elenhil

z929669, I still don't get it why you're talking of unanimous 100% support while nearly every type of policy decision requires a simple majority. Do pro-independence Scots have a better together opinion imposed upon because they happened to lose that referendum? And, more importantly, is that act of imposition unjustified, or even tyrannical? Do Labour voters have their rights violated because they happened to be in a minority compared to a Tory constituency, and thus have little to no say over the type of austerity policies they will continue to face? Can any of them demand that the opposite view should only be forced upon them though the unprecedented 100% majority that, you claim, alone can justify one worldview dominating the other?

a) I never said that." ut you meant it? If not I don't get your position in this debate then. Contrary to your impression, I do not believe that homosexuals are interfering with my freedoms by just being present. I am, however, rather uneasy seeing myself becoming the subject of this discussion, mind you. But - more to the point - I am extremely uneasy at the though of my children being inducted into liberal PC early childhood education programs teaching them that it doesn't really mean much that they have a father and a mother, replacing me with a second, lesbian, mother would be juuust fine. Merely an example off the top of my sleepy head, mind you. I can think of better ones. But isn't it the job of every type of government (be it socially conservative or liberal)? Pluralism can only go so far. Where the values in question are inherently incompatible, you have no choice but to uphold one over the other, and do so either arbitrarily or trying to preserve what you believe to be a historical and vital part of the nation's culture. Not long ago you seemed to have to trouble understanding why, for example, religious morals are largely incompatible with open homosexuality. Do you really believe one has to give reasons to why that is the fact (which is observable though simple public surveying, not someone's attempting to infer what could be the reason for this)? By law (European human rights legal framework, for that matter) a state is uniquely positioned to make judgement as to what constitutes its country's morals and what does not. In case or Russia, the state merely utilized that position. You might not like that judgement, you might find that your particular country's public morals necessitate a different one, but you can't really argue with it. ECHR ruling in Handyside v. UK, application no. 5493/72, 07 December 1976, para. 48 All in all, you seem to be overdramatizing the impact and scope of this legislation. It does not outlaw homosexuality. Not does it make for a homosexual to appear in public tantamount to a breach of the law. Nor does it justify threatening, beating up, or, indeed, killing homosexuals. It prohibits deliberate propaganda of homosexuality to minors, not unlike other laws prohibiting propaganda of, say, smoking or drinking to underage persons. You could, of course, claim that any such law can be distorted to, say, unlawfully discriminate against smokers, but the onus of proving that a) it is the case, and b) that it is not only not contrary to the legislator's intent but directly stemming from it is on you. Having seen the Imitation Game, though, I think people can't be held responsible for holding such overdramatized views :)

I see a small problem with that logic. Just how much is unanimity? And does this logic really apply to regular democratic process? After all, doesn't a liberal administration with a, say, 51% majority mandate impose its subjective opinions and policies upon the conservative 49%? And that is if the representation is proportional. With first past the post elections the numbers can be even crazier. If you don't see that as something inherently undemocratic, then you shouldn't really object to a state upholding the moral views of some 86% of the population (which, to my knowledge, is the extent to which the laws under question are enjoying public support in Russia).

Byne "The Biological Evidence Challenged", Scientific American, May 1994. I am, indeed, of the religious conviction that views homosexual acts (not homosexuality itself) as morally wrong, which does not prohibit me from having an opinion as to whether the inclination itself is genetic or cultural (no, I'm not one of those who think 'Tis the work of the DEVIL!' can settle a rational debate). Frankly, in the history of science as a whole, having a moral/religious views have never been a obstacle.

