Your report that you feel anxious is a strong indication that you do, in fact, exist. The non-existent feel nothing. They do not engage in this sort of solipsistic word play, either. So you most likely exist -- as much as any of us exist.

Voters themselves are, unfortunately, rather ignorant -- republican or democrat. — Xtrix

Are they actually so ignorant? 99% of the time, voters are being asked to vote for one ruling class candidate against another. They are not being asked whether the local power plant is sending too much CO2 up the stack. They aren't being asked whether neonicotinoids should be sprayed on crops, wiping out tons of insects. They aren't being asked to make specific decisions through voting.

What the electorate is asked to do is to vote for candidates they think/hope/wish will do something good for them (the voter) but which does not happen, much more often than not. Do voters have a lot of stupid ideas floating around in their heads. Sure they do -- but nothing as grandiose and ruinous as the stupid ideas floating around in the heads of the ruling class who are running things.

That "voters are stupid" is something of a class smear. Most voters are working class, by virtue of their composing by far the largest segment of potential voters. Dismissing most people as stupid leaves you with the narcissists, lunatics, megalomaniacs, and manipulating creeps who want to run things.

I prefer the ruling class smear: There is much more evidence at hand to support their bad reputation.

BTW, how do you happen to be exempt from your sweeping generalization?

You might find this interesting:

Quillette has a nice article on some books one should read which will annoy politically correct people--books like Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell or The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. The books the article recommends are all great reads.

So, Celeste Ng writes, “It’s difficult for me to explain how much I hate this book [The Good Earth].” And then she goes on to mention, among other things, “the weirdness that arises from a Westerner writing about a colonized country.” Ms. Ng was born in Pittsburgh, PA, grew up in Shaker Heights, OH, and attended nothing but exclusive American schools, including Harvard University. Ms. Buck, on the other hand, was taken to China by her American missionary parents when she was five months old. She was raised largely by a Chinese nanny, spoke Chinese before she spoke English, and spent most of the first 40 years of her life in China.

Why, then, would Buck not be entitled to write about China?

The author notes that if Gone With the Wind had been written by a man, it would have ended the search for The Great American Novel. Since a woman wrote it, it was consigned to the 'romance' category.

It is a terrific read.

Another anti-human — fishfry

Stop that!

Nobody is longing for mass deaths. The reason for talking about mass deaths is to impress on policy makers minds that action on climate change is long over due. Under ideal circumstances, we could feed, house, and care for a significantly larger population. BUT, Fishfry, and you know this, the circumstances before us are far from ideal and are steadily deteriorating, The chaos of global warming is cutting the ground out from under us.

If mass death owing to starvation or disease occur, it will be the fault of the capitalist establishment who decided to fuck the world and make as much money as possible in the interim. That part IS in human hands. Once we have wrecked the environment, mass death won't be in our hands any more, and environmentalists sorrow over that hideous prospect.

I view that event as a horrible consequence of corporate and government ostriches sticking their heads up their asses.

If you want to pin the "antihuman" label on someone, hang it on the CEOs of Exxon and other energy companies, the CEOs transportation manufacturers, the oil drillers and coal diggers. Hang it on Donald Trump and his counterparts in many nations who are doing virtually nothing to forestall climate warming.

Overpopulation is a myth. I hope you at least glanced at the two links I gave, which make the case that the real problem is underpopulation. You illustrate the problem I have with many environmentalists. You dream of billions of people dying a horrible death. Environmentalism is literally a death cult. — fishfry

It would be nice if we could support any size population. We can't. We are up against declining marginal returns on agriculture and fisheries.

Nobody wants to see billions of people dying horrible, or even pleasant deaths. If billions die, it won't be because environmentalists wanted that to happen. It will happen because the carrying capacity of the planet failed to produce enough of what the added billions of people need. It isn't in human hands! We will all be subject to nature's culling operation. It won't be just "those people" it will be "us people".

The Chinese program did work -- fewer children. The problem is that it produces a mushroom-shaped population distribution -- a large cap of elderly people supported on a narrow stem of working-age people,

The Chinese program was deliberate, but other countries have ended up with the same problem without imposing any such imitations.

It's just an unavoidable problem of shrinking populations. As young people become more affluent they have fewer children. That's all it takes.

Adaptations can be made. Many people work in jobs manufacturing superfluous products or providing services people can do without. Providing services to elderly people will have to become a more dominant paid job activity.

