Steven Adamson

Girls love the gay ones it seems: http://notalwaysright.com/they-have-incompatible-operating-systems/36688

**Raises hand** They're several millions of us around the world. Some of us quite famous like Drew Carey and Penn Glllette.

Banana inspection time?

Yeah, being bumped ahead is tough socially. That's what happened to me. I WAS bumped ahead 2 years. So I started high school at 10 when everyone else was mostly 12. I had 2 big breaks: One was that I was big for my age so I fit in physically and was only the fourth shortest kid in class and was reasonably athletic. The second was that maybe 1/4 of the other kids in my school were also 'gifted' students and were a class ahead of their age to begin with, so there were some eleven year olds seeded about my class level and even a handful of other 10-year-olds. But I was always socially delayed. When the other boys were discovering alcohol and making out with girls I was REALLY into Nintendo and cartoons. Of course, it's not as simple as blaming my age-gap since I suspect my natural nerdiness would have been a barrier even in my own age group...and of course that's not even getting into my lack of interest in girls which tended to make me feel like most social activities were pointless (dancing/drinking/going steady/feeling each other up in the dark corners etc...)

Since I entered as the youngest boy in the whole damned school (!) I was particularly shy and the house system allowed me to make friends in the upper age groups that I would never have gotten otherwise and that's even though we had a weak house system because we were not a boarding school and the houses were just artificial groupings. When I was ten I had a crush on a 16 year old in my house. He tried using the common link to take advantage of me. No, not that way. He was very straight and we were a coed school, so he was very satisfied romantically. What I mean is that he tried to get me to do errands and stuff for him, like carry his books to his classroom so he could stay and chat with his friends etc. The first time, I told him, 'no'. His instant reply was, "Come on. you're in my house. Do it for your housemate.' Then he pointed at the little colored badge we wore to show which house we were in. That's when I realized he didn't actually know my name. He just knew I was in his house and was using that to make me his servant. Thing is, I went along with it anyway, because I DID feel like I had a duty to help people in my house. He left school soon after that, but I have to say most of the older kids in the house were good to us younger kids. The older girls especially took on a kind of big sister role with us and house activities were a time of great camaraderie. I suspect one of the reasons my school never saw much bullying was because the older boys had a sense of responsibility to protect the younger boys in their house so that the would-be bullies from another house didn't have a free shot at any younger kid since every kid had protectors floating around.

Found a link to this browsing reddit today. It's an article from 1963 about the concerns over growing open homsexuality in NYC. The report seems even handed for its time, giving a wide range o voices, including gays themselves, but it also seems trapped in assumptions about homosexuality, like the roots of homosexuality lying in 'disturbed family relationships' and gays being targets for crime because the bring it on themselves etc. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/weekinreview/1963-homosexuality-article.pdf Worth checking out for a sense of history and an appreciation of how far we've come.

You say guns are found in the rural areas. What exactly are the rules? I assume hunting rifles are legal if you have a permit?

Dangerous muslims call for prayer and fasting in support of missing girls' return... http://www.themuslimtimes.org/2014/05/africa/nigeria-muslim-students-call-for-national-fasting-over-chibok-girls Now, as an atheist, I suspect Allah's not going to listen to their prayers and intervene as they're asking him, so I'm not exactly supporting this action, but they're also calling for the government to step up its efforts. Since muslims behaving in kind and compassionate ways doesn't sell ads on CNN, it's worth taking time out to note the stories that don't air.

