anonemouse

I don't consider your experiences to be homosexual. When you were young, you were curious about the human body, whether it was male or female. That's normal, something that all kids go through. Your deep love for your friend isn't sexual, therefore it isn't homosexual. It's the love of one very close friend for another, probably very similar to your love for your family. I don't consider other women's attraction to you to be a homosexual experience, either, especially if they were fooling you into thinking they were men. Once you found out they were women, you weren't attracted to them, were you? To me, that's a clear indication that you aren't homosexual, and that you haven't chosen your sexuality. The female gender is a sexual turn-off for you.

Believe it or not, but there was a professor at the university that I did my undergrad at that believed that there were about 12 or 14 (I forget the exact number) sexes. I couldn't tell you what they were, but that's what he thought.

It seems strange to me how people think homosexuality is a choice in humans, conveniently forgetting that homosexuality and homosexual behavior is quite common in the animal world. Do those animals make that "choice", also? If they do, you might want to rethink your stance on the intelligence and sentience of animals. If they can "choose" homosexuality, doesn't that make them intelligent beings? Makes you think.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Seems like rabble-rousing to me, and it's not defensible, no matter what creed the guy supposedly lives by.

If you think it is redundant, I have to ask why you put yourself through it? I mean, most people avoid what they find unpleasant. I am not telling you to go away, because I think you have every right to be here and state your opinion. That said, it makes no sense why you read threads like this and then complain about how redundant they are. If you think they are redundant, why read?

I certainly wouldn't disagree with you saying "I don't think you are a commie, Maoist, Marxist, Stalinist, or pink0, even if you take their side quite often." Why? Because of the part of the statement saying "I don't think you are a commie, Maoist, Marxist, Stalinist, or pinko." Gadgetlady, you seem to be ignoring that part of the statement. When someone says that they don't think you are [insert description], they aren't saying that they really think you are [insert discription].

Well, you said it, we didn't. So I guess you aren't going to be attacking anyone who says that in the future, right?

Oh for Pete's sake, do we have to get into this topic AGAIN?! Once more, no one has EVER called you a terrorist!

Your friend may have lived a homosexual lifestyle, but that doesn't make her homosexual. To put it really crudely, people can sleep with just about anyone, have orgasms with just about anyone, but that doesn't make them emotionally attached to that person. Quite frankly, I think your friend's idea is bull. No matter how many homosexuals I am around, I will never be a lesbian. Many, many gay people were raised in straight environments. That doesn't make them any more straight. Certain environments may lead to people denying what they are, but it doesn't change their sexuality. I firmly believe that people that suddenly "change" their sexuality were either never homosexual or are in denial. You can't change who you are sexually attracted to. You CAN decide to stop sleeping with your same sex, but that doesn't mean you stop being attracted to them.

I agree with most of that, except for burning flags. Burning a flag doesn't hurt anyone and it shouldn't be considered to be on the same level as bombing a school or suicide missions. A flag is an instrument of war. They were originally used so that soldiers or sailors could see where the people on their side were.

A little background on the labs I teach, first. I teach weekly labs. For each lab, there is a page with 5-6 questions on it that they can do and turn in for up to 1 point of extra credit per sheet, which can raise their grade by a letter if they do the sheets for all the labs. They have to be turned in at the beginning of each lab for the student to receive credit. They know this. At the beginning of each lab, I tell them that anyone who is going to turn one in should do it at that time. We are giving midterms this week, covering seven labs. Usually the average midterm grade is about a 65, which is a D. And guess what? I just got an email from one of my students, saying that she had the extra credit sheets from all the labs taught up to this point. She says that she "forgot" to turn them in and pretty please would I accept them. "Forgot," my ass. I bet $100 that she took the exam and realized that she's not doing very well. I told her that I would not accept them. I was honest with them at the beginning of the semester. I told them that the lab was not an "easy A" and that doing all the extra credit that is offered can really help their grades. Not my fault she didn't pay attention. Bet she'll turn in the extra credit sheets for the rest of the labs, though.:huytsao

