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Omaha Mall Shooting in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #131
quote:
Originally written by Stillness:

No one seems to want to address these cases of discrimination. Who will cry for the polysexuals? Thuryl? Is your heart big enough to include a father and his daughter that have special feelings for each other? Maybe they want to adopt a baby together or have the other privileges on Salmon’s list extended to them. Maybe when you meet a person you think is an alright guy, you could vote him into your “marital group.”
See, this is precisely why governments shouldn't get into the business of discriminating on the basis of whether people have "special feelings" for each other in the first place. Any kind of legal status that assumes the existence of a sexual relationship is discriminatory against asexuals, for starters. If a married couple, or a family, or a group of five friends have living arrangements such that they're dependent on each other and have a reasonable capacity to make decisions on each other's behalf in emergencies, why is whether or not they're having sex a relevant issue? Civil unions ought to be a purely legal construct with purely legal consequences; as long as the union is between consenting adults, the nature of the personal relationship between the parties involved is not a proper matter for governments to inquire into.

[ Monday, December 10, 2007 08:03: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Omaha Mall Shooting in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #129
quote:
Originally written by Stillness:

I just want to creep back out to say, I didn’t mean “design” in the sense that the Almighty God made it. I have heard naturalist evolutionist use this same language. And my argument wasn’t that homosexuality is wrong since the organs are shaped as they are, but that the heterosexual union is special in that it uses them according in the way implied by the shape, whereas the other pairings (or groupings since bisexuality came up) do not. So yes, I do disagree.
What on earth is praiseworthy about using one's organs in obvious and natural ways? Surely it would be far more creative to use them in ways that nobody has ever thought to use them before. That's how humanity progresses. Any fool can put a human penis in a human vagina: it takes a visionary to find ways of deriving pleasure from one person's forearm and another's nose hair. Bending nature to see how far it can stretch is what makes life interesting.

[ Monday, December 10, 2007 07:32: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Omaha Mall Shooting in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #124
quote:
Originally written by Fernication:

That is why I think the fairest route is to leave marriage as a community decision (obviously, this would include religious communities) and attach all the government benefits to something more equitable.
Given that our positions have more or less the same policy consequences in this case, I think we can safely agree to disagree on whatever we may happen to disagree on (which is, I think, not as much as we're making it sound like).

quote:
Originally written by Stillness:

But everybody won’t do the same, Thuryl. Some people are not willing to lie and cheat the system to get their way and to stop their neighbor from getting his. For example, the Constitution forbids restricting or enforcing religion. So when some people aren’t getting their way they equivocate and say that there is a conflict of church and state when there isn’t any, so their opponent doesn’t even have the constitutional right get their beliefs enshrined in legislation. That is the sentiment of many on this issue.
The court system is a machine that turns arguments into decisions. If you can discover what legal arguments will produce the judicial decision you want, in what sense is that lying or cheating the system? Both sides will manipulate the system by whatever legal means are available in order to produce the result they want. It's not the job of the involved parties to decide what is or isn't true, only what will help win their case. This is exactly the way the system is meant to work: in fact, you'd be cheating the system if you found a legal way to win your case and refused to use it, because you'd be depriving the process of valid input. If you have a quarrel with the nature of the adversarial system, then I guess you'll have to push for a constitutional amendment to change it.

[ Monday, December 10, 2007 06:19: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Omaha Mall Shooting in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #118
quote:
Originally written by Stillness:

Thuryl, I presented multiple scenarios and asked if you should be able to try to legislate your view and if someone with the opposite view should be able to as well.
I'm not sure I understand the question. It's impossible to prevent someone from trying to do something, so to say that somebody shouldn't be able to try to get their personal beliefs enshrined in legislation is a patent absurdity. Of course, I'll do everything within my power to prevent people who disagree with me from succeeding in getting their beliefs enshrined in legislation, and I'd expect anybody else to do the same.

quote:
I mean I don’t think disallowing same-sex marriage is equivalent to racial discrimination. I think denying housing, classifying it as a mental illness, and military policy is.
Did you not even notice Salmon's big list? There are certain benefits which are only available to married couples. Denying the benefits of marriage to unmarried partnerships is, objectively, discrimination, whether you approve of it or not. Some kinds of discrimination are laudable and necessary, as when we discriminate against murderers by imprisoning them. Unnecessary discrimination, however, is harmful.