James, I suspect you're wrong. I read an interesting article once, I forget where, but they compared the estimated Australian gun ownership before the gun ban in the 90s with the actual number of guns handed in and there is a huge discrepancy. The article estimates that about half the privately held guns in Australia remained with their owners who hid them away. A similar thing has been shown in countries like the UK and Germany where hidden guns are found when people die and their houses are searched/renovated etc. Lots of citizens refused to obey the ban. Estimated illegal gun ownership in places like Germany and the UK is quite high. But it seems most of these guns have been removed from play via being put into deep storage. I can only image how low the compliance rate would be with any attempted ban in the US. That's one reason gun rights activists fight so hard to stop registration laws, because it becomes a directory for home visits from the authority when a ban happens (As happened recently in NY)

Islam is 1.4 billion people. Kind of hard to encompass that group with one sentence. So yes, we do need more proof that Islam is a blight. Granted, I don't find Islam particularly useful, but it's no more a blight than any other religion. In some places, Hinduism for instance practiced burning widows on their husbands funeral pyre until the British stopped them. Those very same Christian British, at that very same time, did not allow women to own property, vote, or have any say in who they married. Right now, in modern times, there are American Jewish conservatives that don't allow women to ride the same bus with them. So, if you consider the rest of the world, Islam is no more abusive to women than any other religion has a history of being. ---------------------- the other aspect of this is that the majority of muslims are not acting in this 'blightful' extremist way. Brunei is less than 500 000 people who have no say in what their senile dictator does, so it's pretty irrelevant to a discussion of global Islam. The Nigerian militants are a vast minority within their own country. Consider this: Where did those girls they kidnapped come from? Who paid for armed guards at girls schools throughout the region to protect those girls from Boku Haram? It was MUSLIM parents who wanted their daughters to be educated, that's who. Why are MUSLIMS protesting in the Nigerian capital demanding that their government do more to bring back the girls? Boku Haram is estimated by the US govt to be between a few hundred to a few thousand people. That's in a country of 170 million. In the muslim areas of Nigeria, MILLIONS of muslim parents are sending their girls to get a western education. (And the rate would be even higher if the area wasn't so poor and lacking in schools) ...so what's the real muslim view on education for girls, I ask you, when the balance of opinion is considered? Again, this is not to defend Islam. I just want to push back against the generalizations in this thread. You won't defeat the muslim extremists unless you actually know who/what you're fighting and panic about a many-tentacled giant muslim threat coming for you isn't going to help. A surgeon doesn't remove the entire liver to get rid of liver cancer. You want to know what can be done about Islam? Supporting education and economic development is the core of it. The reason Boku Haram's main cause is stopping Western Education is because THEY know it's their kryptonite.

I agree with Cole on drug-legalization having the potential to transform the US for the better since the US has the highest percentage of its people behind bars of any country and most of those are there for drugs and most are minorities, and even the ones who committed violent crimes were often tied to the black market trade in drugs. Plus the drug war justifies all kinds of governmental intrusion into our lives and the perpetuation of poverty in minority neighborhoods through the marginalization of their work force. However, I have 3 objections to the idea that banning guns will make a huge change in society: --Banning drugs has been a catastrophic failure since the flow of drugs has never fallen and anyone who wants drugs in America can have them in almost any region for pretty cheap. Why would the trade in guns to criminals be any less easy under a gun ban? --Second, banning guns doesn't make criminals any less effective. You might argue against my first point by saying that the streets of London are not awash in guns. True, but criminals don't need to seek out guns when the populace is unarmed. Knife and other weapon crime has gone up in the UK. Assault/rape/murder rates for the UK are not magically lower without guns. Any positive difference has been minimal and there are often offsetting negative consequences (like an entire crowd being unable to defend a soldier while two terrorists carve him up with knives over an extended period) --The total gun deaths in America are about 33000 per year. 2/3 of those are suicides and studies show that suicide rates are mostly immune to gun laws (I.e. most people who want to kill themselves will do so without a gun, using poison/jumping/hanging etc). 11000 of those gun deaths are murder. Let's say we could magically eliminate all guns, many of those murders would still happen via hammers, knives and steel pipes.) Fewer than 1000 gun deaths per year are accidental. So, if we were to ban guns, We can estimate stopping at BEST, 5000 suicides, 9000 murders and a 1000 accidents., for a total of 15000 deaths. Granted, that's a big number, but in my view it's hardly one of the top two things to change the US. 12000 people die annually of drunk driving and even more from regular accidents. 200,000 people die from hospital mistakes every year. 400-600 people die every year from long guns of all kinds, only a tiny percentage of which are 'assault weapons'. Yet more people are killed with blunt objects each year. And 700 CHILDREN die every year from drowning. My point is that despite the real shock and sorrow of gun deaths, the media has sensationalized the idea that it is a societal problem of calamitous proportions, when it is no more tragic than many other kinds of death Americans face. ---------------------------------------------------- Compared to overall life in America, I don't see banning guns creating much positive change and that's not even taking into account the concomitant negative results, like reduction of self defense.

