I think I had a space heater that looked just like that once.

Let's all share! What do _you_ do with all those left over high-energy electrons you've always got lying around?

"You might think that mice and rats would be basically the same when it comes to these kinds of things" [About training the two species]

It doesn't seem like it makes much sense to believe that rats and mice are different enough for one species to be measurably smarter than the other, but not to also believe that they're different enough to have different behavior patterns and responses to various stimuli.

Please don't take this wrong, but i took a quick look at your comment history and between that and what you've posted here you're sounding an awful lot like a friend i used to know. At first i thought she was just a little odd, but it turned out that she actually had some serious problems and some pretty bad stuff ended up happening because of it. If you really believe the things you're saying i think you should really consider talking to someone. I expect you'd be resistant to the idea of going to a psychiatrist, but perhaps you have friends or family you can discuss these concerns with?

And if i'm just feeding a troll... oh well.

"A new prosthetic system allows amputees to feel familiar sensations and also, somewhat unexpectedly, reduces their phantom pain."

This seems like one of those things that people might very reasonably not think of ahead of time but which seems blindingly obvious in retrospect. It would probably be expected that if you managed to reattach a severed limb that there wouldn't be any phantom pain afterward. ("Real" pain during the healing process yes, and perhaps lingering aches as one might have with any injury, but not phantom pain.) You'd also expect the same to hold true if you managed to grow a new arm and attach it properly.

But a simple prosthetic isn't enough to prevent or cure phantom pain. So one would expect that at _some_ point in the process between no nerve connections with a peg leg (or equivalent) and full connection with a regrown/reattached limb that the phantom pain would disappear. I guess they just encountered that point earlier than they might have expected.

You originally said "And children tend to do much better with two parents actively involved in raising them to adulthood, everything else equal." and "I would suggest that children should be a choice made by a man, and a woman together in mutual agreement whenever possible."

When it was pointed out that two women or two men could be the two parents who are actively involved in raising the children, your argument gradually morphed into "Lesbians have no ability to relate to male children in a way a dad can. Gay dads have no ability to relate to girls on their period for the first time."

This is called "moving the goalposts."

(And as an aside, you also said "THIS is sociological issues, and while not unique to Gay / Lesbian couples, affects all of them." Which is entirely untrue. Some gay couples have only male children, and some lesbian couples have only female children. And given the way in which such couples have children it is even pretty trivial to choose the genders of their children if they wish. I'm not saying they should, just that your argument that it affects "all of them" is totally unfounded.")

However to address those shifty goalposts, as far as i can tell you are basing this argument entirely on personal experience. I'm sorry if you felt your childhood was less than ideal because you didn't have a male role model, but that doesn't apply to everyone else.

I'm male and i definitely related far more closely to my mother than i did to my father, perhaps because my dad spent so much time at work. (He spent plenty of time with us during the periods when he was home so it's not like we felt neglected. I was quite happy with my childhood and as far as i know the same is true of my sister. However there's no denying that having to work to support your family means spending less time with that family.) My sister on the other hand was always arguing with my mom (and our mom told us that she always argued with her mom, and her mom told her that...) so it always seemed to me that she related much more to our dad.

Meanwhile i can't really tell any substantive differences between the son of my lesbian friends and the son of my heterosexual sister and brother-in-law. The first likes sports and video games. The second, last i checked, was into monster trucks and princesses. They're both _far_ more rambunctious than i remember being as a child (though clearly there could be some bias/rose colored glasses there) and both seem quite happy and well adjusted.

Maybe some differences will appear once they reach puberty, but i never had the "birds and the bees" talk with either of my parents. I learned all that stuff from sex ed classes at school and the internet, so i don't see why having a parent of the "appropriate" gender really matters. I honestly don't think it would have made a difference if both my parents had been women. Perhaps a girl would feel differently about having two male parents, but i can't really say anything in regards to that.

You say you think children deserve what's "best". How is not being born at all better than being born to parents of the "wrong" gender? Do you think any woman in a same-sex relationship who gets pregnant ought to immediately go get in abortion?

