BlueTear

No, I think it's a brilliant scheme to make lots and lots of money, and most of my resentment for the whole concept can be traced back to the fact that I didn't think of it first.

So you spend some time in the sun. Your skin darkens. I ask again; Why would your offspring gain a darker skin than you have? I mean, for a first generation, he's obviously going to spend more time in the sun than you did, but second and third generations will have lived the arbitarily time known as "their whole lives" under the same sun. How would the skin of the third generation descendant grow darker than the skin of the second generation? And for the record, there is no race gene. Race is an arbitary division of humans based on phenotypes and rather than genotypes. If I were to say people with a certain size of lips were off a specific race I'd be no less wrong than any division based on something as superficial as skin colour. Last time I heard a plausible evolutionary theory on skin colour it went something like this; The primal man moved out of africa, going north. Less sun on a dark skin meant less vitamin-D, and suddenly the darker the skin you had, the harder a time you had growing up. Survival of the fittest applies and soon enough we have different skin colours. White rabits with red eyes are albino's.

... why? If you're white like snowstorm when you arrive at this desert area, why would your child, or his child, or the next, be born with darker skin? What mechanism makes that possible?

Er... No, that would be the argument I'm making? Searching people of arabic descent is not an adequate security mesure, it just creates a false sense of security. Ring any bells? (First of all, what point?) For someone not aware of your opinion, you're sure basing a nice argument on what people havn't done in the past, which I keep saying is not going to provide adequate security; Once a while, people like that, might just take to trying something that has never been done before. But you know what, as I said two or three replies ago I don't really care. If I had more patience and time I'd keep repeating the same things over and over til I'm blue in the face, but really, we're not getting anywhere cause I keep having to rehash the same thing over and over. Yes, I'm funny that way. When I bring something up in a discussion, I tend to like having it addressed rather than ignored. Probably because I'm not really interested in having two separate monologue's going.

I provided an example of a muslim extremist/terrorist of non-arabic origin who's a member of an islamistic terrorist organization that has orchestrated a suiciding bombing and as ties to Al-Quada, who would like to kill americans. If that doesn't constitute an argument why searching all persons of arabic descent doesn't provide adequate protection against islamic terrorism, well... As I said, if "it's never been done before" is your opinion of adequate security mesures, fine by me. Nah, I tend to have a pretty infantile sense of humour, but giving ideas to terrorist just isn't funny. Nor does it address the actual issue, which is another point why searching people of arabic descent just creates a false sense of security.

One of the muslim extremists arrested in connection with the bombing on Bali, which killed mostly australian tourists IIRC - and yes, the group was not Al-Qauda but has ties with them - was described as being unhappy because he'd killed mostly australians. He wasn't remorseful that so many people had been killed, he was just unhappy because there hadn't been more americans among the dead. He was an indonesian. Born, breed and raised. If you honestly believe "it's never been done before" is likely to provide you with adequate security, then fine by me. I promise, I won't even keep an "I told you so" sign around. I'm glad we're all able to keep this discussion at a reasonable level and avoid childish jabs.

First of all, unless you're going to lay claim to some serious neo-colonialism opinions, the US wants to leave as well, they just want to make sure they leave behind a reasonably stable democracy - rather than keeping a protectorate. Staying permanently is not a part of the intended plan, and leaving is thus not neccesarily the same as failure. Second of all, nowhere is the US military being forced out by military force, the problem is voter support back home. If enough american citizens feel it's time to leave whether there's a stable democracy or not, the armed forces will leave. This is not the same thing as forcefully driving the foreign armies of your soil, which I believe is a much more accurate description of what was done to the british? What do you mean havn't won? Havn't yet been able to create a stable democracy that can stand on it's own two legs, sure, but steamrolling the local army, deposing the head of state and disbanding the local government... Define 'win' for me. Convincing the home voters that you're completing your objectives, or actually completing them? I was more or less thinking of what would've happened if the SA had been properly armed when they ran around attacking political parties before Hitler resumed the reins of the entire Germany. When jews, handily defending themselves with guns, would've been killed anyway.

I'm sorry, I guess I missed the part where the old government was summarily disassembled, it's head of state tried and executed, and the nation placed under an official occupation. Unlike what Baghdad-Bob would've liked people to believe, you do not take down Apache helicopters by having a farmer fire an AK-47 at it. So please, define "win" for me. Some centuries of military technology? Seriously, the nature of war has changed substantially since the WWII, and it's a lot different. We do not kill eachother the same way; The difference between a soldier with a musket and a farmer without a musket is a musket and the training to use it. The difference between a farmer and an operator of a cruise missile, a pilot in an attack helicopter or a driver of a tank is significantly larger. And, automatically, all the civilian nazi's would've had guns as well. How handy wouldn't that have been.