[ Monday, December 10, 2007 02:00: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Omaha Mall Shooting in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #115
quote:
Originally written by Stillness:

And thanks for dodging the meat of my question and giving a fluff, coockie-cutter answer.
I'm not sure what answer you want. My only concern is that people are free to enter into mutually consensual personal relationships if, to whom, and on such terms as they choose, and that governments don't privilege some kinds of relationship above others. As long as all people have that freedom, I don't really care what they do with it.

quote:
Those of my faith are generally apolitical. I think my comments are being misread.
There's no such thing as being apolitical. Have you ever bought any product from a company that's made contributions to a political party? If so, congratulations: you've helped fund a political campaign.

[ Monday, December 10, 2007 01:25: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Omaha Mall Shooting in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #112
quote:
Originally written by Stillness:

Marriage is a divine arrangement predating human government.
Then aren't you angry about the government thinking it has the right to decide what is and isn't a "marriage"? Shouldn't you be campaigning for the word "marriage" to be struck off the law books entirely, and replaced by civil unions for heterosexuals, homosexuals, or any other group of people, whether involved in a sexual relationship or not, who feel that they'd benefit from participating in a civil union? This seems like an eminently reasonable solution that would please almost everybody.

quote:
If yes, what would be the purpose of marriage in your ideal society?
The purpose of marriage is whatever the people involved in the marriage want it to be. Again, a marriage is a private contract between the individuals involved in it, and it's not anybody else's business why they choose to make that contract.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Omaha Mall Shooting in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #78
quote:
Originally written by Kelandon:

You'll note that the fundamental argument against it applies equally well to polyandry, even though it was designed for polygyny.
I'm not convinced that the fact that polygamists will not treat every spouse exactly equally is sufficient grounds to ban polygamy. The classic analogy is to parenthood: most parents do have favourites among their children, and while we may disapprove, we don't institute a one-child policy because of it.

Furthermore, the argument proves too much: if it's wrong to treat one spouse better than another spouse, why isn't it wrong to treat your spouse better than people who aren't your spouse? If there's a legitimate public interest in banning polygamy on the grounds of unequal treatment, then there's a legitimate public interest in banning all marriage, since pairs of people who value each other over everyone else can't help but destabilise and fragment society.

quote:
Originally written by Elastikon:

Yes, that's a good point. Bad Thuryl! Don't troll the Christians, they're high in cholesterol.
What I find most amusing is that he hasn't mentioned the possibility of lifelong abstinence even once. I was fully expecting him to just come out and say "well, then, some people will just have to stay single", but no. Shows how seriously fundamentalists take their own rhetoric.

[ Saturday, December 08, 2007 21:22: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Omaha Mall Shooting in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #74
I do find it interesting that whenever anyone talks about polygamy, the implicit assumption is that it's normally going to be polygyny in particular.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Omaha Mall Shooting in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #68
quote:
Originally written by Excalibur:

quote:
so even if every man marries a woman, not every woman will be able to get married unless some of them marry each other.
Unless a group of people aren't monogamous.

So you're in favour of polygamy but not same-sex marriage. Good to know.

(I don't think that either should be banned, providing that everyone involved is a consenting adult.)

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Omaha Mall Shooting in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #66
quote:
Originally written by Stillness:

My point is that saying same sex marriage is not allowed is not the same as having white-only water fountains. The former is not discriminatory as it applies to everyone.
Except that same-sex marriage does discriminate against women. There are more women than men in the United States, so even if every man marries a woman, not every woman will be able to get married unless some of them marry each other.

Besides, why does the government have an interest in interfering in the right of consenting individuals to make contracts with each other on terms of their choosing? The right to same-sex marriage is a logical extension of the right to contract.

quote:
What you’re calling discrimination would apply to gender designated restrooms and interspecies marriage as well. Why shouldn’t I be able to walk in on naked girls at the community center or marry a plant?
Plants can't sign contracts, you galoot.

Oh, and I do think non-unisex restrooms are discriminatory (particularly against transgender and intersex people) and in an ideal world they wouldn't exist, but that would require a rather bigger cultural change than legalising same-sex marriage. Public restrooms are by their nature a public space. The existence of a public space where activities considered private go on is always going to require some awkward compromises. Marriage, by contrast, is a private contract, and no such compromises are necessary.

Having said that, I stayed at a dorm with unisex showers and restrooms once. Sure, it was awkward at first, but people got used to it.

