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I haven't expressed a personal POV about abortion yet. I've been questioning the validity of classification of moral personhood founded upon potential future. As I said before, it's a perfectly reasonable paradigm, if you're consistent about it, and that means exploring the full ramifications of a conclusion. If value is doled out based on future, those without future are without value. If we say that those without future are still valuable, then at the least we've made the value of future arbitrary, at the most we've contradicted ourselves. By extension, I would be contradicting myself if I said that all people have supreme dominion over their own bodies, and thus they have the right to remove fetuses from their bodies, but they shouldn't be allowed to abuse narcotics, or kill themselves. Those things follow from a supreme right over one's own body. Exactly. Which is why the potential future paradigm is unacceptable. *edit - And as to whether or not the fetus is part of the mother, that is another irrelevant issue. Whether or not a fetus is "part of its mother", the fetus still relies on the mother's body to survive. The relevant question then is whether or not the mother has an obligation to keep the fetus alive, or has the right to deny the use of her body by the fetus.

Nonsense. We're starting with 2 basic assumptions: 1. That being human conveys value to a being and 2. That potential future also conveys value to a being. Since skin has neither of these qualities, it isn't morally valuable. Since a fetus has both of those qualities, it is doubly valuable, and we can't kill it arbitrarily. Is a fetus valuable because it has a future, or because it is human? Or both? If a fetus cultivates value both from being human and possessing a future (if we don't hold a fetus' humanity as a point of contention), wouldn't it then be the case that a terminally ill adult human is less valuable than a fetus? It is human, but has no future. It has 1 quality of value, a fetus has 2. If not, you'd have to make an argument that potential future conveys value exclusively to humans who happen to be fetuses or else you'd be contradicting statement 2. If so, you'd be contradicting statement 1 unless you made an argument that not all humans are equally valuable.

Not a Joy Division fan, then? That guy sounds just like Ian Curtis. I always preferred the Editors, they also sound just like Joy Division, but more like Joy Division covering U2. It's most awesome. Lou Reed - Take a Walk on the Wild Side Joanna Newsom - Cosmia (Harpists are so hot right now) Bobby Byrd - Try it Again Ministry - Every Day is Halloween (!!!)

Wait, wait. That's not an assertion of potential future as a paradigm for personhood. We can reasonably say that a man with ALS has no future. A zygote does. If we say then that the man with ALS is a moral agent (or "person") with the same value as a zygote, we're denying that potential future has anything to do with whether or not we consider someone a moral agent. We're making an argument from humanity, which is much different.

I've yet to hear any bad review of it. Saying that Nintendo panders to kids and otaku is only a bit redundant. They are Nintendo, after all.

You wouldn't have to consider them as non-humans, just dead humans. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Same thing. They don't have potential futures, they don't have value. If we want to consider them people we have to have some different criterion for personhood. Sure. Thus no one has value or rights. Who are you arguing with?

It's certainly a viable paradigm if you're willing to consider all people with terminal diseases as non-humans, or for that matter, consider the young more valuable than the old. It doesn't really work otherwise.

So potential future is our new life paradigm now?

Is a fetus alive? Sure it is. Isn't that obvious? That's really not the issue with abortion. The issue is whether or not the fetus is a person worthy of protection or consideration. If being alive informs one's right to exist, then concessions have to be made far beyond abortion. We wouldn't be able to cut down trees, or eat meat, or some vegetables for that matter.

Elfin Lied is a lot like Spawn. Dark for dark's sake, draining, but not necessarily because it's good. It's just draining. I watched it and was reminded of the basic limitations of the genre. Every anime has to be about what love is, or what it means to be human, and that means eventually you'll come up with deformed, melodramatic cudgels like Elfin Lied. Such abominations aren't unlovable, but you've got to be of a certain state of mind to really enjoy them. You've got to enjoy repetition, or at least pretend that Philip K. **** never existed. At this point all that anime really has to give is Studio Ghibli, which might not really be considered anime, since what they put out is naturalistic, unpretentious and universally excellent (and with the exception of Grave of the Fireflies, kid stuff) and a thousand films and shows like Elfin Lied that cling to the tired husks of Akira and try to leech off of it so that they don't have to go through the trouble of actually coming up with something fresh. But I'll still watch Bebop or Trigun every once in awhile. Lightweight as anime goes, but at least they're not so in love with themselves.

