Randox

Well, guys made the change to pants first, and there must have been some upsides or it wouldn't have happened. Three things come to mind immediately: Pants have pockets. Pants are more protective/durable/warm. You don't have to shave every day if no one can see your legs.

The sex being as important as say eating is an interesting idea. On the level of the individual, I'd say its total BS. Being abstinent won't kill you. On the level of the species though, it is easily as important as anything that contributes to survival, as it ensures the survival of the species as a whole. But I think the argument shouldn't just be about what is right, because the wrong thing is going to happen a lot no matter what laws you put in place. The solutions need to be the best to deal with problems that you do have, not just the ones you should have.

I'll agree that birth control and abortion do make having sex before your ready easier, because you know there is a way out. That is a legitimate problem. I guess the way I see it though, that's going to happen anyway, and the damage done by ignoring a problem because it shouldn't exist is almost certain to be a lot more then doing something to solve a problem that shouldn't exist. And to the women not always being fertile thing, women can ovulate I think as early as day 3 in the cycle, and as late as day 22. So while the window of opportunity itself is about 7 days (considering egg viability time and how long the sperm can survive, which is 2 days + 5 days), unless you actually know when you ovulate, its still a crapshot. The days not covered in that range aren't exactly prime sex days. And just to be extra fun, while ovulation tends to be pretty consistent, its not impossible for it to be delayed, because the universe obviously doesn't want us to be 100% certain about this without inventing a little machine to go in there and check to see if the egg is out yet (that actually sounds kinda cool. Someone invent that).

People survive fine without having sex. And the act of sex has a purpose: to make a child. There is no primary 'need' to have sex. It's a desire, most likely inherent in us so that we don't fall off the face of this planet. People use birth control to separate the responsibilities and consequences that come from sex (it's whole purpose being the creation of a child) from the pleasure one gets from it. And that, I find, is selfish when coupled with the fact that you will not die solely because you don't have sex. Your right in that we shouldn't have sex until we are ready to have a child. That would be the responsible thing to do. But guess what, that's not how the world works. This is why there are condom dispensers in high school bathrooms. People realized that this shouldn't happen, but it does, and rather than going all high and mighty about it, they should try to find ways to minimize the damage. Birth control like condoms and the pill are two of those damage control measures. Aborting is a more extreme version. Sure, the problem shouldn't exist, but it does, so we need to deal with it. And to the whole convenience thing...having a child is a decision that will have consequences that could carry on for years, even if you go with adoption. First, you have the actual physical problem of carrying a baby, and that works over about 9 months, but then you have potential emotional and social effects. For your mind, there is a chance of postpartum depression. Socially, if your a young teenage girl, then you have your family to deal with to. There are parents that will disown their children if they find out they got pregnant out of wedlock, and if you carry the baby to term, you can be sure they are going to notice. That's not an inconvenience, that's life shattering. Or maybe you have a girl that is already living on the street, and there is no way she can get the food required to support her and a baby. Or maybe the mother has a drug problem, and there is no way that she is going to be able to go 9 months without drinking, or doing something else, without first being able to go to rehab. Things like adoption are not really a viable option for everyone, and is unbelievably insulting to imply that having a baby is an inconvenience :evil:

Anyone else have the sudden overwhelming urge to download as much stuff as possible before anyone gets around to possibly enforcing this? Canada would sign this. Makes sense though. We pirate near as much as the states, and we do it with a tenth of the people. National pass time after hockey, igloos and beavers.

Certainly, but one justifies a pro-abortion stance by placing a higher value on present human life. That's a very elegant way of putting it (at least to me). I suppose my stance here would be that just because the unborn has less value, as you put it, it does not mean it has no value, which is where this topic goes places that make me a little ill. I'm not against it when it provides the greatest good to the most people, but just because the present life is more important, doesn't mean that no consideration should be paid to the unborn, if there are other choices. I don't feel it should be taken lightly, is what I am trying to say.