[ Saturday, December 08, 2007 16:14: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Omaha Mall Shooting in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #47
quote:
Originally written by Jumpin' Salmon:

So, suicide doesn't get the media attention it merits?
Even a politician's rather famous suicide got rather short air time. The guy with the gun is only a victim through his own actions. That doesn't make him a victim. It makes him a ruiner.

Most responsible media organisations are reluctant to give broad news coverage to suicides for fairly good reasons: there's strong statistical evidence that every news article on a suicide causes a spike in the number of suicides. I don't think the evidence is as strong for news coverage of spree killings causing more spree killings, because there aren't enough data points to draw any firm conclusions, but they do seem to come in clusters.

I don't think a complete blackout on all information about spree killers is the answer, though: psychologists, at least, still need to study what predisposes people to commit such acts. The idea that there's no way to predict who might snap or when, and so we shouldn't even try to study spree killers to see what makes them tick, is both defeatist and factually incorrect: people have been caught while in the planning stages of committing mass murder, and even if not all of them were going to go through with it, you'd have to conclude that at least some lives have been saved. Does the general public have a legitimate interest in hearing all about the personal lives of spree killers? Probably not. But that doesn't mean information shouldn't be available to those who have good reason to seek it out.

[ Friday, December 07, 2007 19:38: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Omaha Mall Shooting in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #6
The Malaysians even invented a word for the act of attacking random people with murderous intent. If you think that spree killing is a new problem, or one confined to America, you don't know much about it.

[ Thursday, December 06, 2007 05:10: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Eat It! in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #18
Do you even have Red Rooster over in America? If not, you're missing out.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
For all you physics gurus in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #23
You can't just cancel out the mass like that when there's addition on one side of the equation.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Purify enchanted shaped items? in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #12
In terms of raw damage, the strongest weapon is actually the Puresteel Blade that you get from Guardan Koerner in Poryphra Ruins: it does a whopping 20-100 damage, but has no other special abilities. Viper's Touch is also worth considering as a late-game weapon, with 14-70 damage plus poison.

Also, please note that Perfected items DO NOT have a better defensive rating than Shaped items. The ONLY advantage of combining a purification elixir with a Shaped item to make a Perfected item is that Perfected items can be used as artifact ingredients.

[ Sunday, November 25, 2007 04:56: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Webcomics in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #7
quote:
Originally written by The Ratt:

Would this breach the CoC as advertising?
Are the people making the posts making any money from the sites? No. Let the mods do their job.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
It's that time of year again... in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #21
quote:
Originally written by Drew:

Finally, Excal, if you prefer deer, then aren't you the one who's unclean?
Eh? Venison can be kosher, it just usually isn't because of the way it's slaughtered.

(My favourite meat is rabbit, though, so if I were Jewish I'd be out of luck.)

[ Friday, November 23, 2007 08:23: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Stuffing into Small Places? in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #67
quote:
Originally written by Funkadelic:

I can eat a 12" on my own if I've not had anything to eat that day, but I then don't eat for a month.
Are you some kind of carnivorous reptile, or perhaps a codfish?

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Stuffing into Small Places? in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #63
quote:
Originally written by Arancaytar:

What kind of pizzas do they have in America to make this a feat?
36 inches in diameter. 24 slices. You could eat one on your own, but you'd regret it later.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Tank Cat! in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #16
Shouldn't the past tense of "sig" be "sug"?

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
The Continuing Story of Spiderweb Software in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #9
quote:
Originally written by Excalibur:

3. Does the recent increase in spam content irk you?
You don't sit in the traffic jam; you are the traffic jam.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Tank Cat! in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #7
quote:
Originally written by The Iffy Muffin who...does stuff...:

I hope it isn't sanders who locks this topic, he insults people at the end for not much of a reason.
Well, you just gave saunders a very good reason to insult you, because you misspelled her name and also she's not a he.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Wow!! in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #2
I... assume this isn't your original account, then.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Stuffing into Small Places? in General
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #38
quote:
Originally written by Arancaytar:

quote:
Originally written by LakiRa@:

Since when are French only Europians?There are others too.
Unless you count the French colonies (which afaik are all independent now?) there are no French people who are not Europeans.

New Caledonia isn't. I think what he was actually trying to say, though, was "Since when are French the only Europeans?"

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
research notes in Avernum 4
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Member # 869
Profile Homepage #7
Also, there's the fact that you have to actually remember where you originally found Lark's scrolls so you can go back there and translate them. That trips up a lot of people.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00

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