I remember a time that Khelgar intimidated for me :\ and Sand had to have had a few substituted lore checks.

Nine Inch Nails - Empty Shell Burning flesh inside this hell! Now I'm but an empty shell! Drowning in a pool of lies! Ears are ringing from my cries! You are someone that is gone! You left me here I was your pawn! How could I be so dumb inside! I could not tell that you had lied! EMPTY SHELL! EMPTY SHELL! EMPTY SHELL! BURN IN HELL!!!!! You hurt me really ****in bad! My soul is dripping tears of sad! Now I'm really ****in mad! Cant remember feeling glad! This is ****in unlucky ****! Once again I'm in a pit! [screaming] ****! I'm all alone and feeling stuck! EMPTY SHELL! EMPTY SHELL! EMPTY SHELL! BURN IN HELLLLL!!!!! One day I will shake the hand of whoever wrote this.

I got to the Nihilus (or whatever the giant floating baby thing is) and killed it, and it just sat there looping a death animation forever. Thus I got 99% of the game done before it bugged out <_< I didn't get to the ending until several years later. Actually, they kind of did remake it. Turned all the sprites into Quake 2-esque polygons. I didn't think it was very good.

What. Seriously though, there was more suspense in the Blast Pit than in all of FEAR put together. That having been said, a lot of people regard BGtutu as being a step up from the original game (especially when one further modifies it) what's the difference here, really? We could get the same effect.

O rly? Also, this this and this. And this and this.

Oh yeah, my mom (I've already mentioned she's a nurse by trade) had to deal with those things all the time, especially since she went through her residency in a mental institution, where apparently such things are very common. To this day, she forbids me to describe anything powerful as "having an impact", because it reminds her of the impacted bowels she had to treat.

I had 4 within 12. 6 cans of coke a day will do that to you. Good times. I've got a story for it, too. Actually, the aftermath of the surgery was much, much worse than the actual malady itself. Kidney stones cause the most excruciating pain you'll ever experience (if you never bear children without painkillers, but then I hear that those who have experienced both find the childbirth less painful) but it only hurts for about a half an hour (that's still pretty bad, mind you) before it goes away completely. See, there's this little tube that goes from your kidneys to your bladder that the stone goes through. Even if a stone is the size of a grain of sand (normal) passing it is akin to forcing a whole lemon through a straw. It eventually gets through, but when it's going through, it's like you're being stabbed from the inside out. Actually peeing it out is no trouble. You have to strain your urine lest you unwittingly lose the stone (if you need your stones to be analyzed) It's easy to tell when a stone gets passed because you start getting blood and some clots in your urine, because that stone went through your ureter like a razor blade. Pity the man with jack stones. I can't even begin to comprehend it. I got the smooth ones. But at some point, I stopped passing the stones and they got "stuck" somewhere, and they had to take me into surgery. I went in believing it to be pretty minor and ready to bear some pain in order to prevent greater pain. But when I got out of the OR, I felt much worse pain than I ever did with my kidney stones. I can't even remember most of it, but it was just as bad as the kidney stone pain, but drawn out pretty consistently for over 12 hours. By the end of it I was delirious. But oh, that wasn't the worst part (and this is where it gets interesting!) See, when they perform kidney stone surgery they knock you out and then use this snake-claw thing that goes up your urethra. This is a pretty delicate process (thank God), but with the anesthesia and the fact that it's going up your ****ing urethra, the urethra and the bladder are in danger of swelling shut. So they put a stint in. It's a long, flexible plastic tube that goes from the meatus to the bladder, to keep it open and running. I remember it being the width of a coffee stirrer, but it seemed a lot bigger in me. I mean, yeah, you pissed blood when you passed your stones, but it doesn't prepare you for the sheer terror of this. Oh no. You go to the bathroom in PAIN, standing for hours, fist clenched on whatever is near, and wait for the plumbing to kick in. Cause the stint forces open that opening to the bladder, so any time it attempts to close or flex it starts to spasm, and holy christ, you would not believe how much it KILLS. You feel like pissing 14 hours a day, and when you manage it, it hurts like a sonofabitch, and what comes out is not urine. It's thick, red, clotted blood, which will stop up the urethra, and cause your bladder to spasm more, and you wish God would just up and kill you, or at least castrate you, because Holy God the pain. You cry, hard, because it feels like somebody's taking a scalpel to your insides and your outsides, and the local anesthetic they use for the surgery makes you start to furiously itch from the inside, from the urethra to the bladder to the kidneys, and it ****s up your digestive system as well. You're in your own bed in your own house and you feel like you've stepped on a landmine. I was pretty lucky, too, since my mom was a nurse and she had a stash of powerful narcotics that she put me on, heavily, for days. It didn't help much, though. That kind of pain gets you when you're unconscious. BUT that wasn't the best part. After a few weeks had past and I had aged a few years I went into the doctor to get the stint removed. My doctor's a funny guy. I'm sitting there with my pants down and he's checking out the situation and he asks me how I'm feeling, and I say "Alr-" and he pulls on the stint string like I'm a lawnmower. Feeling that, and seeing it, was just about the most unpleasant thing I've ever experienced. See, to keep the thing from slipping out during the waterworks or sleep or whatever, the ends curl up like a pig's tail, and that's why he pulled so hard, to straighten out the thing so it would slip out. This, of course, causes my bladder to have a grand mal seizure, and the stint comes out along with a lot of blood. And then it was over, and I went home a man. And that's my story! :D Now if you'll excuse me, I have to sedate myself after having to recall all that.