BTW, I want to recommend Altimexis's stories about a young Pakistani immigrant coming to America. He seems to have done some research and manages to convey how the extremists in Islam are mucking things up for regular folks who are more tolerant. One thing I noticed is that he keeps drawing the line between what the books of the various religions say and how people use their education and experiences to figure out right and wrong. http://www.awesomedude.com/altimexis/naptown_tales/Naptown06-MyFirstThanksgiving.html http://www.awesomedude.com/altimexis/naptown_tales/Naptown07-TheUn-Christmas.html I suspect that solving the problem of Sharia comes down to simply making information available. Numerous governments have seen the power of Twitter and email to make information and communication available to regular folks when the governments try to restrict knowledge. Even North Korea, the most deliberately isolated and brainwashed society still learns about outside life through smuggled South Korean TV shows and radio broadcasts that they enjoy on their smuggled DVD players and radios (possession is punishable by death, but people still risk it in huge numbers, just for KNOWLEDGE of the outside world.) Muslims are no different. They use the internet, and travel, to have new education and experiences and that changes how they interpret the Quran and the other muslim laws, just as Altimexis showed in his story. Economic development feeds technological advancement which feeds the flow of information. The richer the muslims of the world get (and its happening for sure), the more they want to know and experience choosing for themselves and acting for themselves. Sharia's days are numbered, barring worldwide economic collapse.

Dear Chris, please calm down. From what I read, the law actually isn't extreme. Consider: Maine has allowed guns in bars since 1989 and so have several other states more recently. In addition 20 states have no laws about guns in bars (either pro or con, making it legal by default). There are actually four US states that have NO gun law restrictions whatsoever (called Constitutional carry. i.e. anyone who wants a gun can have one and carry it openly or concealed anywhere they are legally allowed to be.) So, half of America already allows guns in bars and there seems to be no statistical powderkeg of evidence that violence has skyrocketed with bar carry, or I'm sure we'd have seen it presented during arguments over the Georgia law. Second, consider that property owners still retain the right to prohibit guns under the Georgia law: "Bar owners and school boards can prohibit licensed carry inside their facilities with signage." http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2014/04/robert-farago/sgt-hayes-extreme-ga-safe-carry-protection-act-rocks/ Numerous states already allow guns in church (over 20 of them) http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/04/guns-everywhere.html The states that allow carry in churches don't seem to be suffering a gun violence spike on Sundays. ------------------------ Regarding your sarcastic remark about needing to shoot the minister, you might consider that churches are just as likely a target for attacks of all kinds as any other place, meaning that yes, you still have a need to defend yourself in church. ---Priest beaten to death in his church this year: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/07/22217337-california-priest-murdered-in-church-beaten-to-death-autopsy?lite ---Woman killed by husband in church parking lot this year: http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local/indiana&id=9511510 ---Apparent gang members shoot 3 at a funeral service this year: http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=9512259 ---Extremist attacks gay-friendly church, 2008, kills one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoxville_Unitarian_Universalist_church_shooting ---More domestic violence death at church, this year http://www.wsmv.com/story/24612934/fatal-shooting-inside-cookeville-church ---Attacks at churches are common enough that the Federal Government has issued guidelines for dealing with a church shooter. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/19/confronting-a-church-shooter-feds-release-first-guidelines_n_3466456.html ---And that's not even mentioning non-christian houses of worship that legal gun carry would apply to. 3 recent attacks include the recent shooting at a Jewish center, a shooting at a Sikh temple 2 years ago and the burning of a mosque. ---------------------------------------------- Seems to me the Georgia law is not a big deal, whether you're for guns or against them, since it breaks no real new ground. With all the other measures in the law, Georgia is now still no more gun permissive than a third of the USA, so you might want to reconsider your travel criteria since you'll have to avoid more than just Georgia.

