Gorgon

A return to spandex. yay.

Reagan democrats ? The notion that Bush was behind 9/11 has to do with America's fascination with conspiracy theories, it's just as much Michigan militia as ultra hippies. Mainly it's just a story thats so good that it doesn't matter if it's true or not. It takes on a life of its own.

Have Fun

Yes, but everyday heroes like social workers aren't ordered to kill people. You can't have a sudden attack of morals in the middle of a firefight. You give up on politics and do what you're told, and national interests rarely ever fuse with morals. If you believe your country's military to be some kind of generally benevolent organization for the suppression of evil and the upholding of good, you are surely deluding yourself, no matter where you are from.

Incidentally, military service is a job, you get paid. In return you accept risk and follow orders. Thats fundamentally incompatible with acting according to your own beliefs. As long as the aim of British involvement coincides with his philosophies, all is well, but he shouldn't make any assumptions. Neither can he just go home if reality no longer conforms to his belief.

Billy isn't in the show anymore.

I don't believe I can actualize my personal philosophies in the world, or that trying to would make the slightest bit of difference. In order for me to risk my life I would have to have a personal referent rather than something as intangible as women's rights, or democracy.

The reporter chick was Dianna.

Probably someone we haven't seen, or Gaeta, that shifty bastard.

Hah, I was just going to post that.

It will be the same ****, only different.

I thought 3# was really good. But it's still a real pain having to wait between episodes rather than watching a whole series over an evening or two, Like I did before.

I'll take the hegemony of political correctness over the hegemony of totalitarian regimes any day, philosophically I think we should de mystify **** though.

For us the era of revolutions is long gone. In China they are still afraid of the ghost of it. A demonstration in the west doesn't bring with it any sense of a fundamental threat to the system.

National identity can be tied up with a show of multi ethnicity or multi nationalism, think England for instance. The fact that all is not well in the quaint province of Tibet can be overlooked.

There is a rather strange dynamic going on in this if you think about it. The Chinese reaction to western criticism reinforces its sense of national identity, while for the west the example of a totalitarian regime reinforces our conception of the value of democracy. Both are defined by their opposites and everybody wins.

That doesn't make any sense, even if they surrendered mistakenly based on the actual military realities, the Dalia Lama is just one man, you can't sum up a people's identity and claim to cultural uniqueness in one. Not that I think the pre invasion Tibet was some kind of utopia of peaceful monks, it was more akin to religious autocracy, even if it lacked the extreme repressive measures we usually associate with the term.

Pedophilia can be treated with chemical castration, but it doesn't arrest the psychological and sexual makeup of the individual, some pedophiles released under observation of continuing drug treatment re-offend anyway. Other than that there is psychotherapy but it is notoriously hard to document success. Are they 'crazy' or is it merely a question of sexual preference, I don't know, but we have to safeguard children in either case. All in all they constitute a much greater risk than criminals who have merely financial motives.

What do you think about this story of Hillary embellishing on her visit to Bosnia or some such place and claiming she came under sniper fire. How do you downplay that a presidential candidate shows symptoms of being a pathological liar ?

Criminality is just one part of the binary of criminality and legality which helps society distinguish 'right' from 'wrong'. That conception of right and wrong can be accompanied by an extreme ostracisation as in the leepers of the dark ages, where they are no longer though of as human, in that mode it becomes easier to accept the death penalty, since you no longer equate it as something that could possibly happen to yourself or to someone you would compare yourself with.

Thats the point, that one can be considered immoral and the other perfectly acceptable, and that the less extreme and final is the immoral punishment.

The provision against cruel and unusual punishment is rather odd, I mean wouldn't you rather take a whipping or be branded with iron than be killed.

Hooker, Graphics card - Hooker, Graphics card ... Tough call.

Well most experts agree that pedophiles have an extremely high rate of re-offending. I think any consideration of release has to take this into account. In most cases such an individual would pose a continual threat. I'm not sure if life without parole is always the right sentence, we could be on the edge of the age of consent, there could be special considerations. etc.

Mmm this is familiar, shove an image of some bastard who everyone can agree deserves everything he gets in our faces, and then turn it into a discussion of the death penalty. I don't think the death penalty is necessary. There are certain things we just should not do, not because there aren't people who deserve to die, but because these things demean society and lessen the value of human life.