I cannot even begin to explain how much it irritates me I can’t reply to comments!

First off, a thank you, to everyone who commented in my transition-type posts.  There will be more to come, I’m sure… And it’s really bugging me I can’t thank you all personally without a 9,000 word blog entry.  Perhaps it’ll let me soon?  C’mon wordpress!

To Kaya.  NEVER.  I WILL NEVER BE SILENCED.  Grrr!  Argh!  Ergh!  (And other piratey noises…. *swashbuckles*)

To lynette… I might have to try a bond system, that sounds awesome.  (Omg, that sounded kinky!  Joy!)

Next, to luna.  Thank you!  But unfortunately, the issue is IN the dashboard.  It hates me.  At least, that’s my assessment. (Antonio maintains there is a technical issue, but I’m doubtful.)  My blog has ALWAYS been a jerk, and refuses to allow me (or anyone else) to reply to a comment through the blog.  The “reply” link is just a dead link, and I have no idea how to fix it.  Antonio does all the blog stuff – I’m certifiably moronic when it comes to that.  But since the last update, I can no longer reply in the dashboard, which was my only way of doing it before.  It opens a reply box, and I can type in it, but when I hit “Submit Comment” it just zooms me to the top of the page without submitting.  Ergh.  Antonio said he’d look into it today, though.  Yayayayay.  Fingers crossed he can fix it.

Also, to swan… I’m really, really curious as well, about my co-worker.  I wonder if she has softened any of her views.  Perhaps, perhaps not.  Maybe my goals are set too low, but I considered it a bit of a victory just to get interest out of her, rather than disdain or dismissal.  I hope I can talk to her again soon, though… Part of me thinks she simply let the matter slide, didn’t research it, etc.  But there is always the chance she did, or that a few things stuck in her head – the idea of a level-headed, scientific approach that may contradict her “gut feelings” and maybe she’ll mention it to someone else, someday.   Here’s to hoping.  And to a healthy dose of skepticism.  *raises glass*

And to Dan… Thank you, for giving me an opportunity to completely geek out!!!  Obviously, yes, you’re right.  I understand exactly what you’re saying about causation and correlation and their relationship, and the potential for migration to serve as a confounding variable.  I even thought I sorta said so in the “Editor’s Note” but it’s possible I wasn’t clear enough that I acknowledge potential confounds in correlational studies.  The note was, I admit, a lot longer originally. But I got a little obsessed and technical, as I often do with statistics, and decided to just clip the “disclaimer” portion to a bare minimum.  However, I nearly clapped with glee that you commented about correlation and causation, because now I’m justified in rambling nerdily!  YAY!   So, yes, you’re 100% right, urban environments are often more liberal, hence more accepting. So homosexual people are very likely to migrate there.  And that may be why we see higher rates.

There are other potential confounds as well, and my coworker and I brainstormed a few.  Some confounds might even imply that there are NOT higher levels of homosexuality (though I doubt it, but it’s important to acknowledge all possibilities!).  For instance, it might simply be that people in cities and accepting environments are more comfortable reporting that they are homosexual to an interviewer or on a questionnaire, so the numbers are artificially inflated.   It may be that more comprehensive studies are done in urban environments, or perhaps a disproportionate number of scientifically sound studies geared at assessing rates of homosexuality are carried out in cities, and only dubious studies are done in the rural areas. Etc. etc. etc. The thing isn’t that two items cannot share a correlational relationship AND a causal relationship.  (I mean, obviously sometimes they definitely can.  Cutting yourself is strongly correlated with bleeding.  In that case, there is a correlational AND a causal relationship.) However, no, we definitely can’t ever claim causation with ONLY a correlation – we’d need different kinds of studies to attempt to assess causation. 

But, here’s an interesting statistic I had to cut out of the last post for space and time (and last I read this was in a textbook, and I can’t recall the actual study at the moment – but I should go look it up…)  A study showed that prior to age 17 (which was used as a cutoff because not many teenagers have the ability to migrate for social/sexual reasons prior to adulthood – so it is more likely these young people were simply born into an area, or were taken by their parents – neither of which are motivated by sexual orientation, as the migration you spoke of clearly is), there is STILL a higher rate of homosexuality reported in urban environments.  So, while attempting to control for the obvious confound of migration, they still found higher rates.

Again, obviously, there are potential confounds in that correlation as well.   There always are.  But it’s still so darn FASCINATING.

Yanno… 

To me.

The girl who gets excited over coding data analysis in SAS.

*sigh* I’m SUCH a dork.  Someone ought to shoot me and put me out of my misery…

(Speaking of misery – I’m 5 hours into a 22-hour triple-shift.  THE JOY IS NEVERENDING!!!)