Yes, that last sentence is key. I never got into it much, but a major part of my analysis is the idea that economics spells the end of religion. As a general rule, rich populations become more secular. America is the exception to this rule, but America is a special case for alot of reasons and within the last twenty years they've been following the trend internally anyway. I always like to compare th emuslim immigrant experience to the Godfather movies. 1st generation is looking to cash in on America. 2nd generation wants out from all the old ways but needs the familial links and loyalty so they don't just stay in the violent old ways, the embrace a idealized version of the old country to feel secure. 3rd generation just wants to be American.Eventually you get the Sopranos, who are American as any family ever was despite all the trappings of italian phrases and food. And with muslims as with all immigrants, by the third generation, they have enough individual wealth to be free of the need to depend on the old community and they can go live independent of the old values.

It's all the last thrasings of a dying attitude. ] Just as they reversed the policy on gay boys this year, they will soon reverse this policy as the old blood dies out or retires out of the organization and also as the more pragmatic leaders realize the cost isn't worth it.

Lincoln, Nebraska... The story I'm currently working on is actually set there because it's the hometown of one of my best friends. But, let's think about Abraham Lincoln for a moment, the man who verbally defended the freedom of slaves and who history remembers as one of the foremost fighters of bullies in history. I'd hate to think of the dismay in his heart if he ever saw this shit being peddled in a town named after him.

