Scariest Election...

I received an email from a family member who is Christian and hasn't seemed to figure out that I'm not. It makes the claim that this year is the Scariest Election Ever, and they're right, but not for the reasons they think. It is precisely because of this email and the people who send it.  Now if only they would rely solely on prayer and leave out organizing and marketing, we might be safe from them. 

The email originally came with a political slant that the last forwarder deleted (she said so in her preface to the forward).  I actually wish she had left it in so I could read which side this email was for.  I sort of want to attribute this to Palin/McCain supporters, because those are the nutjobs, but my family, although they are Christian, are not evangelicals and some of them actually support Obama (who is himself, Christian).  Plus, there are quite a few factions of Christians who do not want to be associated with the radical tip-of-the-right-wing End Times fundies and who actually believe in separation of Church and State while simultaneously believing God is on our side.  So I'm not actually positive what side the political viewpoint slanted. 

Either way, however, it's a sign of how dangerously ignorant our society is in general.  All of our democracy and science and technology has not taught us yet that Allah will not guide the bullet.

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One Minute Each Night

This is the scariest election we as Christians have ever faced - And for all who practice any faith which holds our Creator God in its center.
We all need to be on our knees. Do you believe we can take God at His word? Call upon His name, then stand back and watch His wonders to behold.

This scripture gives us, as Christians, the ability to call upon God to heal it this land. I challenge you to do so.

We have never been more desperate than now for God to heal our land.

This election is the scariest I remember in my lifetime. 2 Chronicles
7:14...'If my people, which are called by my name shall humble themselves,
and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.'

During WWII, there was an advisor to Churchill who organized a group of
people who dropped what they were doing every night at a prescribed hour for one minute to collectively pray for the safety of England, its people and
peace. This had an amazing effect as bombing stopped.

There is now a group of people organizing the same thing here in America
The United States of America and our citizens need prayer more than ever!

If you would like to participate, each evening at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (8PM Central, 7 PM Mountain, 6 PM Pacific), stop whatever you are doing and spend one minute praying for the safety of the United States, our troops, our citizens, for peace in the world, the upcoming election, that God's Words will remain the basis for the laws governing our land and that Christianity and other faiths will grow in the U. S.

If you know anyone who would like to participate, please pass this along.
Someone said if people really understood the full extent of the power we

have available through prayer, we might be speechless. Our prayers are the most powerful asset we have.

Sex Is Safer With More People

I have been in sort of an ongoing discussion with someone about how safe it is to have multiple sexual partners.  He insists on a very basic math formula that simply says "more people = more risk".  I maintain that there are several variables to the safety probability, and one of the most important variables is how well you know the other person and what their own criteria for taking on additional partners is.

In an open and inclusive poly network, where regular testing is done before a new partner is added, I maintain that more people does not necessarily = more risk, as long as those people do, in fact, require tests beforehand and do, in fact, notify all people when an incidence does come up. 

If you have 3 people in a group, he believes, this is inherently safer than having 5 people in a group because that is two more people who the group has to monitor to ensure they are following the safety rules.

However, if you have 3 people in a group, one of whom is prone to cheating or taking on partners without testing first, I state that this is inherently more dangerous than a group of 5 people who have shown a consistent pattern of testing and notification.  As the number of people rises, at least within a certain range, the risk level does not, in my opinion, significantly increase when all people consistently use regular testing and disclosure.

To illustrate my point, a couple of researchers actually wrote a book about it.  Well, they wrote a book about sexuality and within the book was a segment on HIV risk for a variable number of partners.   It's called With Pleasure: Thoughts on the Nature of Human Sexuality by Paul R. Abramson & Steven D. Pinkerton.  The premise of this math formula is that each person's HIV status is unknown and the partners are randomly selected from the population at large.

 

According to the calculations (which use math symbols that I can't enter here because I write in plain text editors), "the risk resulting from 100 protected [sexual] contacts is about the same as that arising from only 10 unprotected [sexual] contacts".  They go on to say:

"For sexually active individuals with more than one partner, the situation is slightly more complicated.  Although the probability of becoming infected as a result of sexual contact with any one of these partners can be calculated using [this equation], the rules of probability calculus prevent us from simply adding them together to arrive at the overall risk of infection. ...

