Daedalus

Two disturbing trends.

The mental illness thing: it's an analogy that is absolutely inappropriate. It's like me saying religion is a disorder (except one which, unlike homosexuality, does not manifest in our evolutionary predecessors, nor other animals for that matter...).

And anyways: guys, how does religion come into this? Since when has religion been a factor when it comes to human rights? Separation of the church and state, kids. No one religion can have precedence over others when it comes to the establishment of law. And if you want to use the Bible to back up your homophobia, you better take the Bible as it is. Ever read the Old Testament? I seriously doubt that there are any more misogynistic texts widely read today. Adultery, in the Bible, is punishable by stoning. Disobeying your parents is punishable by stoning. Losing your virginity before you're married is punishable by stoning. Everyone must get stoned!

Which is a message you can find in the Koran too, of course; I'm not discriminating. But I'd rather have you be hypocrites and ignore all the fiddly bits in your Holy Books--the ones that don't quite fit with 21st century views of morality and equality--than use them to justify ignorant prejudices.

PS. Anyone for banning marine18? @marine18: stop copy and pasting your material (it doesn't quite qualify as productive use of technology); try not to cite contradictory statistics in a single post (what, according to your ridiculously titled "heterosexual rights" organisation (as if destroying someone else's rights qualifies as your own) is the real % of homosexuals in the population?); and try not to use outdated and discredited studies.

PPS (hey, that's a subject!). Please let's just ban that thing? How the hell do you pass down a "hormonal imbalance" which causes homosexuality (which (as you actually point out) is a slight impediment to the survival of one's genes) down generations?

PPPS (I know, I know). In the spirit of IB and liberalism and acceptance and predicting future trends and world peace and stuff ... let's lump homophobia with racism and anti-Semitism and the whole Nazi brew and just ban him.

Peace.

Spanish was my fourth language when I took the ab initio course in 1 year, with no previous experience.

I mean, regulations are lax, you can probably get away with it. But do you really need to, after four years??? Ab Initio is a joke.

No, it doesn't work that way. There are so many statistics to think about ... for example, ratio of students who receive places to students applying. You can reasonably expect this to be around 5% in an Ivy League uni (I think), 8% vs. 5% doesn't make much of a difference. And then there's also the general academic standard for applying; at Oxbridge pretty much everyone will have A*AA or 40+ IB points, but averages vary within courses. You could have higher admissions rates AND a higher standard of applicants. And you have to remember all the other stuff that comes into play like extra-curriculars, etc. Basically you should not expect to get into a uni easy. Work hard for an Ivy League, slack off for a normal uni, really slack off for no uni at all. It's pretty straightforward.

Graeme, on Mar 07, 2011 - 11:12, said:

Time to take the red pill --

Take me out, G.

Oh, by the way, some of my posts might be worth keeping..

Talk about how we can know whether an aspect of personality like sexual orientation is determined by external or internal factors (you can bring in: nature vs nurture; determinism, free will, etc.). It's sort of looking at ignorance as well, and generally (largely implicitly, I would imagine) being sappy (not that I'm recommending anything else!) about accepting difference and co-existing and stuff, and looking at how knowledge can change the world, how ignorance ("knowledge" minus justification for example) can damage it, like kids getting their gayness "beaten out of them" (or not). How what we general agree to be "accepted" can change over time, how social and cultural attitudes override facts, how empirical evidence takes a *long* time to overcome cultural bias. Stuff like that.

It's a really cool topic actually, looking at it from more scientific perspectives, like how did it persist in evolution, why do giraffes have 90% homosexual sex, stuff like that. But the key is to concentrate on making it as TOKish as possible. I'm more or less completely ignorant when it comes to making things TOKish (I slipped by with a basic understanding of the frameworks of philosophy).

Then again - this is becoming a habit - I'm fairly drunk, so you can also disregard all of the above if you want.