a) I never said that. b) I'm personally not in a position to restrict anyone's freedom (apart from citizen arrest, which I don't think I will ever have to carry out) The comparison is imaginary. I merely gave you an example where human rights are clearly subject to lawful restrictions (which I thought you denied, as in 'respecting the rights and freedoms of people can not include restricting the rights and freedoms of others' - so, did you?) Did I or did I not quote you from the European Court of Human Rights? I rather thought I did. A difference in treatment (discrimination to you and me) is discriminatory if it has no objective and reasonable justification. Otherwise it is what I called (so that you might distinguish between the two) 'legal discrimination'. That is the law of a large portion of the democratic world, so no amount of dismissing it as 'only exist[ing] in states not ensuring human rights' will help your case. Don't take it personally, but I don't believe your personal definition of discrimination has any relevance for this problem whatsoever. Not as long as we're talking human rights law, not your personal ideas of the treatment of homosexuals. So, coming to the question of how exactly the Russian state justifies its laws against propaganda of homosexuality to minors on grounds of its protecting morals: It follows from the very title of the Ryazan regional law (“On the protection of morals of the children in the Ryazan regionâ€). Superior courts of the Russian Federation have likewise found the laws in question to pursue the selfsame aim. The Constitutional Court, for example, in Article 3 of its judgment on the Ryazan regional law indicated that the prohibition of propaganda is aimed against “dissemination of information that can harm . . . the moral development†of children. Similarly, the Supreme Court also indicated that the laws in question are aimed at protecting the morals. Namely, the Court’s judgment of 7 November 2012 concerning the similar law of Kostroma oblast indicates that the norm had been adopted “[to] protect the rights of children and to protect them from harm to their moral developmentâ€. Supreme Court’s judgment of 3 October 2012 on the similar St. Petersburg regional law found the same. UNHRC’s General Comment No. 22: “[T]he concept of morals derives from many social, philosophical and religious traditions; consequently, limitations . . . for the purpose of protecting morals must be based on principles not deriving exclusively from a single traditionâ€. Prohibition of propaganda of homosexuality to minors fully satisfies this criterion due to the fact that in Russia, without any prejudice of the homosexuals as persons, homosexual lifestyle and behaviour are regarded immoral by all major religious traditions as well as by the majority of unbelievers. That is why I believe, given the obvious social conservatism of the Russian society, it is perfectly legitimate for (indeed, required of) the state to limit, for example, the right to freedom of expression insofar as it is used to affect the morals of the young and the society in general.

Consider this (same author) instead: That was what I was talking about. The specific facts or the date of their documentation is of little interest to me. What I'm seeing is that facts, whatever their date, are open to different interpretations, so one cannot really claim to represent a consensus.

Which I did not do. However, culture/environment has a way of influencing human behaviour irrespective of their choice, don't you think? So you can't really claim that a higher percentage of homosexual twins (which lived all their life in a single household), just like a higher percentage of second-generation alcoholics or drug addicts, is entirely biological in nature.

I'm afraid you're simply wrong here. No legal instrument has ever placed individual rights and freedoms as unconditional and subject to no restrictions whatsoever, UNDHR included, otherwise Article 29(2) would be pointless. In fact, the idea that personal liberties have their limits is as old and human rights discourse itself. Your freedoms end where mine begin, etc. Indeed, every document I cited recognizes that ICCPR Article 12(3) Ibid., Article 19(3) Ibid., Article 21 And so forth (some documents, just like ICCPR, have these sorts of disclaimers in almost every single article). You simply cannot have a state of unrestricted personal freedoms, and these articles are a testament to that (and to reason, really). That makes any legal reference to public morals absurd, don't you find? And yet, every human rights instrument recognizes the right and duty of a democracy to protect these morals, just like public health and public safety. You might as well argue that health and safety is subjective, and therefore the police have no legal right to restrict the right to association and freedom of movement of criminals. But, returning to the subject of morals, if a state sees that in a society build around a specific set of morals (religious or otherwise, subjective or objective - whatever) is exposed to another, minority set of morals contrary and undermining the former, it has every right to uphold the status quo without it being in any way discriminatory. All in all, I'm afraid you're stuck with an ill-informed idea of what 'discrimination' is. The thing is, international law prohibits illegal discrimination, whereas legal discrimination is, well, perfectly legal. For example, criminals are routinely and legally being discriminated against for the purpose of public safety. So are severely mentally ill. As the European Court of Human Rights puts it, а difference in treatment “is discriminatory if it has no objective and reasonable justification†(cf. para. 37 of Karner v. Austria, application no. 40016/98, 24 July 2003). I believe you're confused here. No-one is taking anyone's rights away. We're talking about justifiably limiting these rights, as per domestic and international laws. You can question the justification, not the morals or the legal right to protect them. And we haven't even begun the explore the issue of public health...

If so, it must work the other way round, too, but it doesn't. We have societies where at some stage perfectly heterosexual young males are all culturally mandated to act 'homosexually' (performing anal or oral sexual intercourse, for example, often on a regular basis and over a prolonged period of time). It does not seem to cause them enormous internal pressure, and, having passed the stage, they usually enter a regular heterosexual relationship, form a family, etc. So no, the nature vs behaviour distinction is not that clear-cut, either. To illustrate my point: surely you must have heard of studies of fertility of captive primates. The ones where female apes have difficulty with the most basic aspects of caring for their offspring if they, in turn, have had no proper nursing in their infancy. They are, basically, clueless about what to do with an infant ape. They can't nurse, won't hold or show any other 'natural' impulse towards the young. Curiously, some scientists tried rectifying the problem by exposing these females to proper 'role models' (including, amazingly, human ones), which led to subsequent offspring being nursed properly. Pardon the clumsy retelling. So, to my mind, what these primatologists observed was not some fault of behaviour, but a lack of impulse towards mothering behaviour. That was certainly not a question of 'choice' but - by your logic - nature. Turns out, even with apes, and even with such a basic and evolutionary selected 'drive', 'nature' is prone to be affected by 'culture' or 'behaviour'. It is, of course, an interpretation open to criticism from whoever can systematically describe the same set of fact in a different way.

