BlueTear

Morals aside, is that behaviour an indication of a stable and healthy mental state?

Hey, it applied six different small patches in a row! As a sidenote, I ended up giving the EULA a quick once over after I noticed it had been updated near the end of august. Quite amused t ofind a clause about "oral communication" I don't remember seeing before. And if Uldrics guild, gratz on the Al'ar kill!, does TK the way most guilds on my server do it, they've already killed Void Reaver. No guild on my server kills Al'ar before VR, 'cause he's just a gear check. Got enough gear, he dies.

Can't tell you how glad I am someone other than me wondered.

Ah, but gold has little to no value outside of an economic circuit. It may be scarce, but being scarce doesn't help if no one wants to buy it. And considering the non-essential way in which gold is used, most of it's value comes from a demand that is entirely up to people and their mindset. Let's put it this way; If I have bread, I can eat it for my own sustenance, or I can trade it for something else. If I have cloth, I can make clothes to wear or I can trade it for something else. I need food, I need clothing. If I have gold, I can... trade it for something I need. Why does someone else need gold? Why, to trade it for something they need of course. We've just reinvented the coin, and are well on our way to getting back to paper money. Gold being scarce does not make it valuable. What makes it valuable is the demand coupled with the scarce supply. A demand that is not based on an actual use of said gold, but on the _belief_ that the gold is worth something.

I found it funny that he called gold and silver "neccesary items". If you can't eat it, or use it to produce food, you need to trade it to aquire food within an economic system. If it has no real use when it comes to gathering food - such as gold - it's value within an economic system is no more tangiable than that of paper money.

Defender, again, rethorics rather than looking at the actual facts. You don't need to be a math wiz to figure out that if any of our weaponized inventions had killed more people than our benign inventions had saved, we'd net a population loss. Instead, we're netting a population increase of over 300% in the last century alone. Go figure. Can? What I'm arguing here is that it has helped us. The small list of examples I provided were actual. That our population has increased by 5 500 000 000+ over the last century is a cold, hard, fact. It is not a theoretical "it is possible to". It's what has actually transpired. But it has not, which is what you stated who knows how many pages back. You live in world (and by world, I continue to encompass the entire planet) in which knowledge has saved more lives than it has taken. The world is a better place today, than it ever was. It is not perfect, but then again, no one said that.

Freakishly enough, my WoW is now in the process of applying a myriad of patches. It's only Friday for heaven's sake, letmeplay! edit: Mental note; Must not accidentally open test realm client instead of normal client. The ensuing confusion is a Bad ThingÃÆââââ¬Ã¾Ãââ

Incorrect. The largest population growth occurs in developing countries, not developed nations. Nigeria; 40 births per 1000 population. The USA; 14 births per 1000 population. Which neatly allows me to slip in another useful statistic that encompasses the 5 500 000 000 reasons; Infant Mortality Rate, Nigeria; 40 per 1000 births. Infant mortality rate, the USA; 6 per 1000 births. Anyone care to guess how these figures would've looked 250 years ago in either place? Or do you or Defender care to argue that saving babies is not a cause worthwhile? Yah. We call those places "Europe" and "North America". Developing nations have the highest population increases, developed nations hover at the replacement levels for births. The simple fact is that neither you nor Defender is thinking about what has actually changed in the lat 250 years. You give speeches on morality, you talk about how the "human heart is still corrupt", and it's all nice and great rethorics about how we're not getting anywhere. Meanwhile, discoveries made in the past centuries that has scant little to do with these fine intellectual developments, continue to save the lives of those of us quite fond of just plain being alive rather than to ponder the horrible things that we could be facing. Penicillin. Great invention. The realization that maybe drawing blood from sick patients is not a clever way to cure them, but in fact, a pretty darn stupid thing to do - of course, note how the spreading of this secret to any country outside the first world costs us money. No... Waitaminute! - agricultural developements, and as exhibit A I'd like to use a potato. Not only does the potato completely own roses when it comes to gifts, it's edible! And it originially grew only in Peru. How many millions of people worldwide have been saved by the the spread of the potato? But the potato is fairly ancient history by now. Where was I, ah, agricultural development. Okay, post-middle ages, pre-mechanized agriculture. Did the yield per unit of land increase? Yes. Are you praising any of the inventions that caused this - and who are most likely a deciding factor in the survival of your ancestors and thus your very existance? No, no. You give us rethorics. You realize the spreading of the knowledge of crop rotatation is directly responsible for millions of people *not* starving since the middle ages? And that's not even touching mechanized agriculture. 5 500 000 000 reasons. And that's just using the last centuries worth of population growth, not going back to the middle ages.

Oh please. Just admit you painted yourself into a corner rather than come up with some half-assed excuse that when you said "world", you only meant our corner of our "planet". The life of the vast majority of the billions of humans that live on this planet are better of today than they were a century ago. In fact, 5.5 billion of these people, which is well over 50% of the humans alive today, would not be alive were it not for the advances of human civilization over the past century. Defender can give all the fancy speeches on morality he likes, there's 5 500 000 000 reasons why the world is a better place.

Normally, I'd dissect those statements a bit more thoroughly, but I can't be bothered. Suffice to say "better than it used to be" is true. The world has, and continues, to improve. To get better. The fact that it does not fit the description of a perfect world does not take away from that fact, so you just conceded the point I was making: The world is in fact a better place than it once was. Defender, when making the following statement; "People can tell me all they want that this world is getting better.. but I say their just blind and always will be." was incorrect.