As for reducing excess population, nature will provide solutions as human capacity to deal with global crises decreases. Remember: Nature bats last.

regardless of the nuance of the thread — Bartricks

Nuance?

how many times a street person gets laid on an annual basis — god must be atheist

I can sympathize. I haven't gotten laid in a long time. Seems like there should be an initiative to provide safe and effective annual visits to a... service provider for under-served populations. Something -- a massage and a hand job at least.

Did the Happy Hooker have a special interest in social services for the homeless? After all, wasn't she a high-end service provider?

The original Jewish messianic myth did not include anything about the forgiveness of sin. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

So?

That may very well be true, but the early church did not adopt the Jewish messianic myth as whole cloth. In the theology and liturgy of the church Jesus became the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world...

Trump, on the other hand, is more like Judas.

We clearly disagree about identity, and what makes a woman a woman and what makes a man a man. That's OK, we don't have to agree.

When I say sex lies deeper, I mean it is defined separately to one's appearance (e.g. hair length, genitals, a particular chromosome or not), in terms of one’s sex itself. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I understand what you are saying, but I can not agree with it.

Chromosomes (which are groupings of DNA) are the basis of sex (as far as I know). The sex-linked chromosomes determine sex. What determines sexuality (gay, straight, fetishist, celibate, whatever) is another kettle of fish. Certain aspects of appearance (certainly NOT hair length) are determined by the chromosomes: ovaries/uterus or testes/penis, and numerous other sex-linked characteristics.

I don't know where the basis of sex could lie, deeper or not, if it was not in the DNA groupings of chromosomes. For all but a small fraction of people (far less than 1%) the XX and XY chromosomes agree with the person's self-conception of their sex (separate from sexuality). "Medical authority figures in the United States most often quote a prevalence of 1 in 30,000 for MtF transsexualism and 1 in 100,000 for FtM transsexualism." (University of Michigan)

That a small number of people's chromosomes do not match their perceived sex does not negate the principles of how sex is determined physically.

When I say sex lies deeper, I mean it is defined separately to one's appearance (e.g. hair length, genitals, a particular chromosome or not), in terms of one’s sex itself. It is not a status obtained by having one sort of appearance or another, but a substantial feature itself. — TheWillowOfDarkness

If that works for you, fine. To me it sounds non-sensical. In my experience, men who look like men (general physical characteristics, specifics of penis, testicles, beard, body hair, manner-of-being-in-the-world) also act and identify as men. The same (different features) goes for women. Not 100% of the time, but more than 99%. Maybe I hang around with an unusually conventional group of people, but I don't think that is the case.

It IS the case that men and women can perform many roles traditionally assigned to the opposite. Men can be effective nurses, women can be effective soldiers (so reports have it, anyway). Some men are homebodies, and some women are out carousing all night. But female soldiers and all-night carousers generally think of themselves as women. Male nurses and homebodies continue to them of themselves as men.

Were society organized differently (in other cultures it has been) men and women occupy roles which in the US are oppositely assigned. For instance, women in many countries do heavy outdoor work, not exclusively, but consistently.

It is my impression that you are NOT talking about gender-linked occupational roles -- like only men get to be bricklayers and only women get to be nurses.

I do think you understate the mental issues of the homeless — Hanover

I may not have emphasized the severity of mental illness in my response, but MI certainly is a factor in helping homeless people. The point of housing first programs is that the assistance which can be provided seriously mentally ill patients is much more effective IF they live indoors. Like most people, the mentally ill do better if they have a secure, fixed place to live, everything else being equal. It is very hard to provide service to people who are living on the street (because of the stresses involved in homelessness and because of their movement from place to pace.

The same goes for addiction; the same goes for homeless people who do not have the complicating factors of MI or CD.

You're describing today's extended stay hotel — Hanover

True, lots of people are living in motels--which even if it is a ratty, run-down operation is still a relatively expensive option. There were a few SROs in Minneapolis, up to... maybe 20 years ago, when the last of them were converted back to upscale operations or torn down, and yes, they had bathrooms. But I've read of SROs in NYC, for instance, where they didn't have baths. These were, obviously, old buildings and the dates of operation were a while ago.