As might be expected, the probability of infection arising from N one-night stands is greater than the risk from N contacts with a single partner (monogamy).  However, the difference is not nearly as great as one might suppose.  ... the relative risk reduction achieved by engaging in N sexual contacts with a single partner rather than N one-night-stands is greater in the high infectivity condition (a=0.01) and increases as the number of one-night stands gets large, but is less than 40% in any case.  In contrast, the relative risk reduction due to the consistent use of condoms is about 90% regardless of the infectivity or number of partners.  In other words, in this situation even the most dramatic change in the number of sexual partners - from 100 to 1 - provides LESS protection than does the simple expedient of always wearing a condom.

These results highlight the inadequacy of educational programs that focus on getting people to limit the number of sexual partners as a means of reducing HIV risk.  Although there are conditions for which this is sound advice (such as populations with a high prevalence of HIV and other STDs) the simple strategy of always using condoms is usually a superior means of reducing risk.  ...

Finally, to return to the question posed at the beginning of this discussion: is everyone at risk?  Obviously that depends on her sexual behaviour, including who she has sex with, what kind of sex, and whether or not her partners wear condoms for penetrative activities.  For the sake of argument, suppose the infectivity is 1 in 1,000 and she selects 10 male partners at random from a population in which 1 out of every 200 men is infected with HIV.  If she has intercourse 100 times with each of these men and never uses condoms, she faces an infection risk of 0.0047 (in other words, out of 211 such women, we would expect one to become infected with HIV as a consequence of her sexual behaviour).  If, instead, she and her partners used condoms for every act of intercourse, her risk would be reduced by about 90%, to 0.0005 (1 out of 2010)."

The part that really impacts the poly community is that all of these scenarios and formulas are done with choosing a partner totally at random from the entire population without knowing his or her HIV status.  With regular condom use, regular testing, and open and honest communication about status, the probability of becoming infected with HIV drops to a very small number close to zero.  With a known status of HIV-negative, and no exposure to HIV since testing, the probability drops to a small number close to zero even without the condoms. 

This, of course, only affects those STDs that are fluid-borne, like HIV.  The incidence of contact-borne STDs like Herpes is only partially reduced by condom use, not the 90% quoted above.  And for the untestable or hard-to-test STDs like HPV, I assume we cannot significantly lower the incidence rate by changing the variable from "unknown status" to "known status", but none of that was discussed.

 

Anyway, this book sounds pretty fascinating and I plan to pick up a copy sometime soon.  One of the other thoughts they propose in the book is that the primary purpose of sex has evolved to be pleasure and procreation is a by-product.  When I did a search for the title, I didn't find any negative reviews of the book, no blog entries claiming they're hacks and peudo-scientists, so I'm curious to see the research they used to reach this conclusion.  Here's the link to read what I quoted above, just click on the cover image and you will access a preview of the book that you can scroll through: https://amzn.to/2IInG7n

External Hard Drive Reviews

I'm in the market for a 1T external hard drive.  I currently have a 500GB WD My Book, which was working just fine for a while, but has recently begun overheating.  I have to unplug it, let it cool off, then reboot the computer while simultaneously plugging it back in to get the computer to see the drive once it overheats.

And, because I'm poor, I never bought a backup system.

So I'm doing google searches to find reviews, but I'm having trouble finding any for the 1T size.  I have a coupon for another WD product, and the 1T My Book Pro Edition is currently on sale for $200.  But I'm cautious about purchasing another My Book.

I found one review (http://www.gcn.com/print/27_14/46462-1.html) that covered several different brands, and based on that one article, the Seagate FreeAgent Pro and SimpleTech Pro Drive sound pretty good.  They both have decent transfer speeds, good backup software, and go for just over $300.

I've also heard that Maxtor has a good reputation for decent hardware.

So, anyone want to chime in with their opinions and experiences, or links to reliable comparison reviews?  I'm concerned with cost, overheating issues, and backup capabilities.  Transfer speed is important, but less so than the 3 I just mentioned.  It might be inconvenient for something to take a long time to transfer, but if I have to sacrifice speed for not losing my data totally, I'll make that sacrifice.