And now I get to argue for the other side :thumbsup: I guess my problem with this view is that who the hell are we to determine who gets a chance and who doesn't? I'll consider abortion in cases where the chance doesn't truly exist in any case, but just arbitrarily deciding who gets a chance at life and who doesn't sits badly with me. Your view just seems a bit cold. I guess there are two ways at looking at this, and I'll call them emotional and logical. Emotionally, a fetus has a chance of being a bona fide human being one day, and denying the chance is pretty much as good as killing a human. Either way, your ending the possibility of living the rest of the life. Logically, I'd have to agree with you. It's not yet a true being, so what you do with it is totally trivial and inconsequential (I think that would be the logical conclusion. Its not a being, so it doesn't matter). While I often favour my logical arguments over my emotional ones (I love looking at things from multiple angles, its a fun mental exercise), since I consider emotions to generally be quite irrational (I'd make a good Vulcan). However, that logic is just to cold for me. It totally disregards the value of what might be, and the right to have a chance, that I think everyone should have. A further extension, and maybe I am engaging in reductio ad absurdum here, is that your line of reasoning makes abortion so inconsequential that you could justify a situation where people repeatedly have unprotected sex (because it feels better), and just continually abort the babies, because that would be perfectly okay. I think some value does need to be placed on potential human life, else you can take this thing to some very dark places.

Just a couple of thoughts. First off, you aren't going to convince anyone of anything by throwing the Webster dictionary at Wiki definitions, and please don't insult our species ability to debate by trying. In a debate it is standard practice for EACH side to define any terms where the definition of the term may be called into question, or maybe be used differently by each side. If you are going to use the definitions of 'human' and 'person' in your argument, it is up to EACH party to define the term for their own usage, and you need to respect and work with the other parties definition as well to understand what they are saying. Saying that someone's definition is wrong really has no place here. You have the right to define the terms you use, for how you use them, however, definitions are NOT arguments (at least not the ones in dictionaries. Legal definitions are something else). Second, I would put forward that in general, killing a lower form of life is either acceptable, or at least, more acceptable than murder (using the definition of a human killing another human). I would propose this is justified because a developed human has superior cognitive abilities compared to any other species we have yet encountered. If you ignore potential for a second (I'll get back to it in a second), then this could easily be applied to the justification of killing various stage of fetus. Pretty much up to the point where the developing life form (naturally talking about humans here) is self aware, or wherever you want to the draw the line (currently third trimester). note: I am not actually justifying the killing of other creatures. That's another debate alltogether, and this isn't representative of my views. I am mearly trying to discuss a social quirk of the masses. However, the above really isn't valid, because I am totally ignoring potential. And potential I think is a very serious issue for the pro-choice side, because yes, to are totally denying a life form any chance at leading any kind of life at all. I'm not going to get drawn into the debate about whether a fetus is human or not. I figure if its not, its close enough. As such, no, I don't think killing a fetus can ever be called 'righ' in so far as it is a "good thing to do". However, as far as calling it murder, that is up to the law, not us. There are states right there in the USA in which you have the death sentance. In the case of these state sactioned killings, they are not, so far as I know, considered to be murder. If they were, I imagine every executioner would be immediatly charged with first degree murder. So clearly murder can be legal (and therefore, not murder, just humans killing other humans). Whether it is Ethical is another mater, and we are not here to discuss the eithics of capital punishment. However, even though an abortion does deny the baby a future, I think can still be the best choice of a selection of bad ones (the lesser of many evils). Sometimes the circumstances of the people involved mean that the baby will never have a chance to lead a full life. This can vary from preventing the baby being born into extreme poverty, being born into an exceptionally abusive household (though it is doubtful someone in such circumstances would be able to have an abortion), or because having a child will destroy the future of the mother. If the circumstances to the baby, or the effect on those involved is serious enough, then I think that abortion can be considered the best solution to a terrible situation. Again, I don't think it is ethical really, but it can be the best of the bad choices. I feel very strongly that it is the mothers choice. You can disagree with it till you are blue in the face, but until such a time as the law prohibits it, you can [bleep] off if you think to interfere with that choice by any means, including trying to put social pressure on them. While I think the father should certainly have a weigh in, and the parents too if they are involved (the situations where I am most pro abortion would be those where the parents don't know), it is still the mother of the child who gets to make the call. They are solely responsible for the well being of the fetus, and for making the best choices for it, until that child is born (at which point it should be a joint responsibility between mother and father). Second to last thought. And this is something I thought up a lot later (hence the weird edit time). There is another reason to have an abortion. There are people like me who carry very sever defects in their genetic code. In my case, the genetic error hasn't impacted my mind, to the best of my knowledge. I'm certainly not stupid. The defect affects internal physical development. To all apperances I am a perfectly normal human being. I was even fortunate enough to avoid all the common complications of my condition. I am very fortunate. That hasn't stopped my condition from making a number of attempts on my life, most of them as a baby. I was lucky that a certain doctor intervened and discovered what was wrong with me, and that I happen to live near one of the best children's hospitals in the world. These things saved my life many times over, but I have still easily spent more than a year of my life in a hospital, and you can't do that without being affected. Even better, once my body had finished exceeding everyone's expectations, and then taking a steaming [cabbage] on them by going a step further to make internal changes to compensate for my condition, a second condition manifested, and this one is also likely a genetic based (and environmentally triggered). And this one almost managed to kill me too by manifesting itself for the first time as one of the most extreme cases the hospital has seen. My point here, is that I would never wish my life on anyone, and if I produce offspring, especially with anyone who's family has a history of either condition, then it is very possible that I would be putting my children through my life, and quite frankly, I'd have to be a monster to do that. I am still wrestling with the thought of can I ever have a child of my own, or will I be forced to adopt. A lot of it is going to come down to medical advances in the relevant fields. But until then, I am not going to go totally abstinent. I did live, so I get to live life, and my conditions don't get to take that away from me too. That said, I obviously take every precaution that I can to make sure I don't have a child, and its not been an issue thus far. But it is something I had to come to terms with first. Finally, one last point. You can be pro choice and anti-abortion at the same time. I don't feel that abortions are the right choice in the vast majority of cases where it might be considered (using the statistics posted earlier on when people have them as a means to guess how many people get them for what reason). In that, I am anti-abortion. However, I highly value choice, and in that, I think that it is up to each party to decide on their own what is right. Everyone has their own beliefs and values, and I respect that. Therefore, I am also pro-choice.