The question is what do you do for those who can't do for themselves? The answer is that you hope there's someone to do for them, which is in best case a family member, but usually an underpaid, overworked, and maybe not fully qualified government worker who is herself one paycheck away from eviction. — Hanover

Indeed! Housing with services isn't a cheap option. Housing costs money, and adequate staffing (in terms of pay and qualifications) is also expensive. If you are going to have one staff per 100 homeless, MI/CD clients, you might as well not bother, even if that one staff is a combination of Florence Nightengale, Mother Teresa, and Wonder Woman.

Then how did it become a part of Christian teachings? — BrianW

Well, people like Irenaeus and St. Augustine (and numerous others) were intimately involved in building up the Christian community, and teaching what the Gospels and St. Paul meant. Christianity didn't spring from Jesus' head like Athena did from Zeus's head. It was built up on a gospel foundation, and it was taught to people, and teaching involves elaboration. It wasn't created in a vacuum; there were various varieties of Christian thinking, some of them doctrinally incompatible with each other. There were also influences from the culture in which Christianity was developed.

narrative of salvation despite having been designed outside of original scriptural literature — BrianW

Well, I don't think its fair to say "outside of original scriptural literature". Rather, it was based on the scriptural literature. Look, the crucifixion was 'scandalous'. Here you have this man, Jesus, getting nailed up and killed. The scandal is that Jesus was thought to be God incarnate, (an idea worked out after his death), so an extraordinary scandalous event requires an extraordinary explanation, The solution was the Lamb of God sacrificed (like lambs were sacrificed in the temple) to redeem a sinful world.

All this may be frustrating, because people tend to think there was a straight line from Jesus to the Church as they know it. There is a line, but it isn't all that straight forward.

Over time, the Church elaborated its theology. That's what normally happens in religion -- theology is developed over time.

Some people like esoteric theology; some people like origami.

If god did not want rivers to speak, He would not have given them mouths. — unenlightened

A fresh quip I have not heard before. Adding it to my repertoire of irrelevance.

You didn't ask me, but Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, and others contributed to the idea by the 2nd century, and so did St. Augustine in 412 CE, all drawing on St. Paul.

The sin of Adam which all people inherit, is balanced by the Christ's sacrifice to save mankind.

It seems to me that the core of the idea of original sin -- that people generally can't go very long without doing something awful to each other -- has been abundantly proved.

They've had 2000 years to work these things out, and unsurprisingly, some random poster is not going to trip them up now. — unenlightened

True, but it was only in 1854 that Holy Mother Church got around to settling the matter for those creepy old-line Catholics who buy the idea of papal infallibility (which in itself is not an ancient doctrine--it came out of Vatican I, 1869-1870):

We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the first instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin, has been revealed by God, and therefore should firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful.
Pope Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, 1854

,

Apparently annoyed and feeling the need to nail this question, Mary revealed herself as the Immaculate Conception in Bernadette's vision at Lourdes in 1858 which put the stamp of God's (or at least the BVM'a) approval on the doctrine.

By the way, Martin Luther was enthusiastic about the Immaculate Conception, etc.

And the beat goes on.

The cause for homelessness in California, where between 25% and 50% of all US homeless live, is a severe shortage of affordable housing. Why do all these people live in an expensive state like California? Because it's -1ºF in Minneapolis right now. The minimum estimate of homeless in California is 130,000 (the 25% of US estimated total).

People become homeless through several routes--everything you listed, plus poverty and rising rents.

The solution that makes the most sense to me is HOUSING FIRST. Get people into good quality SRO rooms with services or small apartments with services. Once people have a warm, secure place to sleep, take a bath, keep dry, and so forth they start doing better. Provide services with the housing: addiction treatment, assistance with medication (obtaining and administering), and access to adequate food.

Housing First with services reduces ER visits and expensive treatment (county expense) for neglected disease. It improves the quality of life for those now housed, and also improves the quality of lie for everyone else.

At $50,000 for a built-to-purpose unit of SRO or efficiency apartments, California could house 130,000 people for about maybe $7 to $14 billion. Isn't that a lot of money? Yes, it is but Bill Gates could buy 130,000 units of housing and afterwards still be among the richest people in the world. Ditto for several other billionaires in California and elsewhere in the US.

Arranging affairs for the benefit of the rich and property owners is one of the reasons why there are so many homeless people. It's only reasonable to claw back some of those dollars -- about, oh, maybe $20,000,000,000 worth--for housing first across the country.