While the idea of an electoral college doesn't appear quite as silly as it did the first time I had it explained to me, the fact that where a voter live decides the weight of his vote strikes me as undemocratic. Would it possible to, say, increase the number of all electorate votes across the board by ten, to allow a finer division of the votes to more accurately reflect voters?

Ah, yes. That's definitely to way to ensure safety at the airports. They were arabs last, so next time, they'll never recruit muslim extremists from somewhere else like the entire northern africa or Indonesia - you know, the place where Al Qaeda once blew up a nightclub, in a country with the single largest community of muslims in the world. And one of those bombers was born on Java. Or Chechnya. There's enough muslim extremists to go around there as well. And that's not even touching India or Pakistan; There were these to pakistani based islamic terrorist groups who tried to blow the indian government to smitherens in 2001. But hey, keep searching everyone who looks arabic and pretend it actually improves safety. After all, last time...

Can an oil funded terrorist organization that has managed to operate on the soil of what is arguably the most secure democratic state in the world afford makeup and cosmetic surgery? Are they, like any ten year old, also able to realize that if everyone with a certain skin colour is getting searched, one *might* just want to alter that? And, to really make things icky for the crowd going "search all muslims", I'd like to know how many of the 1.3 billion muslims out there are africans? Yeah. Oops.

By all means, search everyone. But until we get to that point, search the potential suspects. And what is a potential suspect, anyone holding a sign saying "I'm a muslim"? That's great. If I was a terrorist aiming to blow something up, it's not like I'd go out of my way to look inconspicious. In fact, I'd probably *not* don the sign that says "I'm a muslim" when I get up in the morning. Actually, I'll just ask again; If all muslims are potential suspects, how do you tell who's a muslim?

If you want to see a bot in WoW, just visit the Burning Steppes and hit the dragons. Have a look around, get some free kills, camp the bots and amuse yourself by trying to get them killed by creatures. Take note of the names you see. Leave. Return a week later. Then tell me Blizzard is being "heavy-handed". Most likely, someone got bored with grinding on their own and bought gold. Logging on for more than an hour and you can expect at least two spam-tells advertising gold selling; If you're interested in buying gold, you will know where to go.

Yeah, it's the epic's that really gives it away, because no raider is ever going to manage by only playing 3 hours a day. Getting to 60 (or now, 70) is relatively easy and will come sooner or later as long as you play the character. Raiding on the other hand requires some actual effort. ... what's a life and where do I loot one?

The biggest problem with religious debates - well, with just about any debate we have here, except as soon as religion comes into it people just lose all sight of their own blind spots - is sheer ignorance. There are so many people who are so convinced they know what they're talking about that they never pause to consider other opinions. Like the people arguing that the earth really is only 6000 years old and presenting "evidence". We blew those arguments apart with a single link to the right site and not only would people come back with the same argument, they'd completely ignore the link in question. And how do you tell someone's religion by looking at them? Does traveling by airplane nowadays require you to fill in a survey where you state your religion? Searching all "muslims" is a mesure that just makes you feel safer without actually improving security. And at that point, one has to ask whether it's pointless discrimination rather than examining potential suspects. If you want security; Search everyone.

I near enough cried when I found a green chest to replace my tier 2 chest. And the tier 3... >_< On the bright side, it seems like Neltharions Tear is still worthwhile, so I'll get to keep at least one epic item. "Yay".

Nah, he's just really, really pissed off at people wasting two hours on a boss that isn't that hard. Still, he can tank Onyxia when he's so drunk there's four of them, and that has to count for something, right? ;)

Fun fact: When taking the mass of all the individual subatomic particles inside an uranium-238 atom, the mass of the uranium atom will not match the collected mass of the subatomic particles taken separately. Where does the mass go? Energy. Matter has been converted into energy. And when you break atom via fission, some of this energy is relased as heat (the rest will remain bound til you've ran your little fission process down to lead if memory serves) This is not the same as chemical energy. Chemical energy is when an inter-atomic/molecular bond has a different "energy level" than another bond. No alteration in mass involved.

First of all, I'm saying that intentionally inflicting pain is illegal on adults - and if you really want to be offended by it, a breach of human rights - and the idea that it is an acceptable method of raising a child just strikes me as remnant of an earlier age - and yes, I mean to imply more primitive. The "blanket statement" regarding it's actual effeciency comes from the American Academy of Pediatrics. I quote the "About AAP" part of their website.