No. I actually found an article made by the paper and translated into english, it's a good read.

So none of the scientific discoveries in regards to agriculture, industry and medicine made since, say, the black plague ravaged Europe has actually saved lives in a non-First World country?

So in your mind, the fact that during the past century, advances in industry, medicine and agriculture has made it possible for our population to increase from 1.6 billion to 6.5 billion means life has gotten more "convenient"? I don't feel entirely out of my depth when I claim that refering to "not dying, but growing up forming a family and procreating" as a "convenience" is a gross understatement.

The funniest thing with this thread is seeing all the people who either failed to read or failed to understand the final, and most important, sentence of the article. Even funnier is the fact that even after this has been pointed out several times, people are still missing it. Why post if you cba to read the originial post, much less the thread, properly?

My mother has a manager position on a fairly large company that sells electricity. A bit more than a year and a half back, she became too sick to work. Pain, nausea, problems concentrating, and a loss of words among other things. She was, months later, diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and takes a number of medicines for it today. As usual, advice given over the internet is a bit dodgy at best, but knowing a bit about the strenght of the medication used to treat fibromyalgia and the nature of the pain, the fact that your mother is still working full time is both an impressive display of character as well as worrying. They need to talk about it with eachother, rather than leave it in situation that'll only get worse.

Who are 'they'? Don't get me wrong, I think Lars Vijks is an asshat who wants nothing but attention, and that his so-called art is nothing but utter [cabbage] intended to offend - although of course, being an artist, he refers to it as "provocative". I even read an article where he claims he has had two great successes in his lifetime; This one and an installation of firewood that has apparently grown to 150m in lenght. Calling something that has sparked something like this a success is the ultimate sign of disrespect towards a lot of people. But legally, he had the right to make these drawing. Legally, the newspapers who published this so-called "art" had every right to do so, and we will most empathically not make depicting the Prophet Mohammed illegal because a bunch of islamic governments who wouldn't recognize human rights if it bit their faces off suggests it to our minister of state. Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of speech. Whether members of a certain religion finds this blasphemous or not is not the problem of a free state who values human rights. There's also two other things worth noting: A demonstration against the newspaper attracted 300 people. Considering the amount of swedish citizens that classify themselves as muslim, that's a very clear indication that sensible people are pefectly able to keep their religion and political views separate. If islam was such a religion of hate, how come the hundreds of thousands muslims who live here, only 300 turns up? I'll answer that myself, because somehow, I doubt your ability to come up with it: It's about politics, not religion. The goverment of Iran, the military government of Pakistan, the royal house of Saudi Arabia, and so on and so forth, all stand to benefit from xenophobic policies as well as repeatedly pointing at the infidels blaming them from anything and everything. The hostility is nothing inherent to islam, it is blown up intentionally by people who want to exploit it for their own power. Remove the goaders and islam is just as able to inegrate into working democratic societies as christianity or any other religion. Second of all, no, the "art" this clown posted was not the aforementioned picture of Mohammed with a bomb. The collection included picture of mohammed head on a dog, in a traffic circle. It's a bit of a trend to put small sculpture of dogs or bunnies in traffic circles.

So basically, contraception is unpatriotic?

Just won the fishing tournament and picked up my nice [Arcanite Fishing Rod]. Highlights included not having my HS set to Booty Bay so I had to ride there - and as my bro put it "wow, you're going to be so pissed if you lose because you didn't have your HS there" - forcefully removing a lvl 70 warrior from *my* school of fish (Considering the lack of a challenge, I suspect he was prot) and a relaxing gankfest outside the entrance to the city, luckily *after* I won - I swear, they nerfed those gaurds. Weird, yet a fun event :)

Oh look, we got our daily dose of homophobic drivel today too.

So a gradual shift from democracy to autocracy is "stable", where as the past 50 years of dictatorship in North Korea is "unstable". Not tracking. Here's one article that does a pretty good job at explaining what they're up to. edit: And Unoalexi, look up the word "rehabilitating"?

No, not really. The odd lie and shoplifting are not nearly as character defining as homosexuality.

I question whether claiming you "love the person" when you hate an act that is the result of the very core of who that person is and how he or she defines himself can ever be anything other than empty words. And I third ctp's statement.

Okay, so just why is cyborgism, "mind swapping" (which I'll choose to interprate as "digitized human consciousness" 'cause then I get it) and a bunch of all other stuff mentioned cons? Why are they "immorral", and why would we want to resist the changes they'll bring to our society?

If Russia showed any signs of actually stabilizing as a democracy, there'd be no sweat. But they aren't. Last years Nation Security Strategy of the USA, and I quote: "Recent trends regrettably point toward a dimishing committment to democratic freedoms and institutions". They're rehabilitating Stalin in their history textbooks for crying out loud. If Germany were to do that with Hitler we'd be all over their [wagon]. A considerable portion of the population genuinely believe that Russia needs to be ruled in an autocratic fashion. That is every bit as scary as the fundamentalism of Iran and the brainwashinged person-cult in North Korea. And that's not even touching questionable foreign policies in attempts to keep Moscow-friendly regimes in neighbouring states - whether these regimes are democratic or not.