Cities used to have skid row areas where men (usually) could find the cheapest possible housing: warehouse floors divided up into small rooms with plywood and chicken wire with a lockable door. It was a step up from sleeping on the street--not a big step up, but slightly better. Cities used to have a lot of ratty apartment buildings where poor people could live -- with water, toilets, heat, and privacy. Probably plenty of cockroaches and bedbugs too, but it was a step up from living in the warehouse box-rooms.

Some cities used to have SROs -- single occupancy hotel rooms. You got a bed, a window, a radiator, and a lockable door--quite possibly a sink. The bathroom was down the hall. These were also a step up from living on the street or in warehouse-boxes.

These poverty-linked housing options are pretty much gone in most cities--torn down, redeveloped into loft spaces, turned into condos (provided the building bones were very good), and so on -- but no longer available as cheap housing. So, that's another reason why people are homeless.

BTW, the GDP of California is $2.751 trillion -- bigger than the GDP of the UK. California has one of the biggest economies in the world.

I'm thinking there were jobs programs in the 1930s. — tim wood

Unemployment in the US was at least 25% during the Great Depression. Job programs helped some, but by no means did the programs help 25% of the working population.

I'd vote for either Sanders or Warren.

Sanders is 78; Warren is 70. Biden is 77; Pelosi is 79; Bloomberg is 77. Buttigieg is 37. Klobuchar is 59. Trump clearly has the most youthful mind of all the candidates -- mid-teens. People in their 70s often have agile, resilient minds. What most people in their 70s and 80s do not have in abundance is the kind of endurance one would find in a much younger person.

I don't think the Democratic Demolition Derby Debates has been helpful to the party or to the public. In the good old days, the party bosses got together in 'a smoke filled room' and had a frank discussion about the would-be candidates. They decided who would be prepped to win the nominating convention. Of course, potential candidates had a role in all this; but they had to pass muster with the party's political experts and power players before anything else happened.

The back room system wasn't all bad. Candidates who had a good chance of embarrassing the party were deflected; candidates whose closets were well populated with skeletons could be interviewed frankly about their histories. The press back in the good old days was far more likely than the press today to extend personal privacy to candidates. John F. Kennedy was thus able to carry on an apparently very active sex life with all sorts of women, and the reporters and editors closed their eyes.

We probably won't be going back to the good old days, but it seems to me that the old system of experts picking the candidates had some merits.

Modern Science is an atheistic endeavour. — VoidDetector

I think of science and religion as two separate spheres of human activity with little or no overlap.

Where they confront each other antagonistically is when the religious claim their theogony and creation myths accurately represents the state of the cosmos (i.e., a god created it), and when science claims there are no such things as gods. Or at least there is no evidence for them.

Scientists can be religious, and the religious can be scientific. For instance, I know fundamentalist Christians who believe in a god-directed world but who, never the less, accept the science of medicine and do not count on faith to cure disease. How do they manage this contradiction? Compartmentalization. Religion and science are separate categories which do not inform each other.

although I don’t know why he wouldn’t be the ultimate Scientist and Mathematician — vmarzell

That is a way for the religious scientist to bridge compartments.

It isn't at all unusual for even smart people to hold contradictory views. There are people who fully understand the facts of global warming, but who, none the less, buy SUVs to tool around town.

A more obviously false view is hard to conceive of — Bartricks

What is harder to conceive is that there is any reason to continue this discussion with you.

I pointedly used conditionals in the OP. I said 'if' sex is constitutively determined by physical features (including chromosomal structure) then it can obviously be changed. — Bartricks

So you did, and I don't agree with that statement.

The identity of an animal is determined by billions of base pairs of DNA. A creature's identity, once composed, is fixed -- that's my view. You don't have to agree with it. A rabbit is a rabbit; it can not become a wolf. a salmon is a salmon; it can not become a bear. Homo sapiens are a particular variety of primate, and there is nothing we can do about that. Nor should do.

A female conceived is a female, and a male conceived is a male. Just because one can not altar fundamental facts does not mean that we then have to be rigid and unyielding about various aspects of existence.

Men and women can fulfill an array of roles which are very diverse, without needing to change their identity.

But we (all creatures great and small) have a stable and, for all practical purposes, an unchanging identity. This is a good thing, again in my opinion. A creature can fulfill the role for which it is suited. Some creatures can fulfill several roles. An ox can be a source of meat, and a source of traction. An ox can not breed, however, because oxen are sterilized male cattle.

