What sorts of public campaigns have you witnessed for school boards where these sorts of asinine discussions are raised? This would be injected into the meeting agenda as a minor item lumped with a bunch of others which would have all been approved with a single quick vote so they could move on to much more important topics such as wasting money on some frivolous sporting event or booster club meeting.

These sorts of discussions only come up during campaigns AFTER they've been put into place and one person in the community stands up to say WTF and is ignored at meeting after meeting by the administration who put it into place with the consent of the morons on the school board and then runs solely on the platform of removing this one item.

After they spend $1500 running, get on the board and abolish the decision, something else comes up which is possibly worse and they are powerless and clueless to stop it.

This is the problem with all local level government bodies (city, county, etc). People run on a single stupid platform, are elected, and stay there forever or are booted out because someone else has another single stupid platform of the day.

Most everyone else just shrugs, says ok, and their kids get scanned.

(As an aside, my kid is NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER getting their fucking eyes or fingerprints or any other biometric data scanned for school -- fuck that noise).

If I may borrow a quote from Representative Paul Broun on the House committee for Science Space and Technology, this so-called study is obviously just another Lie Straight From The Pit Of Hell. As he says, the Bible is "the manufacturer's handbook". Obviously science would be a lot easier if students spent a lot more time in Bible class and spent a lot less time in science class.

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So..... you're saying that Science and English are both hard?

p.s.
fortitude

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Because the first step in solving any dilemma is to grab the nearest sharp knife and cut off our noses despite our faces.

You've flipping the logic backwards.

Of course "Leviticus says..." is an unsustainable argument.
The entire point of raising "Leviticus says [shellfish]" is to smack someone over the head with the fact that "Leviticus says..." is an unsustainable argument. If someone wants to cite Old Testament Law as an argument, they need something better than "I personally enjoy shellfish and I personally do not enjoy homosexuality" as a basis for claiming one is a valid God's Law and the other is a "no longer relevant" God's Law.

Even if we take the Bible as the undisputed word of God, we still have the Old Testament was fulfilled/thrown_out/clarified/whatever_you_want_to_call_it by Jesus. Therefore "Leviticus says [homosexuality]" is an unsustainable argument. Saying "Leviticus says [shellfish]" does not positively establish that homosexuality is fine and dandy, but it does positively refute any "Leviticus says..." argument that homosexuality is any worse than eating shellfish or wearing a poly-cotton mixed fiber T-shit.

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*I* haven't. The present reality has.
I said *IF* the government issues marriage licenses *THEN* the government cannot discriminate based on race/religion/gender in granting those licenses.

*IF* the government gets entirely out of the marriage business, I'm fine with that. That is a perfectly reasonable perfectly valid option. If you want to get the law fixed to eliminate government-marriage-licenses, you have my blessing and my passive support. I don't think you're likely to succeed, but if you do, great, problem solved.

But so long as the government *is* issuing marriage licenses, I would appreciate your support, either passive support or preferably active support, that the government cannot use race/religion/gender as a basis to discriminate against interracial/interfaith/gay marriages.

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whoops, yeah, I had them both years ago, havent had either since around 2K1

a wet paper bag would have been better. at least a wet paper bag cant keep infringing on our freedoms.

Or throwing them overboard in Ballmer's case.

The last I had heard, we were nowhere near determining whether that was so. It seems improbable that a gas giant would, but until we actually have a reasonably decent sample size of gas giants under close observation, I'd say it's awfully premature to jump to conclusions.

It's a very primitive biosphere; dominated by methane, molecular hydrogen and congressmen.

Pretty much. Once we have the names of a program. we can submit FOIA requests on them. thats one of the catch 22s with FOIA. you have to know what you are looking for, you cant just say "I want all the info on the NSA spying on americans" you need to say" I want all information on codenameA codenameB codenameC." will they give it? doubtful but its a start.

Im not so sure that PC enthusiasts are down, I just think there is a larger audience of PC users today then when it was still a hobby and therefore it seems small. at one point we were the big fish in a small pond, now we are the small fish in a big pond

I havent had a sub in many many years but as a kid in the early 90s PCmag was just plain awesome, It really helped me learn in my early years (6-12)

All I can say, from a purely anecdotal position, is that the two PCs in our house almost never get used. I bought my wife a Kobo Arc for Christmas for e-reading, and within a couple of weeks she stopped using her notebook for anything other than the odd big email or document. I still use mine for working from home (mainly coding and management), but still, I prefer my Nexus 7 for reading and casual computing.

If a fair chunk of users are in the same boat my family is in, about the only time we will replace our PCs is when they croak, and considering how little they're used now compared to a year ago, I'd say that could be quite a while.