Name's Jason. I'm an IT guy, skeptic, and atheist, and love OSS, science of all stripes, and debating on-line and off. Just read my stuff, you'll get the picture.
That’s just the top 20. What’s with all the Formspring? Somehow I’m the number one non-Formspring.me site for just about all those searches! Ah well, I’ll take what traffic I can get.
This article is absolutely unfathomable. I’m trying to find some way to blame Bill Clinton and his “definition of ‘is’”, but it goes well beyond that. WELL beyond.
A new study from the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University found that no uniform consensus existed when a representative sample of 18- to 96-year-olds was asked what the term meant to them.
[...]
The study involved responses from 486 Indiana residents who took part in a telephone survey conducted by the Center for Survey Research at IU. Participants, mostly heterosexual, were asked, “Would you say you ‘had sex’ with someone if the most intimate behavior you engaged in was …,” followed by 14 behaviorally specific items. Here are some of the results:
* Responses did not differ significantly overall for men and women. The study involved 204 men and 282 women.
* 95 percent of respondents would consider penile-vaginal intercourse (PVI) having had sex, but this rate drops to 89 percent if there is no ejaculation.
* 81 percent considered penile-anal intercourse having had sex, with the rate dropping to 77 percent for men in the youngest age group (18-29), 50 percent for men in the oldest age group (65 and up) and 67 percent for women in the oldest age group.
* 71 percent and 73 percent considered oral contact with a partner’s genitals (OG), either performing or receiving, as having had sex.
* Men in the youngest and oldest age groups were less likely to answer “yes” compared with the middle two age groups for when they performed OG.
* Significantly fewer men in the oldest age group answered “yes” for PVI (77 percent).
The only explanation for people not considering penis-in-vagina to “count” as sex, that I can think of, is education. Without teaching people what counts as sexual intercourse, STD infections are probably most rampant in segments of the population where people aren’t properly informed.
The question and answer periods are always so awkward, so neither Jodi nor I really felt the need to watch them, but the debate itself was rather one-sided. Of course it always seems that way — theists always think their side handily won any such debate, while atheists likewise think the same thing. My reasoning for calling it one-sided is insofar as Barker actually adequately answered Deen’s claims (though not, as Deen seemed to think he should have, during the opening speech), while Deen did nothing of the sort, merely constructing several incorrect assumptions about Barker’s worldview.
I’ve noticed that quite often during debates — the theist side will make several claims about the atheist’s worldview in particular, even going so far as to outright refuse to acknowledge the atheist’s self-definition. I can’t recall a debate where an atheist tells a theist what the theist believes — only that their reason for believing what they claim to believe is wrong.
Jon Stewart pretty much “exposes” Chat Roulette for exactly what it is: a part of the internet. Which is for porn. Why this is such a big media story, I have no clue.
Pardon the framing story, I can’t embed the clip directly from The Comedy Channel and I can’t see Comedy Central in Canuckistan.
Human beings are fallible. They make mistakes. They are imperfect. Put solitary humans in positions where they are held to be paragons of virtue, where they are the arbiters of what is moral and what isn’t, and there will be systemic abuses. This hearkens back to the old saw, “power corrupts.” However, some folks who are elevated to positions of power are already corrupt — sometimes they believe they are fighting their own corruption by claiming a life of virtue, sometimes they aren’t even aware of how immoral their personal codes are.
That religious folks are held as having a higher standard of morality is galling. I recently got into a discussion with a coworker about a person I hardly knew at all, where that person’s moral compass was in question. My coworker defended this person with, “oh, but he’s very religious, he’d never do such a thing.” I couldn’t resist scoffing. Not after seeing headline after headline where religious people, held up as moral paragons, are in fact as shiftless and corrupt as any other human being.
In my Too Many Tabs list, there’s a bunch of links I have not yet mentioned in any previous RCimT wherein a religious figure does something grossly immoral. They wouldn’t have been as big of news if the person in question wasn’t in a position of religious power, either. If they had been ordinary citizens, it might still have been news, but the outrage wouldn’t have been nearly as amplified. I guess adding a charge of hypocrisy on top of whatever existing charges they’ve accumulated, just redoubles the gravity of their crimes.
I dunno. I’m honestly expecting this to be a total bomb, as video games don’t traditionally make good movies. But I absolutely loved the Playstation Prince of Persia games’ plot, so… yeah. I’m of two minds. I guess I should reserve judgment until it’s out.
Jodi and I respectfully request donations toward our potential honeymoon -- come hell or high water we are going to CONvergence in Minnesota, but we'd like to be able to eat something other than Mr. Noodles or warm ourselves by setting our cats on fire between now and then!
Please feel free to donate whatever you can. It will be greatly appreciated, believe us.
(Just think... if even just one person were to donate a million dollars... think what kind of difference that would make in our diet!)
Name's Jason. I'm an IT guy, skeptic, and atheist, and love OSS, science of all stripes, and debating on-line and off. Just read my stuff, you'll get the picture.
Asshats
Books
Canada
Computers
Copyright
Current Events
Food
Games
Geekery
Gender
Humour
Introspection
Life
Marriage
Medicine
Memes
Meta
Movies
Music
Politics
Pseudoscience
Random Crap in my Tabs
Religion
Science
Space
Loading ...
Recent Comments