What a man can do is take the role of a woman; visa versa for a woman. There may be satisfactions in so doing. Again what can not be change is "identity".

I do disagree with you about weather or not someone can truly change their sex, because i think that changing you appearance, organs, and societal roles to match the opposite gender constitutes a sex change. — sarah young

I do agree with your definition of what constitutes "a sex change" as the term is used, to which we can add an official name change.

All sorts of people decide to occupy deviant roles in life (deviant used here in the sociological sense of non-conforming). I grew up in a very conventional working class family. Once I left home after high school, I lived a much different, non-conforming kind of life than what I had practiced at home. Many of the people I associated with were pretty "far out" as the saying went.

You might be gendered non-conforming, yet very conforming in other aspects of life. Fine by me, as long as you are not trying to be a ruthless capitalist.

But I don't care whether or not you think I am a true woman — sarah young

No reason that you should care, as far as I know.

so how do you feel about the transgender bathroom situation — sarah young

My main concern about public toilets is that they be well maintained -- clean, supplied. Who else is using them at the moment is not a major concern to me, as long as proper decorum is being observed. No loud cell phone talking, no panhandling, drug dealing, that sort of thing.

The issue seems to be of primary importance to females, who fear that a male in disguise will be lurking about. The issue seems to be particularly volatile in schools (where students, parents, and staff all get involved).

I have known, worked with, socialized with, and provided social services to maybe a dozen transgendered person. This goes back to the 1970s. In those earlier days of gay liberation, there was no separate movement for trans people, at least where I lived. Actually, among GLBT people, the 4 groups all had/have separate issues, sometimes with no overlap. We took shelter in 1 big tent, more or less peaceably.

What I accept as a practical matter in my personal life (mostly tolerant of difference) is not the same as what I might theorize about philosophically. So, on a practical level, I have few problems with it. Contradictory? could be.

Sex lies even deeper than that — TheWillowOfDarkness

How does sex lie deeper than the chromosomes in which reside DNA?

there a more efficient argument than that — Brett

Like, "The word is not the thing" and "The map is not the territory" perhaps.

but gender dysphoria is a very serious issue, the rates of suicide and attempted suicide by transgender people are upwards of 75% and I feel like you are just trying to say that it is a casual want instead of what it really is, the ability to be who we really are — sarah young

Indeed, gender dysphoria is a very serious issue. I would not say otherwise. I also do not say that gender dysphoria is a casual wish. The difficulties which transgendered people endure argues strongly against it being a casual desire.

Can a man take on the outward appearance of a woman? Yes, clearly. People can take on the appearance and the roles (within limits) of the opposite gender. Can a male become a female? I would say 'no', because "maleness" and "femaleness" is deeper than appearance and roles. Sex (male/female, as opposed to appearances and roles of man and woman) is built from conception forward, resides in the chromosomes and sex-linked traits, and is immutable (in mammals, at least).

Not only is sex built up from conception, it has been built up in the evolution of species. Many (most?) plants and almost all animals are either male or female.

Transgendered people can (and do) change their appearance and roles. As long as that produces a long-term increase in personal satisfaction, fine. What can not be done is an actual change of sex -- switching out the XX or XY chromosomes for their opposites. The organs that were made in utero can be removed, and hormones can force changes in appearance.

Re-gendering rests on a delusion IF individuals think they have actually become the opposites - switched from male to female, when what they have achieved is a change in appearance and role.

Silly fellow.

Why are you invested in the idea that nothing has an inherent identity? If you were a 14th-15th-16th century alchemist you would be trying to transmute lead into gold. Nuclear engineers can transmute gold into lead (by adding particles to atoms). The reverse, lead into gold, is much more difficult because it requires deleting particles from atoms. It's possible, but extraordinarily difficult and unimaginably expensive.

Real gold is born in supernova explosions and collisions of neutron stars (the creation of heavier elements like gold).

The simplest way of turning pigs ears into silk purses would be to bury pigs ears under a mulberry bush; the pig's ears would be broken down into simpler substances which a bush could take up, make leaves, and feed silk worms. Except, a bacteria/worm-reduced pig's ear no longer has the identity it once had. Now it is only chemicals. Calcium is calcium, indistinguishable from its sources. Were you and a pig buried side by side, or cremated, neither of you would have the same identity you had before you were transformed by bacteria, worms, or fires.

