Maybe it's a case of Google having too much money and too many people who need to do something, anything, to look busy.
I've heard that in the next release in addition to showing hometown and birthdate, they will also show last four digits of your social security number, mother's maiden name, favorite movie, and the name of your first pet.
Do that many people actually click on ads? I don't think I ever have, not on purpose anyway.
I'm only responding to the first three due to time constraints.
Gen 19:5-8: "and they called to Lot and said to him, 'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them.' But Lot went out to them at the doorway, and shut the door behind him, and said, 'Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly.'"
The very next verse includes this:
Don't do [this] evil, my brothers. Look, I've got two daughters who haven't had sexual relations with a man. I'll bring them out to you, and you can do whatever you want to them.
Does this really seem like a moral source you want to draw on to condemn gays, a source that literally in the next breath has a father sending his young daughters out to be raped? Incidentally, that passage isn't about homosexuality, but rape and as another commenter pointed out hospitality.
Lev 18:22-23: "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination."
This passage is from a whole string of commands about who you should not have sex with, including family members, your neighbor's wife, women who are menstruating, and others. The punishment for any of these is essentially excommunication from society: 'such persons must be cut off from their people.' Our views on many things have evolved, including on adultery having sex with women who are near their mensuration cycle, and gays.
Lev 20:13: "If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death."
Consistency aside (death sounds a lot worse than the excommunication punishment outlined just a few paragraphs earlier), other things that warrant the death sentence include worshiping other gods, improper eating of ritual offerings, gathering sticks on the Sabbath, and ineligible people acting as priests. This sounds a lot like the Taliban to me, and not at all a society most Western people actually support.
The bottom line: the Bible was written 1500 - 1800 or so years ago and reflects a very primitive and authoritarian set of values. Many of those values are immoral by our views today. The people who are selecting passages to support anti-gay views, anti-black views, pro-slavery views, whatever, always ignore the inconvenient passages.
An important thing to keep in mind with evolution is it is not some person sitting in a shop coming up with a design for a new species. There is no intelligent thought involved (ignoring sexual selection and animal husbandry for the moment), and a huge amount of luck is required. A given mutation needs to happen in a given environment and not get wiped out immediately by some random event. The result is not the best design an intelligent actor would create. It's the best design that happened to mutate and survive in a given environment.
I think video games (and movies) have violence because it is an easy mechanism for engaging emotion and stimulating people. We evolved as humans to respond physiologically to violence (e.g. with adrenalin), and that's easy to manipulate, probably indicating lazy or less-talented writers.
As to whether repeated exposure to violence is harmful, I think it's hard to argue that it doesn't desensitize us. Whether that's bad or not is a judgment call. We know that when we visualize something much of our brain reacts as if we're doing that thing. We also know that our brain can change as we repeat activities so that something that caused one physiological reaction at one point does not cause the same reaction later. That's desensitization to the original stimulus.
I think it's interesting that on slashdot every time this issue comes up, people who support violence in entertainment are frequently very emotional on this issue and people who are against it are shouted down and often not given much rational consideration.
I've always thought they should have a special quest that lets you betray your faction. At the end of that quest you are officially part of the other faction. Because of your betrayal, you wouldn't be accepted back into your original faction, so this would be a one-way switch.
How are we going to pay for an increasingly older population? Will they be older and healthy and still working, or older, on expensive medications, and requiring expensive procedures to keep them living?
>> she chooses him by the size of his wallet
While that seems true on the surface, capitalism actually takes selection in a different direction. Successful, upwardly-mobile couples seem to have smaller and smaller families, while working class and poor often have quite large number of offspring.
The major difference between bonds and bond traders is that the bonds will eventually mature.