In short, everything i've observed has shown me that actual children of actual same sex couples can be just as happy and well adjusted as the actual children of actual heterosexual couples. That certainly isn't "proof", but it seems to me that it is a far more compelling argument than your theoretical opinions about people that you don't seem to have any actual experience with.

You seem very concerned about the "biologic process". Please explain why this is so important to you. Which do you feel is more important, the biologic process or the social contract? You seem to be trying to switch tacks but you can't have it both ways.

If the biologic process is what is most important, then a single woman who decides to get pregnant by sperm donation, from a man who you've argued above was involved in the decision making process by the choice to donate sperm, will provide just as good an environment for the child as a married heterosexual couple. Because it's the biologic process that matters, not the social situation.

If the social situation is what's important, then please provide your argument as to why a same-sex couple is inferior to a heterosexual couple. And it better be a good argument because i have living proof that a same-sex couple can successfully raise children in a healthy manner just as well as a heterosexual couple while all you've done so far is state that it's "silly" to believe that.

In particular be sure to detail how a same-sex couple that can't (currently) have children without someone else supplying one or more of the gametes in inferior to an infertile heterosexual couple who can't (currently) have children without someone else supplying one or more of the gametes. Do you believe that heterosexual couples in which one or both members are infertile should not choose to have children?

If the spouse hadn't agreed then they would not have had the children. How do you argue that she wasn't part of the decision making process?

Your original argument is that children are better off with two parents raising them. That is a matter of sociology, not biology. The "biology of 'choice'", whatever that is, is not relevant at all. The man consented to donate sperm. He was not involved at all in the social decision by the women to have and raise children as a couple.

He was not involved in the decision making process that this couple made about having children. His choice to donate sperm was indeed a choice, but not a choice in the context in which you originally phrased the question: "I would suggest that children should be a choice made by a man, and a woman together in mutual agreement whenever possible."

The man was not there for the discussion. Yes he also made a decision prior to that and you could "technically" say he was therefore involved. However the grandparents also made the decision to have the kids who would become the parents, so you could technically say they were involved. And friends made the decision to introduce the couple to each other, so you could technically say they were involved. And if you keep extending the chain of causality to people who made a decision at some point that impacted the final decision to have the kids then technically the entire planet was involved.

So i would argue your "technically" argument is incorrect, and even if i'm incorrect about its incorrectness, it's still entirely beside the point.

That's funny, i know a lesbian couple that got married and then had two kids. No man was involved in the decision making process. (Yes, a man donated sperm in each case, but if that man hadn't been willing there were plenty of others who would be, and those men weren't part of the decision making process. And pretty soon such families won't even need a sperm donor anymore.) It's a two income family (as most families around here are, regardless of whether they're hetrosexual or homosexual) but the parents spend as much time with the kids as they can and the kids seem to be doing pretty well.

So while i agree with some parts of your argument your foundation is built on quicksand.

Let's see if we can sum up this thread.

And so we have come full circle to why we can't just have one method of doing things, and thus why we can't have nice things.

Also, obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/927/

Where are you getting the impression that the heat is going to be transferred to a liquid which will be used to perform work? Both the MIT page and the wikipedia page on thermophotovoltaics seem to indicate the conversion is pretty much straight from heat to electricity. The wikipedia page in particular uses the same heat engine equation as you but comes up with a result of 83%. I'm not sure what the difference is between their number and yours is, but even if your 70% is correct a 70% conversion into electricity is still a lot better than the 40% for regular photovoltaics that you cite.

A robot programmed to eliminate "unpure" food based on the standards set by a bunch of critics. In their arrogance the critics will have provided standards of purity that no food can match, and the robot will go wild, destroying all food everywhere.

Of course given that the end is inevitable, i for one welcome our new robotic food tasting overlords.

Power companies hate Apple for this one weird trick!ï

If you don't care about what kind of job you get, just how much money you make, then:

a) You will make more money than someone who considers other factors in their choice of career.
b) You will take any courses which you're told will enhance your marketability, no matter how disgusting. Like COBOL.

Hence it's unsurprising that people who take COBOL make more money... but is it *because* they took COBOL? That's less clear. Correlation is not causation.