One of the sleights of hand that pro-trans advocates pull is saying "sex is assigned at birth". Not true. Sex is observed at birth. Hospitals, doctors, midwives, and parents don't arbitrarily "assign" a sex at birth.

Penis? check = male
Vagina? check = female
XY chromosome? check = male
XX chromosome? check = female

Granted, a small fraction (1 in every 4500 births) of babies are born with ambiguous genitals, and an extremely small number of babies are born with chromosomal abnormalities which leave the baby in the lurch as to whether they are male or female. Most babies with ambiguous genitals have unambiguous chromosomes and are clearly male or female.

Transexuals usually have a perfectly normal body; the idea that their identity does not match their body is a delusion. Look, I completely understand that some men would rather be women and some women would rather be men. They can pretend. I might wish I looked like Adonis, sang in a baritone voice, possessed the mind of Einstein, and had the wealth of Bill Gates, but I don't. They can have organs lopped off or sort-of-look-alike organs fashioned out of skin and fat tissues. An artificial penis is not a real penis; a glass eyeball is not a real eyeball.

I didn't realize the question would be hi-jacked in this way. — frank

Come on, Frank. Anyone with 3,980 posts (--you, at the time of this post) should know that your topic was doomed from the get go. The least you could have done was say something devastatingly clever, sarcastic, and insulting about the royal parasites.

Megan kissed the right frog and is now ungrateful. Send her back.

And who is this person pontificating on the video? Why should we spare her the time of day?

The US doesn't have an illustrious past, and instead has a history of struggling to survive. — frank

As national states go, the US has a sufficiently illustrious past. We successfully seized our country from other people, which is the usual way nations get big and powerful. Powerful nations have never been established through a sensitive respect for native cultures or peaceful coexistence. Never mind this e pluribus unum crap. Our predatory symbol should have in its talons the legend, "Accipere facilis est et accipe illud!" -- Take it easy, and take it all!

We ought to enjoy the remaining years of our supremacy before someone else decides it's their turn for a go at world domination.

Sometimes self pity is the only option available.

Someone (maybe you) attending the meeting at your place of servitude should have distributed the "Bullshit Bingo" cards (there are various games for various kinds of 'sensitivity' and 'diversity' "training").

Someone should also have offered the white person who thinks that their whiteness is harmful to others a cyanide pill and advised them to "do the right thing".

I thought that this kind of nonsense was quarantined in institutions of "higher learning". Sadly, it appears that the disease has followed graduates out into their places of employment. (I gather that you work at a NGO or a non-profit. Most capitalists, a cursed lot, wouldn't waste company time on this crap.).

Can you change your sex? I think so. — Bartricks

Can you make a silk purse out of a sow's ear? I think not.

Here is a picture of a silk purse. Below the purse is a picture of a sow's ear. Vive la différence!

I think the best explanation is that race clearly does have an essential historical component, whereas sex - it would seem - does not. — Bartricks

It seems to me that you have reached for the wrong comparison here. Among progressives (who are all in favor of loosely defined gender definitions) there is very strong support for the idea that race is an arbitrary social construct than that it is an essential historical component.

In the real world there is a distinct difference between "what is, in fact the case" and "what one can get away with". In the real world, males have XY chromosomes, and females have XX chromosomes. Men have penises, testicles, prostates, and so forth; women have vaginas, ovaries, fallopian tubes, and uteruses. Women can bear children; men can not,

Through art a man can look like a woman, and a woman can look like a man, but through no amount of surgery, hormones, clothing, cosmetics, and propaganda can a man become a woman, or a woman become a man.

is man-made climate change just a natural process or is it not? — TheMadFool

We are, imho, NOT space oddities. As a species engaging in hunting and gathering we did no damage to the planet. The HG regime lasted for most of our history. It was only when we stopped hunting and gathering, and started planting the wheat we found in the fertile crescent (around 12,000 years ago) that we started becoming a problem. Agriculture led to settled existence, and settled existence led to more children which led to more agriculture, more villages, and so on. A few thousand years later we started developing technics, writing, and all that. Philosophy! Finally, after hundreds of thousands of years, we were on our way to becoming a real problem.

It took another 2 thousand years for us to get really good at being the problem we naturally are -- smart apes driven by the emotions of stupid apes, with more power than we know what to do with. Then we discovered industrialism and became hell on wheels, and here we are.

