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The thing that bugs me the most about these threads is when a link I post is dismissed out of hand because it comes from the government.

So yeah, I'm not going to put too much stock into the words of an organization that is demonstrably being less than honest. 

RWHN, don't take me too seriously here, but you have to admit this is pretty funny.

Also, I didn't just dismiss your government link as biased because it was from the government.  I dismissed it because it was written with obvious bias, and next to no scientific argument.  I say next to none, because some of the citations seem credible, though I haven't honestly fully digested them yet.

Ima get a cranial piercing done.

OMG 

What I'm saying is, genetic correlations do not, for the most part, line up at all with social designations.  There is some small amount of genetic tracing toward shit like red hair, but the gradient of skin pigmentation typically correlated with cultural racial designations is not reasonably connected with genetic grouping.. at least as far as I can tell.

I mean, obviously the sociocultural factors are important and have direct impact on our everyday lives, but they're also usually stupid and counter-productive. As GA said, you have to keep that white lab coat on, and keep it clean.

I never take it off.  Problem is, there's no biological basis for race; the point of my post.

Awesome thanks all.

I'd trip out if anyone put this to music, so feel free. It's not like I could try to stop anyone without invoking the Gods of irony to punish me.

Deal.   

I 2nd the Transmetropolitan.  Fucking fantastic books; I recommend them often.

Most sociologists seem to agree that "race" is a sociocultural construct, rather than a biological one.  In other words, it doesn't have to do with color.  Initially, I was skeptical of this argument, as I do think that sociologists tend to almost intentionally overlook biology.  After doing a bit of research on this argument, however, from a genetic/biological basis, I found that I'm inclined to agree.  There is very little overlap between skin pigmentation (a biological adaptation) and racial designation.  A person can look white to me, yet consider themselves black, and yet move to another region and be considered black by the local majority, or maybe yet still black.  This can be pretty bothersome when the geographically based cultural designation differs from the individual's own assessment, and it happens in many places.  

As with gender designation, I feel that ultimately it should be up to the individual.  Perhaps even moreso with race, as there is really no significant correlation between genetic make-up and human racial classifications.

Plant handheld pain laser on person with some of the energy discharged, get a witness.  Irrefutable evidence of torture.

I'm not even sure there is any legislation against lasers either, but I'd have to check at Cracked.com to be sure. They have instructions how to build burning strength lasers, and EM Pulse guns up there somewhere too. "7 Legal Sci-Fi weapons you can build at home"  I think the thread's called.

I really don't think you could build a laser at home, with "burning strength", that would be worth a damn as a weapon.

WOW WOW!

Great Scott, man!

Vocal effects can be cool, but I think the overabundant use in the industry is triggered by the fact that it's easier to find someone who can act the right way, and fuck the singing, just autotune it, right?  The music's mostly shit anyway right.  Though in the end, I tend to agree that's it's obviously weirdly subjective and as someone said in another post, noise or noise and rhythm.

After reading everything in this thread, I need to get back to work, but hot damn!  I'm hooked.  She's fantastic!

Yeah, I have no interest in having it out over this either.  RWHN: I appreciate your input, and I do not intend to be dismissive toward it.  I'll check out those links at the end; I truly skirted over them before.

I think it's crazy that prescribing OxyContin for chronic back pain is a legitimate business that's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but smoking a joint for chronic back pain is considered a menace to society and grounds for an individual to have a criminal record (which these days just about guarantees they'll never get a job that pays a living wage).

I agree. This is completely insane.

I meant the part where he said that "psychological addictiction is still addiction."

I'm not disputing this point at all. 

Are you reading ANYTHING he's typing in this thread, or just sticking to your script come hell or high water?

Absolutely, I read through those links.  The mayoclinic link merely illustrates that marijuana can be classified as an addiction, but that doesn't mean it's pinned down to biological dependencies.. ofc, one could easily argue that anything psychological is biological, but I was much more interested in concrete evidence of chemical dependencies, or deficiencies caused by use.  I haven't come across anything substantial.  

The jointogether link doesn't bring anything new to the table either, unless one isn't aware of the harmful effects of smoking it.  I do agree that smoking it is harmful to the lungs and heart.  I'm a big fan of vaporizers, which are widely available, and at least here in central IL, quite affordable.

The whitehouse pub also addresses dangers in smoking, which I've already addressed, and I think it's pretty easy to see it's written with bias.

It seems to me that RWHN is coming at this from a sociologically influenced perspective, which can be substantial, of course.  I just wanted to know if there were concrete/numerical analyses that illustrate a biological dependency.