I feel I'm in a good position to comment on this topic: I'm an atheist who grew up as a devout muslim but now I abhor much of Islam. I have lived in the US, Canada and Guyana. I have friends/relatves who live/lived in the middle east and the US/Canada/Europe. My sister is a US citizen who immigrated there and my brother moved back to Guyana after university, but is married to an American woman (And has 4 American citizen kids) X---The first thing I'd say is that muslim immigration into the west is primarily an economic thing. Pecman asked why you would move to a country without wanting to fit in. Rick said that immigration is a part of a plan to conquer the west. But it's all about money actually. There are no religious immigrants who came to the west from a richer country. The rich muslim individuals who do move to the west (the sons of oil sheiks or bankers etc) almost always move to the west for the freedom to live a decadent, non-religious, western lifestyle (womanizing, gambling and liquorizing).Already-wealthy religious muslims tend to stay away. Less wealthy men and women with kids go to the West to make money and then they complain to their relatvies back home about how morally degenerate the culture is and how much they fear raising their kids in it, but they still don't come home, because money is king and by the third generation, there's almost no religiosity left, especially in the girls. X---Islam is not a fanatical religion as practiced by 99% of its adherents. (Calling it things like a death cult is rhetoric not based on the reality of most muslims) The extremists who make the news for stoning their daughters etc tilt perception to think that the ignorance is ingrained. It's not. You never hear about the Islamic TV preacher who supports his daughter entering beauty contests. (True local story). There was a time when muslims themselves drew Muhammad, despite the ones threatening death over it today. One reason for the misconception is that most muslims are not actually middle eastern. So the violence associated with middle eastern Islam has little to do with how Islam is practiced wordwide. The average Jamaican is more homophobic than the average muslim. X---Islam needs an Enlightenment. It's almost certainly not as tolerant a religion as most strains of Christianity, but that's not because the written words of Islam are more severe. After the European Enlightenment, people act like they're not there, but the Christian religion still holds the following gems: -Don't suffer a witch to live. -Stone adulterers -Eating shellfish is an abomination -Beat your children if they don't obey you. -Slavery is legal. -Genocide in the name of God is acceptable (See Joshua conquering the holy lands. I think at one point he was ordered to wipe out a civilization and take 10000 foreskins from the dead men and boys and the Israelites could keep the women as sex slaves.) -If a woman is raped in a town and no one hears her call for help, then it means she wasn't really raped. How many Christians would hold that any of the above is a true part of their religion nowadays? Damned few. The scientific and philosophical changes since the 15th century have beaten these old WRITTEN laws back into non-rememberance. Only the preachers who bother to read the Bible fully know that they're there now, and they avoid mentioning them and focus on the 'real' Christian message. Islam never had a clear-cut enlightenment, so it's swing into modernity has been slower. Someone mentioned that Islam is still being spread by the sword in Africa. I will add that it's also being spread by rape, BUT, in Nigeria, Christians are killing children as witches, but no one's drawing the conclusion that all of Christianity is barbaric. Muslims are not a monolith either and just because Islamic written law is just as barbaric as Christian written law doesn't mean that muslims feel any more obligated to follow the written law once they have their own enlightenments. X---Islam has it's own version of the Inquisition in the 20th century and now Islam is in the middle of an internal culture war over its soul. What most people don't realize is that up til the end of the 19th Century, Islam was quite socially liberal in the places it existed, almost on par with European Christianity. (Both religions were dark and horrible compared to today but they were climbing out of the pit together) Then in Saudi Arabia, a mule was born. (That's a sci-fi reference to the Foundation books. It basically means a mutant abberation that knots the grain of history.) Wahhabi Islam was formed as an anti-modernist cult. By accident of history it found favor with the ruling class of Arabia who used it as a political tool and then it grew beyond their control. It's advocates have made determined attempts to export it worldwide and their missionaries have made inroads into the traditionally laid back Islam that most of the world knows. So you will see extremists pop up on the caribbean island of Trinidad and in Indonesia etc, but almost always the local population is scratching their heads going, 'What the fuck is WRONG with those guys?' X---Moderate Islam doesn't comment much on extremist terror against the US because it's not a big part of our lives. No one in this thread raised this, but I bring it up since it is the one objection I hear most whenever I try to tell people that Islam is not a massive conspiracy of extremist Decepticons. They say, 'If you're not all extremists, then why don't you ever say anything against the terrorists?" 1) First off, the moderates DO voice their objection, but that's not going to get any airtime on CNN when they can show a video of Hezbollah calling Americans devils. There is no open medium to carry messages from the Islamic world to the Western world. It's all controlled by gate keepers who decide what gets airtime and if it bleeds it leads as the newpapers adage goes. peaceniks get 30 seconds at the end of the broadcast if they get any time at all. Remember all those girls schools getting attacked by the Taliban? It's not extremsits sending their daughters to those schools. It's moderate muslims who build them, fund them and run them. Remember the students bleeding in the streets of Tehran a few summers ago? They were protesting and DYING to speak against extremism. 2) America isn't part of the muslim worldview for most muslims. Consider this: Why aren't regular moderate Americans voicing their objections to the suppression of Tamils in Sri Lanka by Sinhalese buddhists? Because Americans aren't thinking about Sri Lanka! It's on the other side of the world from them. SImilarly, most moderate regular muslims live on the other side of the planet from the US. They hear about an attack against the US in Iraq and it's got the same impact as hearing about Colombian rebels kidnapping civilians or Russia invading Crimea. It's something happening somewhere else and they're thinking "I've got to get my kid's lunch ready before he heads to school, so let me switch the TV from news to cartoons so he'll shut the hell up while I cook." X---Western Civilization is changing Islam much more than Islam is changing the west and the west is winning the war of ideas. It's amazing that one big incident with some jackass taxi drivers has balloooned into 'muslim immigrants are destroying western civilization.' (Actually it's two incidents because there was another incident a few years back in NJ I think where some airport driver refused to carry vodka in his car or something) The point is there are punk rock bands practicing underground in Tehran (BBC tv had a report on that) There are TV channels beaming romance soap operas into Afghan homes. Atheism/secularism is on the rise among 'muslim' youth as well as western youth. My older cousin emigrated to the US. When he came back 'home' to visit 7 years later, he brought two small items that changed my life forever. They were two cassette tapes. Metallica: Master of Puppets and Metallica: Kill em all. I fell in love with heavy metal music and it opened up my head to the idea of being open to new ideas. All that shit you guys deride as the dregs of Western civilization (Kanye West and Jersey Shore and Miley Cyrus and WWE) is getting exported via the internet and poisoning the youth of muslim countries too. AND THEY WANT skinny jeans and purse dogs and giant sunshades too. Assimilation is a two way street and while I know people like Rick will complain that the immigrants he sees aren't doing it, on a world wide scale it;s happening. As a generational shift, it's happining. Studies have shown that almost any migrant society (German/Irish/Polish/Puerto Rican) takes three generations to assimilate. People are just too resistant to change for it to happen fast. ---------------------- Let me wrap up quickly. What I'm basically saying is that you guys worry that change isn't coming to Islam. But what you miss is that with immigration, Islam is coming to where the change is. Contact with the West (via immigration and more recently TV and Internet) is breaking apart the extremist structures with in the larger framework of Islam. Heck, it's breaking down Islam as a whole. The extremists resort to violence BECAUSE they don't find their mind control working in the Western world. ____________________ Author's note: Let nothing I wrote above be taken as a defense of Islam itself. As an atheist ex-muslim I have rejected Islam for many reasons and every day I learn more reasons. But just because I abhor something, doesn't mean I am going to let it be mischaracterised. The idea that there is no such thing as moderate Islam and that all of Islam considers itself at war with the West makes life difficult for the people you most want to help: The reformers. It feeds prejudice and in real life I'm still walking around with a muslim name and brown skin, so I'm aware that the stereotypes are a roadblock to assimilation. Ironic, eh? You can't complain about muslims being too radical to assimilate and then when a muslim says, "Hey, I'm moderate. I'm assimilating,' you respond with, 'No you're faking. You want to kill us all. get lost.". You're driving the seekers back to the cave of ignorance instead of welcoming them into the light with you. Another note: I picked on Christianity in this thread. I'm not playing a game of 'they did it, so Islam can do it.' I object to BOTH belief systems equally as being untrue and detrimental to human worth. I simply use the comparisons to show that Islam is on a similar route towards irrelevance as Christianity in the West.