It's just that throughout the installer the author repeatedly warns that this feature 'is a Nogo for Lowend Hardware'.

Citing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, you are, I believe, aware of its Article 29(2), too: It will come to you as no surprise that this is not some legal blip, but an integral principle of human rights legislation mirrored throughout the international treaties that followed UNDHR (cf. Article 19(3)(b) of ICCPR, Article 13(2)(b) of UNCRC, or Article 10(2) of ECHR, for example). So, regardless of individual claims such as 'morality is subjective', virtually every human rights instrument there is somehow recognizes the overarching right (indeed, duty) of the state to protect it. As for subjectivity, I personally see no problem whenever we're talking about not one group's opinion (say, an extremely vocal Evangelical section of the US society, for example, or a hardline section of the immigrant Muslim minority in some liberal European country), but a consensus among the major religions AND the non religiously affiliated part of the society. To put is shortly, Russian society is historically conservative enough for the majority of its citizens to hold open display of homosexuality contrary to their morals, be their Russian Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or atheist. Not a huge revelation, I believe. So, in legal terms, the Russian state has an obligation to protect the morals of the majority of its citizens rather than to convert them to a more Western set of moral values. These human rights laws are by definition very much entrenched against social change, you see. Regarding studies into homosexuality, I was under the impression that I cited at least one that directly contradicted the genetic causative theory (Byne, W. and B. Parsons (1993). Human sexual orientation: The biological theories reappraised. Arch. Gen. Psych. 50: 228–239), and highlighted the internal problems acknowledged by authors of a prominent study of twins themselves (LeVay, S. and D. H. Hamer (1994). Evidence for a biological influence in male homosexuality. Sci. Amer. 270: 44–49.). Sorry I can't address the maternal hormone theory, but that alone should be enough for starters, shouldn't it? I'm not trying to 'convert' you. It is just that I can't stand people claiming some sort of consensus among the scholars of a subject when there clearly is none.

No, I do not. I'm saying that studies purporting to show predominance of genetic factors of sexuality are representing only a fraction of the interpretations available, and have long been susceptible to well-deserved peer criticism, examples of which I quoted above. Which is not the same as "bah, you can prove anything with studies nowadays!" And, speaking of repeatability, once more: we're dealing with interpretations of facts. One scholar chooses to observe a group of twins and, seeing some degree of concordance, suggests genetic causality. Another looks at the same facts and notes that there is a whole bunch of factors the first one decided to overlook, factors that make the same facts open to an entirely different interpretation. Russia (any state for that matter), I believe, is perfectly entitled to use its discretion to find a balance between individual liberties and the public good (which, let me remind, includes not only healthcare, but also public morals). This is, by the way, derived from the existing universally recognized human rights instruments. So no, secularism or not, existing religious traditions (not to mention healthcare and depopulation concerns, both of where are very much an issue in Russia) do have a lawful direct impact on matters such as these.

I'm sorry, but I know of professional primatologists that would disagree and argue that 'homosexual' behaviour in bonobos has little to do with sexuality and everything to do with social interaction (of which sexually charged interactions are but one of the means, even if, in case of bonobos alone, it seems to be an uncommonly prominent one). It is, once again, a matter of which interpretation any given observer infers from the 'facts'.

The trouble is, surrendering your parental sovereignty to the state is not the solution, because the said state is not inherently more competent than a parent is. For example, not long ago my state used to mandate that all children had to have their tonsils ripped out, because it believed science overwhelmingly proved the gland to be a rudimentary, even dangerous appendage with no actual use and plenty of potential to harm for child. Ditto for breastfeeding. I also have no great regard for the factory-style early childhood education it used to mandate (and in some ways still does), and am sufficiently aware of the harm it does in the name of turning children into proper little citizens. And so on, and so forth. I would never want this same incompetent state to dictate how to care for my children and how to raise them. Luckily, the current human rights framework does still protect the primary role of the parent in this regard.