I definitely understand that. I have absolutely no aptitude for math. I have never made a grade higher than a B in any math or math-related class, no matter how much studying I do. Getting a B in a math class is a cause for celebration for me. The last math class I took was experimental design last semester. It was basically an intensive statistics class, using completely different techniques than any of the other stats classes I've taken. The only reason I did as well as I did in that class (I got a was because I had taken a SAS (statistical computer software) programming class the semester before. At the end of the experimental design class, I could literally do only about 10% of the material by hand. I couldn't tell you what a lot of the symbols used in the equation meant and I couldn't go to the professor for help because I couldn't use the proper terminology. But what I could do was figure out how to input the problem into the SAS software with the proper programming and interpret the results. If I hadn't had that SAS programming class, I probably wouldn't have passed the experimental design class. The thing with the labs I teach is that there is very little that the students actually have to know how to do. The majority is basic memorization. I think a lot of them get really stressed out by the idea that they will have to know all of this stuff that they have never learned before and will never have to know again, and they make it a lot more complicated than it actually is. I could understand if it was like a math class and they were learning complex equations and having to remember them, but the most complicated thing they had to do on the midterm is use a microscope to figure out which thread was in the middle of a pile. The rest was straight memorization. Heck, they didn't have to do that much, actually. They just have to be able to recognize the correct answer out of three or four choices, most of which are not at all similar. I also tried to teach them little tricks for memorizing the correct answers. For example, algae in the phylum Pyrrophyta cause red tides. "Pyro" is a word that many know is associated with fire. Fire is red. Therefore, they can associate Pyrrophyta with red tides. We try to use associations like that to make the memorization a little easier on them, instead of having them look at the organism through a microscope and recognize it soley by its appearance.

I am gone for almost a week, and look what happens! Threads get locked, people go nuts, yadda, yadda, yadda. By the way, you have no idea how much I missed this place. It's kind of sad, really. I was stuck watching really boring videos of birds. Stupid thesis.:faint:

I didn't take them, I just found them on the internet. I believe that the photo with the lizard was taken in Texas, though. The birds are neat, though, because they impale their prey on thorns, twigs, and barb wire. That was probably the fate of the lizard.

That's scary. I think the type of person that wrote that is probably very dangerous. His words are obviously hate-filled, but he states them with such certainty that he could be very persuasive. He makes me think of the neo-Nazi leaders and other hate organization leaders. I am a firm believer in free speech, but words like his make me wonder if hate speech should be protected.

Oh geeze, you made me snort! Those sound familiar! The first semester I taught, I got pissed at one of my classes. I was giving easy multiple choice quizes, but they were doing very badly. I decided that if they wanted to fail, I'd really make them fail. I changed my quizes to fill-in-the-blank/short-answer. Definitely didn't make the grades go up, but it made me feel better. I eventually phased them out, though, because they were a bitch to grade. Every single person had a different answer and they were all mispelled. Our midterm and final exams are multiple choice, so they don't even have to actually know the answer, just be able to recognize it. And still the 65 average.

I know, I know. I am actually getting ready to watch one right now. It's not so bad once I get started, it's just that getting started is the hard part.

Two things to say: 1. OUCH! 2. Good for you!

Thanks, TOM. I went to see my parents for a couple of days at their vacation house (no internet), and they basically conned me into staying there and working on the tapes. I'm glad they did, though, because I have less than a month before I have to give a presentation about my thesis and I have to have some preliminary results. Knowing my speed, I doubt I'll get through the 55 or so tapes that I have left to watch by then, but I've got at least a little data to work with.

Yeah, I sort of feel that if they can come up with an original excuse, I am more likely to let them make quizes up. I let one guy make up the final exam last semester because he seemed really sincere and was honest about the fact that he had just been an idiot (his words, by the way).