We had this discussion fairly recently, so let's fastforward a few pages. The following is a excerpt from the "Guidance for effective discipline" by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Highlights are my own. I'm still not able to grasp why inflicting physical pain - which we'd describe as assault or a violation of human rights depending on the mood we're in - would suddenly be okay because we're dealing with children. The whole "children aren't real humans" way of thinking was a fad during what, the 17th century? 18th?

No, we're not. Some people will be smarter, some people will be more beatiful. Apparently this is acceptable because of element of chance involved, but the moment we start choosing it, it becomes the preclude to a genocidal war. Huh? (And you just said every person who elects to marry someone over someone else discriminates. Can I sue?) Why would it happen? Your example isn't just farfetched, it's downright silly. First of all, if it costs such ridicolous sums of money, your "elves" will hardly number enough to take over a democratic society in the timespan that the technique remains ridicolously expensive. Second of all, what you describe pretty much requires the abolishment of democracy throughout any society that could afford the treatments on a large scale. How fiddling with the genes is going to make people abandon democracy, I just don't see. Third; Genetic difference automatically leading to a genocidal war? C'mon... We consider it morally wrong to perform euthanasia on people with mental [developmentally delayed]ations - even when the [developmentally delayed]ation involves their genes - but if we were to enhance ourselves genetically, we'd automatically lose all sense of morals in that direction and kill of the inferiors. Yeah, right. And weaponizing the technology? Hello, we've been weaponizing diseases, chemicals and whatnot for centuries. Every scientific discovery we've made can be applied in a military fashion. That does not mean we should shy away from making new discoveries. And as for is it neccesary to enhance ourselves... There's a lot of things in your lifestyle that isn't "neccesary", yet serve to enhance your quality of life. Large scale genetic engineering has a lot of appliances to offer humanity.

Why is that fine? Why accept the inequalities nature provides you with as if there is a reason for it? Let's fastforward the doomsday scenario a bit; The genetic engineering technique's are commonplace, and the technique's are affordable to the vast majority of individuals. How is a system were you can remove the genetic deficiencies of yourself and your partner when creating a child to create a combination of your best gene's less fair than the genetic randomizer? Here I have to ask what your biggest problem with this whole scheme is; The fact that the "genetic transcendance" occurs, or the fact that people are left out of it? Because...? And the comparision is perfectly valid. If I chose not to mate with someone I'd describe as ugly or unattractive - which would seem to imply having drawn a dud in the genetic lottery and having aquired gene's that are in my opinion inferior to my personal ideal - I'm making a regular, human, choice. If I were to do the same thing but with a set of manipuated gene's to enhance, say, my dexterity, intelligence, night vision and muscular control, my selection process is discriminating? You keep saying that, yet I've seen nothing that would suggest that genetic enhancement - or plain genetic repair - would somehow magically inccur surges of discrimination. Unless of course, we count the selection process made above, immunity to certain diseases and probably a better overall health as disciminating. Personally, I'd call that inferiority jealousy. There you go with the fair again. Is it fair that, most of the time, pretty people manage to get pretty children due to their respective gene's? Is it fair that smart parents get smart kids because of their genes? Besides which, I'd still argue that these technique's will - like computer and most modern gadgets short of nuclear submarine's - become cheaper and more readily available over time. Take a good look at what you're saying here; If they are superior, they will discriminate. So everyone with an IQ of 150+ discriminate against everyone else? Every blonde, good looking person on the planet, automatically discriminates against everyone else 'cause hey - they look better than the average! They had a more luck in the genetic lottery. Clearly, they must be discriminating! [cabbage]. Superiority, subjective or objective, does not automatically lead to discrimination.

Where's as what's - at best - described as the genetic lottery of birth is "fair"? Being born with a genetic defect causing [developmentally delayed]ation because your parents both have the recessive genetic is fair? The fact that little Albert over there was born with the genetic predisposition for a higher IQ than Johnny over there is fair? 'Life isn't fair' is actually a pretty fitting argument. So suddenly wanting - not required or forbidden by law, but wanting - to select a mate from the same "class" or whatever you want to call it, is seriously offensive to everyone else? Not really seeing the argument. So genetic "superiority" automatically means discrimination? I'd like that leap of thought explained further.

... how'd you figure that out?

Are you unaware or too naive to realize that for the most part, your average middle school and above will feature the very same words in much larger quantities and frequency than you're going to get on TV and that censoring them on TV is a thoroughly ineffecient method of editing the language? If society as a whole finds it so offensive, why are they even used in the first place?[/i]