I'm terribly sorry, but I do believe that, with a bit of work, one (even I) can produce a study suggesting the opposite. For example, the study you cite suggests that sexual orientation is more concordant in monozygotic twins than in dizygotic ones. No doubt, it refers to the study by Bailey and Pillard, of which there is enough criticism from their peers to not take it at face value. To quote from an anthropologist I happened to translate just recently, Small, Meredith What's Love Got to Do with It? The same can be said regarding the 'male sexual orientation is linked to several regions of the genome' claim. Criticism aimed at Hamer et al., 1993, will, no doubt, apply here, too: Ibid. And so forth. I'm sorry I do not subscribe to academic literature in the field and cannot even access the full text of the study you're referring to (good for you if you can). However, the passages quoted by me show that the 'discovery' is hardly novel and has had its critics before. To the best of my knowledge, there have been no breakthroughs in the subject that have suddenly put all doubts at rest.

I might have believed that, had I not followed research into other aspects of human behaviour (including the reproductive circle) that were once thought to be '99.9 nature-driven'. To clarify: you're coming to this from biology, I'm coming to this from (cultural) anthropology, and our interpretations of the 'facts' are very much different. I say there are preciously few human behaviours that are purely biological. Cross-cultural studies show that the human animal is, indeed, unique in the extent to which he can distort his behaviour, oftentimes quite contrary to what nature and evolution clearly dictate. I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on sex drive alone, but I do know how other parts of the reproductive circle (namely, everything that has to do with 'exopregnancy' and child-rearing) are culture-driven. Driven, in fact, to the point of absurdity. Take nursing, or breastfeeding in particular. One might argue that a behaviour so essential to human procreation and so clearly evolutionary selected must be '99.9 nature'. Yet, the degree of cultural variation in this matter belies the 'nature vs nurture does not apply' thesis. We are perfectly able to begin to apply the stupidest and most harmful cultural norms to what is the most basic and essential behaviour in every species' evolutionary history, and successfully subvert and hijack them to our momentary cultural needs. Looking at the nature vs nurture debate from a history of science point of view, one can clearly see that this is, indeed, a pendulum that swings from one to the other. The recent breakthroughs in genetics tend to convince the public that biology is the name of the game. Heck, my old man (a psychologist by trade, mind you) even believed ALL human behaviour is genetically driven, and goes as far as building his own bizarre version of theism on the rather dubious thesis that, given that genes are rather easy to manipulate, the fact that God has not bothered to genetically 'cure' mankind of destructive behaviours proves that He is not a benevolent deity. The walking contradiction, my father. Still, this naive obsession with genetics and nature is only a temporary phenomenon, no doubt to be replaced with proponents of '99.9 culture' sometime in the future. After which the pendulum will start to go the other way.

Is the performance impact of mountain fog really as big as claimed by the author?

Once you have a child and begin to invest (figuratively) into his education, it becomes rather less important whether your society is 'prosperous' enough than whether your society is OK enough to let you raise him the way you think best. If prosperity comes only though the kind of pluralism that, in reality, means an aggressive state-sponspored and in-your-face propaganda of 'alternative lifestyles' (which is the reality of trying to establish pluralism on a preexisting more or less homogenous set of opinions and beliefs), I say thanks, no. I don't know if Boris got children, but I do, and would be rather mad if the state (swayed, for example, by the current Western fancy for 'inclusiveness' in 'sexual education') tried to influence their ethical worldview over and contrary to mine. To hell with pluralism. then - when in comes to children, not every man's opionion is of equal importance, prosperity or no.

The nature vs nurture debate is as old as science itself. Which belies any claim that a phenomenon is 99.9% one of the other. And, more specifically, any claim that a certain aspect of the currently predominant paradigm is a 'fact'.

Well, incidentally, Boris seems to think it equally important to voice his - and for the very same reasons, mind you (though he is obviously not very eloquent at expressing them): he thinks those views are harmful of any society, democratic or otherwise. Curious, huh?

It is easy to say live and let others live. It is rather more difficult to act on the maxim in a pro- or contra-something state that sways with whatever the dominant lobby happens to like and want to impose on you through policy.

Frankly, It'd rather have a somewhat opposite function: hide names of NPCs I never met before and replace them with generic descriptions (race/occupation). Now, THAT'S immersive in my book. Used to have a mod like that in Oblivion.

I couldn't find any info (or even comparison screenshots) on the modified ELFX-compatible version of RS. What exactly is it? What does it add to a full ELFX setup?

Just for curiosity's sake: don't you guys see homophobia and russophobia (or any phobia of that sort) as essentially similar phenomena? Both use sweeping generalizations to denigrate others (Wild animals and Neanderthals? Really?). Both enjoy absurd acts of public disassociation from whatever comes "from them" (Won't use ENB? Seriously?)

The latest Compilation installer has STEP Combined Plugin HF.esp v2.2.9.1, which lists ELE_Legendary_Lite.esp as a Master. So I'm asking for one not dependent on ELE.