This week is our spring break, but I haven't had much time to enjoy it. I am basically comparing the provisioning (feeding nestlings) rates of male and female Loggerhead Shrikes. I have a whole bunch of videotapes of birds that were taken over the last few years to watch to get my data. It wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that the tapes are crappy. Bad lighting, bad clarity, zoomed in too close to the nest or too far out, you get the picture. There were a lot of people responsible for making the videos, and some of them apparently weren't very skilled. Not to mention the fact that the records are a little shoddy. Some of the videos show birds that have identification bands before they were supposed to have been banded, or they have the wrong bands on, etc. This is a major problem because the males and females are identical, so the only way I can tell which bird I am looking at is by which combination of bands they have. Basically, I love what I am doing, but I HATE these damn tapes. These are Loggerhead Shrikes, for anyone who doesn't know what they look like.

A 65 isn't failing, but it is close. The way the grading is set up, it is a D. I personally think the entire lab is set up badly, but I'm not the one that designs the course. The major problem, though, is that the students just don't want to put the work in, generally. They think that just because they aren't biology majors, they shouldn't be required to know the material. A lot of them are just out of high school and they still have the high school mentality. They want to be spoon-fed the material and be able to get an easy A with very little work. The reality is that the lab wouldn't be very difficult if they would just put the effort in. I warned them repeatedly that the midterm would be difficult if they did not stay on top of the material. If they took it one lab at a time, and worked through the material as we went, they would have done very well. Unfortunately, if they wait to study, they wind up with a lot of material to memorize and very little time to do it in. I told them that I would answer any questions they had and that I would help them as much as possible. Surprise, surprise, no one came up to me or emailed me questions. To me, after giving them fair warning, it isn't my fault if they don't listen. Like TOM said, you either know the material or you don't. So yes, it does matter, especially for the students who made the grade. I know that I, as a student myself, would be pissed if another student made the same grade I did, with less effort. To say that students who did the work for one grade should be curved an entire letter grade is absurd, in my opinion. I think that with a few exceptions (like the Chinese student I posted about earlier), you should get the grade you deserve and that you've done the work for. If you've done D-level work, you deserve a D.

Wow. What a time to be without internet access. I missed a LOT. That's still true today. A lot of people who don't really know much about evolution think that scientists just sit around and say, "Well, this sounds good, so we won't bother looking for other possibilities." That's not what happens. Over the years, we've gone through many different possible explanations of how we came to be. We don't just say "eeny meeny miny moe" and randomly pick what we think sounds the best. Over many years, lots of observation, lots of research, and lots of experiments, we refine our theories and throw out the ones that don't work. That's why we no longer believe in Lemark's idea of aquired characteristics, for one example. (Lemark believed that certain characteristics were aquired during an organism's lifetime and are then passed down through its offspring. The classic example is a giraffe's neck. He thought that the neck stretched during a giraffe's lifetime, and that the lengthened neck was then inherited by the offspring, eventually causing all giraffes to have long necks.) Another thing I want to say is that a layman's "theory" is not the same as a scientific "theory". In everday language, people use "theory" to mean that they have an idea, but they don't necessarily have evidence supporting it. In science, "theory" is a term that indicates the idea is supported by a lot of evidence. Otherwise, the term "hypothesis" is used. The scientists' "hypothesis" is the equivalent of the layman's "theory".

Apparently, the evangelicals aren't happy with Guiliani being divorced. And from what I've read, they are worrying that McCain is a little too wishy-washy for their tastes and they're not sure he is really respectful of true conservatives. I hate to say this, but it looks like they're just going to have to suck it up, no matter which candidate they go for. Those two (IMO) are probably the only ones that would have half a chance at actually winning the Presidency. Well, Mitt Romney might, but he's Mormon, so the evangelicals won't be happy with him, either. Looks like either way, they aren't going to very happy.:rolleyes

Don't read your psychological analysis. It is probably guaranteed to piss you off. I just had mine faxed to me so that I can send it on to my new surgeon. I am just a tad pissed at what the psychologist wrote. He approved me for surgery, but he also said a lot of crap that I really don't agree with.