If they can pull it off that would probably have an effect. It would take pretty much all their staff though to clean all the worlds in one go. It's not the ad bots you need to take out to scare people strait, its the real bots. If poeple suddenly see all the bots are gone, then they might think Jagex is serious about solving this sometime in the next century.

I'd rather see a fine for this than jail time. There is absolutely nothing about preventing someone from flying the flag that says to me that person needs to be removed from society for a while. It just seems like a make work project to waste money and see if we cant turn a few people into criminals while we're at it. Just make it a really large fine (like 1 grand). And the timing is a little interesting. This is a make work bill, which doesn't look good when there are more pressing issues to be tackled. Last time I checked, we weren't suffering a huge wave of patriotism that would make something like this relevant. It also seems to me that there are an incredible number of places where it would be dangerous to hand a flag. Aside from the jail scenario mentioned in the article, I am thinking of things like the windows of any vehicle and the door on your neighbours house, since they weren't very specific about how property would be included in this. People with more time than myself will think of plenty of ways to use this law to just piss people off.

I can't think of any valid reasons not to have interracial couples (like I don't know of any genetic based problems specific to interracial breeding). It's not something I pay much attention to. On a personal level though, I have never felt any sexual attraction to someone that was not my own ethnicity, and don't expect I ever will. I can appreciate looks well enough, but my libido isn't in it. As for the social complications, I think at least where I live that interracial couples are such an inconsequential thing that this wouldn't be much of a problem. The child will probably accept that their parents look way more different from each other than most parents as just the way things are. The only real problem I could see is teasing based on it, if its an area where this sort of thing matters, but then, children will tease for just about anything. If not your parents, then something else. Honestly, the biggest problem I can see is that most people are only attracted to their own ethnicity, and mixed ethnicities are not very common, which seriously limits the dating pool for the child (though I think many parents would consider this to be a blessing during the teenage years). Or maybe being two ethnicities makes you attracted to both. I honestly don't know if this is even a problem or not. But yeah, if two people love each other, go for it. I don't think it'll ruin the child's life or anything.

