From the article, Having An Older Brother Raises A Male’s Chances Of Being Gay:

A male is more likely to be gay if he has an older brother, the likelihood grows the more older brothers he has. The percentage of gay males is estimated to be around 3%, this probability can go up to 5% for males with several older brothers, say researchers from Brock University, St. Catharines, Canada.

The researchers are certain there is a biological basis for sexual orientation - in other words, there is a prenatal effect. It is not a case of older brothers having a psychological effect on the male baby after it is born. Males with older stepbrothers, or adopted brothers, are not more likely to be gay, only males with blood brothers. The scientists say the effect has to be through the mother, the only link between them.

From an evolutionary standpoint I think its fairly clear that there is no possible way homosexuality is GENETIC.

For genes to survive and propagate, they have to be able to reproduce. How long do you think a gene is going to last when its instructions say “hey! have sex with males!”

That gene doesn’t have an icecubes’ chance in hell of surviving past a few generations, let alone millions of years of human evolution. I think anyone hoping out for a GENETIC explanation is gonna be hoping for a long, long time. It doesn’t make sense genetically.

Now, a simply biological explanation is not only feasable but seems to be the only reasonable explanation to me. People come out of the womb deformed in lots and lots of different ways, every day, all the time. And its not just reproductively deformed either… mentally retarded, deformed limbs, blind, deaf, etc etc.

Are these diseases, per se? No. Did the person “learn” to be deaf? No. Fact of the matter is, the human reproductive system, despite is elegance and complexity, is not fool proof nor is it error free. When you have 6+ billion people all over the world fuckin and pumpin out babies, the odds that the reproductive system is going to fail is pretty good.

This leaves us with people being born “defected” if you will — and some of those people have defective systems that idenfity their gender and their sexual orientation. They ARE born gay, but its not a gene that can be passed down and spread.

The day we “cure” homosexuality is the day we “cure” miscarraiges, deaf or blind children, mental retardation, and every single other developmental mishap that is not a genetic predisposed disease.

In other words, never. The point here is that being gay isn’t a person’s fault any more than being born blind or with brown hair or with fair skin. Going on to prejudice gay people for something that isn’t under their control is about as compassionate as leaving blind babies gutters because they can’t see. There’s absolutely nothing that can change the fact that they are gay, so you should do what people do for every other person who isn’t born a “normal, healthy” human: try and allow them to live as fulfilling a life as they can, in whatever way they deem possible. And if that way isn’t causing you any harm, why do you care? So a couple of gay people get married so they can have a will and a next of kin. How does that hurt you, or anyone for that matter? It’s not going to teach little kids to “be gay” because its not something that can be taught.

Just another example, I suppose, of the religious neo-con right going around imposing their values onto systems that they fear because they are too uneducated to understand them.  Of course the ultra-left liberals are probably just as bad in the opposite direction doing something equally retarded, but they don’t have any power in this country to do anything so who cares.

Saturday night was one of those fun summer nights. We went to Ru Sans for dinner and I had some delicious maguru (salmon) and sake (tuna) sushi, along with a full Firecracker roll. It was delicious.

We came back home and got ready for our friend Scott’s “White Party”, in which a dress code of exclusively white clothing was being adamantly imposed. So, dressed in head to toe to white, we were watching TV waiting to leave.

It had started sprinkling while at dinner and had turned to a light drizzle by the time we got home. As we sat there we began to hear the distant booming salvos of thunder rolling in, so we checked the ole weather.com. Sitting about 10 miles due west of us as an ominous crimson blob of precipitation, stretching from kennesaw to douglasville. The last update was at 9:56 and the time was now 10:07.

And then it hit.

The skies opened up and biblical amounts of thunder, rain and lightning poured down from the heavens, in inundating sheets and waves, shaking our modest home from the rafters to the floorboards. The darkened sky was cracked apart by marbled flashes of lightning, illuminating the house and everything around it. We opened the windows and the door and turned off the TV and watched it come down. Hobbes sat on the window sill, watching the torrent unfold, his tail twitching back and forth. It was so loud one had to shout to carry on a conversation, though nothing much needed to be said. Our driveway melted away into a river of mud and rock and all around you could hear a symphony of car alarms going off every few moments, rocked alive by the explosions of thunder.

One bolt must have struck no more than 100 yards from our house. The thunder arrived almost before the flash of lightning, and was so loud that Hobbes jumped vertically straight up into the air, his tail poofed out to its largest size.

Needless to say, we foregoed attending the party.

Yesterday it again rained several times throughout the day, and I’ve awoken this monday morning to more of the same. Aside from the trip to and from the car, I must admit I rather enjoy stormy days — much more now so that I don’t have to go tromping through them anymore to class. The soft gray light that filters down from the windows above is calming somehow, and makes me feel like I’m somewhere other than my cubicle at work.

In September of 2005, someone I used to know didn’t correctly engage their parking brake while parked in front of my house, and consequently their car rolled backwards down a hill and smashed into a row of cars parked in the parking spaces. One of those cars was mine.

About $2,100 worth of damage and 2 days later, I returned my rental car to progressive and got my car back shiny and like new. I must commend Progressive for their repair process. They are fast, efficient, do wonderful work, and give you a rental car while yours is in the shop.

However, I’m out $500 for the deductable. They tell me that once the other party’s insurance company claims responsibility, I’ll get my $500 back. Usually takes a couple of weeks.

Fast forward 9 months. I still do not have my $500 back. For the past 9 months I have called Progressive about twice a month inquiring about the status of my claim. Everytime they tell me the same thing — the paperwork is in, Allstate has claimed responsibility, and they are just waiting for payment. Should be “a couple of weeks”. After the first 3 months it got handed over to the Progressive “Subjugation” department, which apparently is greek for “Do jack shit until the time expires on the claim and you lose all your money”.

So eventually I got annoyed enough that I tracked down the Allstate rep who was handling the claim and called them myself, despite the fact that this was not my insurance company (The actual person who’s fault it was refused to do anything, go figure). The Allstate rep began giving me more of the same run around, that the paperwork was in, just a matter of time, I would get paid shortly.

Yeah, right.

I asked to speak to her manager instead, then proceeded to give the person hell for a good 15 minutes about how it had been 9 months since the accident occured and there was absolutely no justifiable reason for why it should be taking this long, that it wasn’t even my fault that someone else’s mistake should be costing me ANYTHING (let alone $500), and that I knew they were just trying to wait it out until the subjugation expired and so they wouldn’t have to pay anything, that I wanted it paid immediately, blah blah blah.

The guy started back peddling around minute 9, but I pressed on, making sure to make it the entire 15 minutes. I wanted this guy to want me off the phone so bad he’d make sure and click the right buttons to send me my money.

End result? An hour later the Allstate rep calls me back and says they put the check in the mail this morning. Thank you very little, bitch.

I wonder what I should do with my $500 now though.