Leaderboard

So the embryo just successfully implanted after 28 years in storage has missed out on 10 years of elections, 12 years of driving, and seven years of drinking/gambling. OTOH, they will always win at the carnival when someone tries to guess their age.

Here’s the thing. You only believe we’ve been fractured into ‘special interest’ groups now because you can see them, and because the people opposed to them are louder now that it’s all in the open. Before, the people opposed to them were so powerful the ‘special interest’ groups were forced underground and out of view. Hell, I remember the days on this forum (so hardly the mists of time) when any discussion that involved gay rights would have multiple people proudly claiming ‘I have no problem with gay people, I just don’t want them shoving it down my throat’. When what ‘shoving it down my throat’ really meant was any public display of same sex affection. You know, the stuff that all straight people do all the time. Now, hardly anyone says that anymore because they’ve realised they were wrong. The people who still say it are even more loud and angry because they’ve realised they’re losing. But despite them being so loud and angry, at ground level society is better and is less divided now - at least on that subject and many other similar ones. By the way, without you being any more specific I assume that the ‘special interest’ groups you’re talking about are simply people who want to live their life how they want. Or in other words, people.

Closer? No. Farther apart? No. But have we gotten more basic rights for people? Yes. Today we have 'woke madness' fighting bigotry. (Or awareness of injustice fighting people who want to keep old values, depending on whether you have to sell papers or not.) Today there's a lot of friction over politics. It is not worse than what McCarthy was doing to "communists" (like Lucille Ball) in America. There's a lot of friction over LGBT vs conservatives. It is not worse than what the UK did to Alan Turing. Of course not. Perfection is not within our grasp and it never will be, because we are fallible humans. Sorry to disappoint you. But we are getting better. We ended the laws against marrying "outside your race." We let women vote. We let gays marry. We let women have control over their own bodies. (That one just took a hit.) We told women they didn't have to let their husbands rape them. All of those came from those liberals you disparage all the time. In time, conservatives come to support those new values as well. Today most conservatives support interracial marriage, and that's been true for about 40 years now. Today most conservatives support gay marriage - and that only changed last year. So no, it's not just one side. Given time conservatives support all the same rights liberals do. But it does take time. And this is not a "one side is better" argument. This is the definition of the words themselves. Conservatives prefer traditional values/mores/laws/societal norms by definition. Thus enough time has to go by for gay marriage to be part of their history and experience, for example. Liberals (and progressives, a word that Ron often uses as a pejorative) are defined by promoting individual rights over collective rights, being open to new ideas and promoting social reforms in the name of greater individual rights. Now of course not all liberals or conservatives live up to these definitions. I know several conservatives who are very accepting of trans people (for example) and I know several liberals who are intolerant of any ideas outside their narrow view of the world. But those are exceptions that prove the rule; they are noticeable specifically because they are bucking the trend of mainstream liberalism/conservativism. Great example! And I know of women who have named their daughters names that aren't obviously female (like Devi) so they won't be discriminated against. That is bad. We should work to fix that. But keep in mind that 80 years ago your Asian friend might well have been in an American internment camp to "protect" America from him. And going from internment to being online (albeit with a different name) is a huge step forward. All we have to do is keep going in that direction. I think that's a different issue. EVERYONE, no matter what side of the political fence they are on, does that. It's a way to yell anonymously. In the olden timey days the only way you could do that was being in a crowd (or a mob) and rely on the anonoymity of crowds to protect you. And only 100 years ago, a white mob attacked a black neighborhood in Oklahoma, relying on that anonymity. They burned 35 blocks, killed 26 blacks, and put 800 blacks in the hospital. And as a result - they jailed 6000 blacks "for their own protection." That doesn't happen any more. That's progress. (I mean we still have Charlottesville and Jan 6th - but there is far less violence in those mobs, and our response to them is far better.) Now we have the Internet to replace those anonymous mobs. People feel protected when they are posting, so they yell and scream as much as they like. It would sure be better if they could communicate more effectively, but that is vastly better than doing the same thing in the form of an armed and angry mob. Definitely agreed there. And that's nothing new - flaunting has been a way of life since the robber barons of the late 1800's. The two things that HAVE changed are that 1) the disparity between rich and poor is larger than it's ever been, and is widening and 2) electronic media makes it far easier to flaunt than ever. In the 1890's you had to go out into society to flaunt. In the 1920's newspapers covered the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Now reality TV and a constant barrage of media about your favorite rich-n-famous character means you can't get away from it (unless you want to, which people don't.) I see a lot of things better today than they've ever been. We've had a black president. Gay people can marry. White people can marry black people. Women have more rights than they ever had. (Again, up until a few weeks ago at least.) In terms of overall rights we are in a better place. In terms of strife, we SEE a lot more of it because of the ubiquity and aggression of the media - but in terms of what matters (actual rights) we are headed in the right direction.