I do not like the idea that the Catholic Church feels it has any right whatsoever to manage anyone who is not a part of their faith. I belong to my own denomination of Christianity myself, and what the Catholic Church would essentially be doing is saying that what I believe is wrong. They have no right to criticise my beliefs. In general, I dislike any faith that would tell you what to think. Part of this probably comes from my own faith (United Church of Canada), which is very much against telling anyone how they should live their life (beyond following the ten commandments). We are very much for finding your own faith, and your own answers, rather than have the Church provide them for you (though the Church does naturally take an official stance on a variety of issues). In terms of the law's involvement, the USA has separation of church and state, which means the law has no business accommodating any religion. It should be left up to the scientific community to determine at what point a fetus becomes a sentient human being (and therefore would be murder), or whatever other criteria the law chooses to use as its "this is wrong" line. I have also taken a look at my own faiths official stance on this, and it falls pretty much in line with how I feel (which is essentially that while I don't think abortion is a great thing, I do feel it is sometimes the best choice). They say it a lot better than I do, so here are a couple quotes: The long and the short of it, is that abortion shouldn't be taken lightly, but that sometimes it can be the best (not good, but best) solution to a problem, for the people involved.

No, I don't think its the child's fault. The problems may stem from them, but they are not responsible for them because it was not through their own action. And it's not always anyone's fault (at least not in terms of the parents). As I said, condoms, even when used perfectly have a failure rate. Then you have things like rape, where it is clearly not the mothers fault that she got pregnant. And even if it is the parents fault, because lets face it, that normally is the case, what I am saying is that that mistake shouldn't have to punish them for the rest of their lives. Most of my concern here is actually for the child, who is ultimately the one who is going to suffer the most from this, both from subpar parental care, and sever extra emotional burden (because they are going to realize that there existence has made their parents lives [materially] worse). I believe that subjecting a child to that kind of physical and emotional burden is unfair, and cruel. EDIT: Regardless of what I think, I do feel that people are entitled to their own opinion on this kind of thing. If your religion, or your personal morals are going to demand you go one way or the other, all the power to you. One of the ideals I hold very dear to my heart is that you don't have the right to impose your personal views/belief's on other people (and I consider all religious views as personal). The only person who's opinion on abortion really matters though, is that of the Mother of the Child. No one has the right to interfere with that choice. Not her parents, not her boyfriend/fiancée/husband. The only body that gets a bigger say is the law. Everyone else can suck it up and accept their choice, one way or the other.

Just as a first point, I resent people using the "The Church" to describe religion against abortion, on the grounds that I am an observant Christian, and my faith does not forbid abortions at all (or any other form of birth control). I have no issue with abortions. The way I see it, if someone makes a mistake, and someone gets pregnant, I would rather see the pregnancy aborted rather than watch the child ruin the life of the parents (which seems to be what happens in most cases of teenage pregnancy). And not only does the child often destroy at least the mothers prospects for a good future, but the child suffers both physically, as the parent(s) stuggle to provide for them, and emotionally because one day that child is going to learn that their birth, at that time in life, has had serious detrimental effects on the parents. I would rather that the mother have a chance to abort if she wants to, and get her life on track before she has kids, and be able to provide properly for herself and her children, rather than have both her and her child suffer because of a mistake or an accident (condoms can fail). And on birth control in general, I would say it is a necessity brought on us by our social development. Before our social development was so complex, it would have been perfectly normal to become parents about as soon as physically possible. But to function in the here and now, there are years of study and social interactions (like getting a job) that need to be completed before we are ready to be parents, and mature enough to deal with the enormous pressures of modern life, and being a parent all at once. Since evolution hasn't decided to dampen our libido until our early 20's, it makes perfect sense (to me) that we would develop a way to deal with the demands of nature, without destroying our social future. I think the idea that our urge to have sex long before it is socially responsible to do so is some sort of test that we are meant to overcome is ridiculous, and the expectation that we all just abstain even more so. It is more responsible to deal with the problem that has been created than it is to just stand there and say "we aren't going to fix it because it shouldn't be happening". And as a final religious note, since I'd say that's where most of the debate lies, the God I believe in isn't going to just cast the soul of an aborted fetus into limbo or hell. Either the soul will be sent strait to heaven, or it will be given another chance at life on this Earth with another body. EDIT: I guess I have one more point. A scientific pairing to the one above. Is a fetus living? Yes, obviously. But I would consider it to be alive in the same was as a tree, or a sperm cell. It fits the definition of alive, but not the definition of a sentient being. At least not until the final stages of development. And I have no reason to believe that killing a non-sentient being is murder, or else you would have to consider every camp fire to be cremating a corpse, and your immune system would literally be responsible of mass genocide (there is an entire part of it dedicated to foreign dna).