Actually, edible eggs are not fertilized, they were at no point considered "alive". All the fertilized eggs with fetuses in them are thrown out (hopefully). Really, if the momma chickens are treated well, a benthamite vegan wouldn't have much grounds to object to the consumption of eggs. But they do anyway, so I don't take them seriously.

In the long run, we're all dead. -- John Maynard Keynes A good way to threaten somebody is to light a stick of dynamite. Then you call the guy and hold the burning fuse up to the phone. "Hear that?" you say. "That's dynamite, buddy." -- Jack Handey So in conclusion, gentlemen, **** you. -- NY State Senator Allan K. Race (D), in a written response to a racist group's letter. I wish I were less awkward around strangers. I never know what to say when someone asks me who I am and what the hell I'm doing in their house. -- Andy Ihnatko I had a fortune cookie the other day and it said, "Outlook not so good." I said, "Sure, but Microsoft ships it anyway." -- Tom Singer

*Heads over to Wikipedia* Ooh, that looks interesting. Interesting characters, involving storyline, criticised by reviewers as slow-paced - these are all ticks in my book. Does Shenmue 2 have an unsatisfying, Kotor2-style 'cliffhanger' ending, or is it reasonably satisfying while leaving some unanswered questions for game three? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, it is a ridiculously slow game. I know many people that swear by it. I really didn't see the appeal. Plus, oh ****, what horrible, terrible voice acting. But the thing about Shenmue, and the reason I (sarcastically) suggested it to you was that the main "plotline" is draaaaawn out during the games. The games themselves don't have the usual "part of a set" game format, in which every game has its own focused plot that contributes to a whole. There are fifteen chapters in the whole Shenmue saga. The first game was the prologue. The second game was the first 5 chapters of the story. The third game... never happened. So it had roughly the same effect as if, say, Bloodlines had ended right after investigating the Asylum. It's hilarious, because there are now many, many brokenhearted Shenmue fans who want the story to be resolved, but it never will be. The first game is in the Guinness Book as the most expensive single game ever made ($10 million production costs) The second game was a complete financial disaster (they lost something like $30 million) so I'd encourage you not to play the game, lest you grow fond of it and become a saddo. But hey, there have been some highly dubious claims by Sega that they'll develop a Shenmue MMORPG (only in Taiwan!). That doesn't sound familiar at all. Nope.

That's fortunate, because I already skipped over it.

She's a young girl on a Japanese animated television show. She could be a theoretical physicist and you wouldn't be able to tell. BLADE RUNNAR. It's the version with Deckard's VO. I don't remember if that's the good version or the bad version. DAMNIT BROWSER STOP POINTING OUT MY ERRORS.

But the lulz of the situation would be lessened when she angrily explains what transfiguration is. "So you don't swallow?" is a much better retort, as she is much less likely to continue the conversation after that.

Have I got the Tee for you!