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Hmm...  Marriage laws came about as a means for the state to take over a role previously filled by religion.  Religion is already scurrying to catch up to modern reproductive technology.  Maybe it's time for the law to do so as well?

Incidentally, the comment was made that two (or more) people in a committed relationship don't need marriage to maintain that relationship.  I disagree on one point: they don't need the legal status of marriage.  Quakers, the Amish, old-school mormons and other groups get married without benefit of the law all the time.

You're in luck!  Re-electing Dubya would do the same thing _and_ free up the president's Saturday's.   :;):

Actually, Gennaro, contrary to what you might see on the news about high priced adoption agencies, there are still orphans and disowned children who go begging for adoption.  Whether homosexual marriages can serve a social reproductive function is very much dependent on whether they can adopt.  Allowing them to adopt would have a much greater impact than slight improvements in reproductive technology simply by virtue of the sheer numbers of children available for adoption, and serve a useful social function.

I do have misgivings about that, though.  It's been my experience that while a homosexual relationship can last as long as any heterosexual relationship, the average homosexual relationship lasts a much shorter time.  I'm not sure how the introduction of children will affect that.  If there's no change in relationship stability, I'd say don't let homosexuals adopt.  However, I've got no idea of whether that's true or not - no data. 

I guess I'm just going to sit back for now and let the great sociology experiment continue...

Arguably neither one in Louisiana.

This weekend we adopted an amendment to our state constitution that is supposed to prevent homosexual marriage.  However, it also calls common law marriages into question, meaning we're now set to have lengthy court battles over tort law that had previously gone unmolested for half a century. 

As for actually preventing homosexual marriage, the only difference this amendment will make is the creation of a budget line item for distributing updated copies of the state constitution.  Louisiana's existing laws against homosexual marriage were already iron clad.

*Sigh.*  In their eagerness to look good standing up to the homos, the banana republic of the United States has once again forgotten:  "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Josh, I don't have an attention span long enough to understand all the political newspeak.  Issues alone are hard enough for me to follow.  Please excuse me while I raise my head up out of the sand for a few minutes and ask: 

What is a candidate's "travelling press"? 

(It sounds like there's some collection of reporters stuck riding around on the bus with these guys for months.  Poor saps... )

Hmmm... You know, this could be useful for a solar collector, too.  18% efficiency is pretty good for solar power generation, better than solar panels.

This use of thermoacoustic cooling/heating is pretty ingenious.

Never trust any group of people who hang around with Lyndon Larouche.  Gotcha.  :;):  Get thee behind me, Larry! 

GCNRevenger, I concede that the scenario you described has been the case in the past.  However, I think the iron curtain between governmental and private sector space travel is coming down.  As implied in your earlier post, the key factor in this change is technology. 

Technologies and skills developed by government programs are becoming widely - and more cheaply - available in the public sector.  Formerly exotic techniques are becoming industry standards.  All that's necessary is the commitment to synthesize all of that new know-how into an enterprise. 

Unfortunately, "commitment" is often a euphemism for money and profit motive.  Those are currently lacking.  (It's a bit like leaping a wall and landing in a hole on the other side. )  However, one of the main reasons that there is no profit motive is that profit making ventures in space are almost as unexplored as the technology was thirty years ago.

*Sigh.*

Having already decided that I'm not psychologically suited to abstain from the coming US presidential election, I believe I'll ask if they'll allow me to bring dice into the voting booth.

Washington, DC would clear out like New Orleans evacuating for a hurricane!

Explaining this reaction to your earlier statements would take us off on an unnecessary tangent, Gennaro.  So, I'll just stay on topic and agree to disagree about which traditional Japanese gender role is more "deluded." 

Gender roles play an important economic role, particularly when times get as hard as Scott Beach and others fear they will, because they determine how a family's resources are allocated.  The traditional "working husband with housewife" model is at its heart an allocation of labor, not privileges, and who gets what privileges is (economically) irrelevant so long as the arrangement meets the demands for labor.  Modern society's contempt for gender roles of any type does have a cost in loss of available labor for the family.  While a few lost man-hours of labor may not be a problem in good economic conditions, it can make all the difference in the world when things get tight.

A return to traditional gender roles (actually, traditional allocations of labor) will make more man-hours of labor available for a family than it's usually given credit for.  A lot of traditional gender roles from various cultures are geared toward efficiency, not gender. 

Both spouses spending all of their time working jobs outside the home and leaving their kids in daycare full time (but not hiring a maid) is not typically the most efficient use of a family's labor.  Almost any other allocation of labor is more efficient than both spouses working full time, allotting no chores to their children and not contracting out for services.  The deeper the economy goes into the toilet, the rarer it will get.

Efficiency is more important than tradition in hard times.  But tradition can often point the way.

Ah, but no appreciable light would be refracted by the rims of the glasses, which would cast a clear shadow just like the rest of the photographer.

Where are the glasses?  They should be visible.

So, male chauvinism is the answer to female chauvinism?  :sleep:  Not very original.

You're correct.  IMHO, this is a symptom of the single greatest economic strain on the modern world.  We tried to trade a lifestyle whose cost was high in terms of labor for one whose cost was high in terms of money, and ended up increasing the cost in both.  Particularly here in the States.  Labor saving devices serve no purpose if every time one saves you an hour you immediately fit some other task into it.  The modern world must simplify its lifestyle or perish.