I've never enjoyed the team play aspect of the skill. In all honestly, if I wanted my gaming experience to depend on other people, I'd be playing WoW, not RS. It took me about 10 minutes working with random people to discover that I apparently hate everyone on internet I haven't met yet. I got my cls by dungeing with a friend from my clan. Sometimes we did it as a duo, sometimes we got another 1 to 3 people from the clan to join us (I'd say the majority of dungeons were 3-4 person mediums). We both realized it wouldn't be the fastest way to level up, but it was the least likely to result in serious urges to hunt people down and hurt them. I'm not sure if I will ever go back to the skill, baring tweaks from Jagex that make solo dungeons at least similar in xp to large groups. Not that it really matters since I find the skill to be more unbearable than most. It's hard for me to believe that Jagex didn't see this coming. Barbarian Assult exhibits similar patterns, where the people who know what they are doing don't want to play with the new people, because teaching people (if they even want to learn) slows you down. The people who know what they are doing isolate themselves from the clueless. It's not like this pattern hasn't been obvious for a very long time either, so sometimes I do wonder why they went and designed an entire skill that would take this problem and magnify it many times over.

Well, day one is off to a rocky start then. I don't trust Jagex any more than I did when I woke up this moarning. The only thing that's changed is I confirmed that I love Mod Daezhun's sense of humour :thumbsup: Anyway, maybe this means that Jagex will actually change something before the sun goes dark.

I guess the problem for English is that it is cobbled together from a bunch of other languages, and there is no real central oversight to the rules of the language itself. The other thing to consider is the difference between spoken and written English. I would say on the whole that spoken English is clearer, because it has all the non verbal communication to help you convey your exact meaning. Oddly enough, spoken English has to cope with words that sound the same and mean different things (and the fact that this was ever allowed to happen is totally stupid), while written English has to deal with words that are spelled the same but sound different and mean different things. If we all spoke with subtitles things would be perfect :lol: On the whole, I think written English would be a lot harder to learn than the spoken language, because the spelling rules in English just don't make any [bleep]ing sense. We have so many sounds that can be spelled many different ways (and for the life of me I can never find the example for this, but I remember finding sounds that have upwards of 15 different valid spellings), and then just to make it more fun, we have specific letter combinations that produce totally different sounds, such as "th" in "The" and "Thursday", or even better, you have the words "though" and "through", and just for kicks, "cough" ("ough" is a lot of fun).

I almost died laughing. I'm still crying. You made my day. Nice office too. I hope they move the tank, or at least get a new one. We wouldn't want the bots and trolls to invade HQ.

I do care about my weight I suppose, but its never been something I need to worry about. The more I eat the more energy I have, and the more exercise I get. If I'm not active, I don't get hungry, and I don't eat nearly as much. I guess I don't have any compulsion to eat (unless I am watching TV), to which helps.

The part of sleep I have never been able to master is the part where you actually get up. If I don't have a reason to get up (class or work), I often keep going back to sleep over and over because I normally wake up during dreams I like, and going right back to sleep allows them to continue. What I need is a bed that electrifies itself for about 10 minutes, 5 minutes after my alarm goes off. 10 minutes is enough to remove the urge to go back to sleep. For me, the secret to not being tired is having a fairly consistent bed time. I used melatonin (sleeping pill that helps reset the body clock) for about 2 weeks when I knew I would be going to sleep around midnight or earlier every night. The pills were enough to conquer any urge to stay awake, and now I don't need them. My body knows that I am going to sleep between midnight and 1am, and I can no drift off into dreamland in either about 15 minutes, or 30 (I listen to tv shows when I go to sleep, and I always fall asleep around the middle of them for some reason), which ius amazing compared to the hour to hour and a half it takes me to fall asleep when I don't do it at the same time each night.