I sometimes wonder if gas companies have it somewhere in the back (or middle) of their minds that keeping prices high will also hurt the Democrats at the polls, and help Republicans who are more inclined towards giveaways for the fossil fuel industry and much more hostile towards competing renewables.

airdvr, please read closely both Jerry's and Bill's replies. If you are honest in your appraisals you'll have to agree it is the conservative groups and actors who are largely responsible for the divisions. We liberals are all too happy to bring whomever into the tent.

You're equating abortion and trans-gender surgery, specialty medical procedures that not every medical professional is trained to provide, with selling a lousy wedding cake? We disagree, then. If you open a retail shop for business to the general public then you must sell your products to the entire general public. To do otherwise is nothing short of discrimination and that we should all strive to end.

Are you new? The purpose of any original post is to surface deeply repressed emotions so as to begin travel down that long road to understanding. Unfortunately we need to explore several cul-de-sac's along the way but eventually, and after many struggles, we somehow arrive at our destination just before the thread is locked. It's a beautiful thing.

Things are better, just as they're better for minorities in the US. It'll never be perfect, because there will always be assholes, and there will always be entitled assholes. Some of them will always be smart enough to get away with it. But "fuck it if it can't be perfect" isn't a great approach. Wendy P.

If a pregnant woman gets the death penalty it would be akin to abortion, which is illegal.....

This facebook post addresses some of the things you mentioned. I don't completely agree with all of it, but it is definitely food for thought.

Big shout out to the crews at Skydive San Diego, Skydive Moab, and Bay Area Skydiving! Special shouts to the loft in Eloy for getting me back in the air in record time. Nevada was NOT fun jumper friendly! Pretty much tandem only out there. Heading to Longmont tomorrow and then on to Kansas and Missouri.

Thanks - Ridgely is definitely on the radar. I'm curious to find out what the old Delmarva crew is up to these days.

Convicted women could volunteer to be surrogate mothers where time spent pregnant would come off the end of their sentence. A win-win scenario if I ever saw one.

Hi airdvr, Just what is the era that you say we once were? Jerry Baumchen PS) I do hope you do not mean when: - LBGTQA people could not come out of the closet - When abortions were done in back alleys with coat hangars - When a black woman could not marry a white man I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

Chaucer's calculations are completely wrong... He is using the dimensions of the bag, not the dimensions of the money. The bag is not solid or water or air tight. I get 801 cu inches for the money, that is 13,126 cu cm. (there are several estimates given for the money size) 1 packet of 100 bills.. 0.5 thick x 2.61 wide x 6.14 long = 8.0127 cu inches x100 packets = 801 cu inches or 13,126 cu cm (801 inches is about 10 x 10 x 8) I get a slightly less weight number than 10.35 kg but we'll use it for comparison. plug in numbers... density = 0.7885 just below the density of water. (0.0552 is ridiculous and should have been caught as such) Now, with a 0.7885 density just below water the money bag would float initially until the money absorbed enough water to put it over the density of water at 1. With a slightly less weight as I calculated the density would drop a slight amount but the effect remains. Exactly what Tom Kaye found with the single packet, floated initially then sank as it became water saturated. also, the money went into the bag in banded bundles of packets, not individual packets.

Where people wait politely for days in line for their turn at all of life's essentials. "Sri Lanka, with 70.2% of the population identifying as Buddhist. Of the remaining Sri Lankan population, 12.6% identify as Hindu, 9.7% identify as Muslim and 6.1% identify as Christian." Perhaps its because there are so few christians with AR-15s running around.

Me - nope. I think corporal punishment harms far more often that it helps.

That same 'current court' blatantly LIED in the ruling about prayer by the football coach on the field immediately after the game. The current court has at least 3 members who perjured themselves during their confirmation hearings. Forgive me if I don't think that their 'interpretation' of anything is worth much.

Then they can answer that for themselves. They should have no right to impose that answer on anyone else.