We are engaging in natural, uninhibited, greedy, ugly, bad (and occasionally splendidly beautiful) behavior. We are naturally self-fucking, which is why we may have achieved conditions which will wipe us out. Perfectly natural. For us. Unfortunately.

And what happened at the end of the Communist/McCarthy hysteria; nothing but ruin. — Brett

The Unamerican Activities Committee was itself kind of un-American. In 1954 McCarthy was censured in the US Senate by a vote of 67 for and 22 against censure. McCarthy died young, 57 years of age, just 3 years after being censured. He died of acute hepatitis, maybe aggravated by heavy drinking.

We have had two intense red scares -- the first in 1919 following WWI, and the second starting after WWII. The post WWII 'red scare' was combined with a 'lavender scare' since the people who were death on communism were also death on homosexuality. I suppose one could say that the Cold War was one long third red scare. Too bad we can't get a tax refund from all the money they spent on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Whats wrong with nuclear (fission) power. Fusion is just another type of nuclear power. — christian2017

Fusion is "thermo-nuclear power". What's 'wrong' with fusion is that we haven't been able to sustain it. Fission reactors can be operated at a temperature low enough that the nuclear fuel (enriched uranium) doesn't melt the reactor as long as the reaction is moderated. When we lose control of a fission reactor, they melt (like they did at 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. It's a horrendous mess to deal with.

Fusion reactions are too hot to come into contact with a physical container. Fusion is what stars do, and a star, as you know, are very, very hot. Instead of being held in metal tubes and covered with water (fission reactors) the fusion reaction has to be contained within a non-physical container composed of powerful magnetic fields. While the theory is sound, the actual achievement of an ongoing sustainable thermonuclear fusion reaction in magnetic suspension has proved very very very difficult.

The good thing about fusion is that if the magnetic sphere fails, the reaction stops abruptly. I should add that there is a container in which the magnetic sphere is produced, because the heat has to be captured to do anything useful with it.

So FUSION power has been a dream for a long time -- 50 or 60 years. Several international projects have been working on the goal, but nobody has scored anything. Like I said, the technology is very, very hard to perfect.

A further difficult problem with fusion is that once the magnetic container is in place, the thermonuclear reaction has to be started by focussing many powerful lasers on a small piece of fusion fuel. The lasers provide the intense heat to trigger fusion. When the fuel is used up, another ball of fuel has to be put in place and triggered. And so on -- every step of the way has been one enormously difficult problem after another.

Yes, I was aware of the cyanobacteria. They began their oxygen producing career a very long time ago. If your point in asking was to underline the idea that "change is the only constant" then I agree. The planet has gone through extremely radical change ever since it started to coagulate out of the primordial disk of our solar system.

The moon was created by a very cataclysmic collision of a small planet with earth, but no one was here to be inconvenienced, since the earth was still too hot, hadn't formed oceans yet, and so on. The event was a good thing, however, since satellites like the moon help stabilize the movement of a planet, and later on produce tidal forces which are helpful to life.

The problem with the current constant of change, global warming, is that we seem to have a rather large role in it, and it is turning out to be highly inconvenient for ourselves and our co-evolved environment. Change will remain the only constant, no matter what, and big things are yet to come. For instance, the sun will eventually enlarge, envelop Mercury, Venus and earth (at least) in its much enlarged but cooler sphere, and we will be reduced to a cinder. Once that happens, a cinder we will stay for eternity, continuing to orbit the dwarfed sun. That assumes, of course, that another star, ejected from its region, doesn't come sailing through our solar system and send the lifeless planet off on a solo trip to nowhere.

In the long run, the universe will continue to expand, continue to cool, continue to thin out, and eventually die -- the energy of the atoms finally dissipated -- somewhere in the trillions of years in the future.

So, stay tuned. More to come.

Now I know one of the arguments is that the children did have the opportunity to give or withhold permission — Brett

Of course they did not have the opportunity to give or withhold permission. Why on earth would they even be asked? Parents get to make decisions about their children without consulting the child.

Yes, kid, you are going to bed now. Yes, you are going to get a measles shot, Yes, you are going to get a bath. Yes, I'm going to photograph you today, however much you may resent it 15 years from now. You are also going to stop hitting your sister, you are going to eat the food we give you (or you can go eat somewhere else -- which is what our parents told us) and so on.

Parents are on-the-scene decision-makers--legitimate in loco parentis. Sorry kid, your ma and pa are the boss of you.