In regards to the interview: I can't disagree with Jagex's decision. Especially since Jiblix was an fmod in addition to a pmod, and fmods have considerably more power and responsibility than their silver brothers, since fmods are the primary means of controlling the forums (almost all moderation is handled by the green team rather than the gold team. The goldies just handle oversight, sentencing and policy). Paid or not, both teams do represent Jagex, and its not appropriate to outright bash the person you represent. That's really just bad manners at best. Mods resign ALL the time because they are unable to support Jagex anymore, and feel that they are no longer able to represent Jagex or enforce their policies. While a lot of mods do stay on with disgreements, they do so under the condition that they don't outright flame Jagex (we are allowed to disagree, but we are not allowed to promote anti Jagex sentiment, or lie/speculate in an anti Jagex manner). I had forgotten about the telling people to report the bug thing. In retrospect, that was not the proudest moment to be a mod, after essentially being told to intentionally mislead players, or keep your mouth shut. It was kinda funny at the time, in so far as the macroers were essentially reporting themselves to Jagex, but in retrospect...not so good. I do agree with pretty much everything Jiblix said though, except the part about removing both mod teams. The pmods probably could go without existing without impacting the game alot. There either need to be more of them (and the staff to actually manage them properly), or they need to have more expansive powers (and again, the staff to back that up). As it stands right now, they are lucky shot fire suppression (when you catch someone for something like racial profanity or someone in the middle of a scam) and company figure heads. Some of them even get to spend most of their time dealing with other pmods, which is a pretty sure sign that there are not enough staff to keep everyone in line. The fmods though I see as being critical, if only because there is nowhere near the staff that would be needed to pick up the slack. Mutes aren't exactly the bulk of what we do, and its all the things like locking and hiding that would be hard to replace with a purely gold team (at least for the same cost).

IMO, the sex offender registry is way to broad to be of any use to anyone. It seems to exist purely to ruin the lives of anyone who was ever convicted of anything even remotely related to sexual misconduct. There are just so many stupid things that get people on that list that I find it impossible to put stock in someone being on it. If only it was limited to actual predators. Anyways, I am going to have to agree with Jagex. They really can't be seen to be supporting a fan site for a game with mostly underage children that is run by a convicted sex offender. It doesn't really matter what he did, that is just a PR problem that can't fly. And at the end of the day, I think I agree with them releasing the reason too. =

Nova Scotia is got clouds all day today, and some nice fog (its always nice when you can't find the silver car in your own driveway. Seasonal cloaking device) along the coast and in the Harbour. We've got some wind now, but no rain as of yet that I know of. But the storm is going around us to the west (that's a first in living memory for me, though I hear that hurricanes have actually gone in far enough to cross the great lakes a few times many years ago), so most of what we will get is wind, and not rain (I'd rather it be the other way). For once its the other side of the province that gets to worry (NB side), because the storm is going to hit at high tide with a storm surge, so parts of the province are probably going to go under for a while (and the Bay of Funday should have one heck of a tide going). Maybe we can get through this without losing power for once <_<

Can't say I have had this trouble recently, but I have seen quite a few people who are having this problem, and they are from a pretty wide range of locations as far as I can tell. I have had days though where the runescape forums just plain don't work very fast, and often have to be refreshed because when it does load, it only loads about half the page.

I find it funny that you would think its a problem not having the dominant hand on the wheel. Having learned to LHD, I can tell you that in terms of spinning the wheel, the my left hand (And I am right handed) is actually much better at solo steering than my right hand is, especially in right hand turns, which is important because I normally have two hands free for left turns, having already shifted and just let the clutch up before or during the turn. But for a right turn, I have normally shift during the turn itself and I will have my right hand free to help with steering by the time I have done a half rotation back to the left to straiten out (a half rotation being about as far as my left hand can turn the car to the left before I have to palm it, which is much harder anti-clockwise than it is clock-wise). Now, if I were in a RHD car, then I would expect to be on the other side of the road, and left turns would be the more complicated ones, and I would naturally need the hands switched around since they way I dirve, its the opposet hand (right hand for left turns, left for right turns) that holds the wheel during the turn, while the other hand does cross overs to hold it while the other hand palms. And manuals are just way more fun to drive to automatics, because you have more control over the car.