liberal media" refuses to acknowledge the existence of evil in the world and the idea that the liberal media says god doesn't exist.

QUOTE (kjshoe04 @ Jul 30, 2012 -> 01:37 AM) I have never seen anyone openly discriminate against someone because they are gay. I have. It's not exactly uncommon.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 29, 2012 -> 11:22 PM) Dude...its not just the south. The majority of this country still doesn't support gay-marriage. It was recently voted on in a very liberal state (the one I live in) and it didn't pass. I think its a shame but to say the south should be succeeded. Give me a break man. You are being just as bigoted and stereotypical yourself. FWIW the polls have been rapidly shifting over the past decade or so such that what was the majority in 2008 is now the minority in 2012. Nationally, there's a slight majority in favor of same-sex marriage, though state-by-state breakdowns are still against it.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Jul 29, 2012 -> 05:10 PM) simple. someone from the southern united states speaking a common opinion held by the ignorant bigots that make up that part of the country. i, for one, wish we had just let the south secede back in the day... Not that Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras were that great, but that would have been pretty s*** for the slaves.