If I were a god, my books would be written the size of niagara falls on cliffs made of diamond.

Another alternative is using first names or last names only and job titles to never outright name someone. I remember back in the 90s there was a comic where Batman guest starred in a comic from another company (Image comics) and he told the other hero, "God, you're dumber than Clark." Image comics didn't have the rights to use Superman, only Batman, so they used the first name to create a Superman joke. SImilarly you can have a reporter saying, "The captain of the Pitbulls teams sent out a tweet last night saying "I've got no problem with faggots". Or you could have the main character narrate, 'I turn around and found myself face to face with the best player in the whole country. "Um, Hi Mr. McGuire," I said. "Hey kid," he said to me. Is it true you're dating another guy?"

I say just use "sortof" names, e.g. Eddie McGuire can be Eggie McDoom. He'll have the same job etc, and say things in character with Eddie McGuire, and any football fans will know exactly who he is. I think they did a similar thing with Rocky V, when they wanted to show notorious promotor Don King as the villain and just basically used a lookalike with a similar name and catchphrase.

It might help if we knew more specifics. I mean, you're considering putting them into your story, so you might as well say who in particular you're talking about and what kind of things you want them to do/say in the story.

It's been a few hours and this story is still alive in my head. That's a sign of good storytelling right there.

Excellent story which does that rare and remarkable trick of showing you someplace new and making it feel familiar by the end. I'm going to be going back through this one and looking for hints at the techniques he used to accomplish that :-) I did have a few minor grumbles about mechanical things, but I'll be expounding on those in my email to the author. They're not serious enough to mention here. In the end, I feel like I lived those two nights in the jungle and that counts as success of the highest kind.

They put 'In God We Trust' all over the federal money in the fifities because of the fight against godless commies. That worked so well that 'atheists/no-religion' is the fastest growing segment of the US population now. These laws are the last gasps of a terrified group of people who are stuck in an old world view and will largely be of no consequence. Freedom's been moving through Mississippi for 200 years. It's not always been fast, but it's also never been reversed.