dwarfie76

I don't see how you could have a million players all planting things in the same vegetable patch without mucking up each other's crops.... oh wait.

Nice.... it would be good to have some action in the higher levels of prayer.

I'm also not you. Does that mean you are not self aware? I can observe you, and your interaction with your environment and make a judgement as to the level of self awareness you posess. However, yes you are technically correct. You could indeed be an android with absolutely no self awareness. Well that's just it, you don't actually have a point. Unless you are actually arguing that a cow posesses no self awareness at all. Which would be blatantly stupid.

Depends on what you're doing. I was mauling ogres for a while the other day and had it a few times, gave me a good opportunity to deposit all my seeds in the bank and clear up some inventory space.

How do you know that the cow is self-aware? You think a cow is not aware of it's own existence to some degree? I like how you removed the conditional modifier "rather more" to make it look like I was inferring that a cow is fully self-aware in the same sense that a normal human adult is self-aware. When in actual fact it was quite sufficiently apparent that I was referring to self-awareness being something that exists across a broad spectrum rather than as an absolute state. A human is more self-aware than a cow, and a cow is more self-aware than an oyster. I might use that debating strategy some time, but then I'd run the risk of looking like a right prat wouldn't I?

Dying and losing your stuff is part of the game. I don't expect anyone to collect my stuff for me when I die, and if I happen to be in the right place at the right time then that's jsut my good fortune.

Yes, I've had it numerous times and I get 500gp each time now. Although this "random" event is a little too frequent for my liking, especially when I'm at green drags, bury a bone to pick up a dhide and bam, taken by the grave digger - the 500 doesn't compensate for the lost crafting/mage xp and the 1500 that dhide would have yeilded when I alched the vambraces.

However, the rune store you are after is in the City of Varrock, if you use the world map that Jagex provides you can't miss it.

Almost there, 208/210 after MEpt1 completed last night. I think it's good balance, Those of us who choose quests over skilling or combat getting a reward commensurate with the effort we put in. Not saying that it's harder to get 210qp than say level 120 or a 1800 skill total, just that it's nice to get a reward along the path you've chosen, and aside from ancients, most quest rewards aren't that great.

OK, so what level of brain-functionality qualifies an organism for protection? A living breathing cow is rather more self aware than a third trimester fetus. Surely we should then protect the cow over the fetus? Is being "human" somehow more valuable than being bovine? If so why? Is your third trimester line extensible if the fetus can be shown to have less than normal brain functionality? Surely, in the case of anencephaly, we can abort the fetus anytime, since even if born doctors wouldn't attempt to resuscitate a baby born with no brain. So if the fetus is somewhere between brain-dead and normal can we extend the abortion deadline? Even to after birth? Why not?

No it's not. Moving the food around is the least of the problems. Stopping it being syphoned off, getting it donated rather than binned and generally getting people to give a damn about their fellow mankind are far bigger obstacles.

We don't know everything about mathematics either, but 1 + 3 and 2 + 2 still make exactly the same 4. It's like "artificial" flavours and colours in food. It doesn't make half a rat's rear-end's worth of difference whether you synthesise 4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde or squeeze it out of a bean pod, it still smells and tastes like vanilla.

There is nothing stopping someone from killing it before it becomes a human, thatÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s the point of being pro-choice. However this doesn't allow anyone to abort the child; aborting against the mothers will infringes upon the rights of the mother much like physical assault or theft would. The theft angle makes it seem that you feel a fetus to be "property of" the mother in which case I have to ask at what point you feel a fetus progresses from being the mother's property to a being with it's own rights, and what makes you draw that line at that particular point?

All very well said dwarfie, but I do disagree with the last part here. At conception, a new life form with new DNA is formed. To me, that is a clear line. There's no ambiguity about it. New DNA. New life. I don't honestly care about the circumstances surrounding the situation: don't mess with life. Fair enough. You wouldn't think of allowing an anencephalic fetus to be aborted though? Given that the condition involves being born without the higher order brain regions and the infant will be blind, deaf, mute, unable to smell or feel pain and have no possible way of achieving consciousness?

Not in the end product there isn't. Thats like saying there's a difference between 4 and 4 depending on whether the addition is 2 + 2 or 3 + 1.

My main job through highschool was working as a pump-jockey in a service station. Not a bad gig, couple of hours after school three nights a week, pump petrol, clean windscreen, check oil and tyres. It also meant I got to know most of the town which was useful for my other source of income - working as a bartender for parties. People would throw parties 40ths, 50ths, engagements etc and instead of spending the night making sure people had enough to eat and drink they'd hire me and some of my friends for the evening and we'd get dressed up in black & whites and hand out food and drinks for the evening. We could make $150.00 each tax-free and cash in hand for four or five hours work. Generally it was only the wealthy end of town that hired us and although we only specified that we charged $15.00 per hour they were always happy to kick in a bit of extra cash if we did a good job.

Most of what we eat is genetically modified. Plump juicy tomatos didn't just spring from the earth, they were genetically modified by thousands of iterations of planting and harvesting only the plants with the desired attributes. Just because something is genetically engineered using elbow grease and time instead of technology doesn't make it any more inherently good for you or "natural". In terms of being a solution to world hunger however, GM foods are pretty overrated - especially considering there is enough food already on the planet to ensure no-one ever went hungry. The hunger problem is caused by people, not by a shortage of food.

Agreed. There is no question that from the moment of conception, when the sperm and egg combine that you have an individual lifeform of the human species. It's not possible to argue that the fetus has no intrinsic right to life. If it didn't, there would be nothing to stop anyone from killing it. To argue that only the mother has the right to decide if it should live or die is flawed. Similarly, to argue that ordinarily a fetus should be protected from abortion, then to allow exceptions based on the circumstances it was concieved under is flawed, it is still an individual human being regardless of whether or not it's father was a rapist. Also to be against abortion, but in favour of the morning-after pill is also a logical contradiction. There is no black and white argument that can withstand any scrutiny other than to say abortion is wrong, completely and utterly without exception because all human life has some intrinsic value - regardless of whether or not that human will be a normal functional member of society or a vegetable existing only on a respirator. Or to say that human life exists not as an absolute, but on a sliding scale of worthiness of protection. I don't think that many of us would argue against the idea that to allow an anencephalic fetus to come to term rather than abort early is counterproductive. However it is still a lifeform of the human species with it's own individual DNA. The question of where we start drawing the lines is the only real question and is something that can really only be taken on a case-by-case basis.

Yes you do, I just got mine after grinding level 70 cooking and finishind DT. They're awesome.

That sure as hell ain't you in the wildy there.

Why, it's not the baby's fault that it's father is a rapist. Why should the poor unborn child suffer for the actions of it's father?

30 here, married with two kids... IT consultant, been playing computer games for more than two decades. I get a laugh out of it when I'm told I must have no life as I sit playing with my kids on my knees. If this is not having a life, who'd want one?

Do your own damn homework.

OK, so who's morals? Yours or the person who fed yours to you? If you arrived at the moral standpoint independently then yes, you are required to show your working. If, on the other hand, you're simply parrotting what someone else has told you then you'd probably be better off out grazing with the other sheep.

Wow, there's a well thought out argument if ever I saw one.