metadigital

Well, so much for staying execution on this thread.

Not that I've noticed. I tried to change a rogue into a Duelist, and a fighter into a Weapons Master, with no success. :|

Welcome. Check out Lady Crimson's forum resources for such things as Reven heads.

The question is, will Teeth's boss be sufficiently embarassed by his drunken performance in the morning?

It wasn't a film, it was a religio-political statement.

That's actually good advice. One should get up and take a break every hour or so: stretch and give the mind a small break, too. This helps to re-focus.

Your argument was about the legitimacy of drug laws in reference to their efficacy. That drug laws were wrong wasn't the issue, it was that they were ineffective. That drug laws harm the innocent is irrelevant to the argument that they fail as a deterrent, and that the laws fail as a deterrent is insufficient argument to conclude that those laws should not be in place, as evidenced by the murder analogy. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No. My argument was about the efficacy of the law that dealt with a reduction of personal freedoms (however valid). Don't try to reduce my argument to absurdity: the whole point is that the law won't work because it will ALWAYS have individuals against it. Whereas (apart from tarna and a few others) the vast majority of people do not support murder.

What I understood from the book and the movie(they're the same) is that the bloodline would mean another Church entirely, another branch of christianity or something, like Catholiticism, Protestantism, etc and there would be, I guess, Jesusism or something. But the Church has built itself on the premise that Jesus is God or its son and Jesus having a family and descendants would debunk all of this, essentially destroying The Church. Meh. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The Masons already believe in this, they have their own Bible and lore.

Except that murder is a act against someone else in the society, and therefore must be fought against. Whereas drug taking only affects the individual, except currently, where the illegality of the process causes more, innocent other members of society to be affected.

Humanists act in an ethical manner not because of some mythical afterlife punishment, but because they believe in it. In fact, you could argue that it is a weaker form of ethics that requires a punishment: people don't really want to act ethically, and wouldn't, if they didn't think they would be punished for not acting so.

Er, what? 1) How do you know it didnt effect peoples habits? Lets say hypothetically I couldnt find a bag of weed to buy because the shipment intended for Chicago was intercepted and the dealer didnt have any. I guess I wouldnt be smoking any until that status changed. 2) I wouldnt call having 9.25 Mkgs less drugs on the street a "failure". Not to mention whatever peeps were also rounded up in those cases. Why does it have to be all or nothing to be a success? Since there are still some drugs available it must be a total failure and we can give up and legalize everything? Thats akin to saying "Well, that guy got killed in the car accident while he was wearing his seatbelt. Might as well throw out that mandatory seatbelt law because its a failure." <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Because I don't know one person who has trouble finding drugs if they want them. That's failure. And it is a foregone conclusion, just like prohibition didn't stop the speakeasies. And how much of the tax dollars of society do you want to spend stopping drugs? How much of that could be spent on youth education, etc?

Alex got tarna's joke (she told me); she is not so pleased with the welcome that the other forumites gave her. The people responsible have been given warnings and moderated status. Really, I would expect people to show a minimum level of decorum here. Or do you want to endlessly talk about the same things, with people endlessly reciting their staid opinions over and over again. ("Fallout 3 will be Fallout in name only." etcetra ad nauseam.)

OH NOES! Destroyed by teh Futurama!

Not necessarily. you are making some crude generalisations there. Jung, for example, beleived that God (and he believed in God) had to evolve with humanity, as humanity evolved. whether he was right about God being linked to the collective unconscious (or even if we can understand what he meant by the coolective unconscious). Also, some people hold that there are universal truths (read definitions for evil), and they do not require a god.

Thanks for the business ethics course, Withrik!

I'll be one for free.

And what about Jung's personal and collective unconsciouses? The truth will out! Acausal parrallelism FTW! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I remember thinking Jung was a crackpot when we studied him in my psych classes. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> He may be crazy, but he also managed to

Bargain!

I can't wait until we meet our exact selves, only 10^(10^118) meters away from this very spot!

You're looking at the solution from the wrong angle. It's not for the benefit of the addicts (directly); it is for the benefit of society. The benefits for the individuals is incidental and serendipitous. Basically, it costs society: crime (not sure on the figures, but something like: drug addicts make up less than 10% of the criminal population and commit 90% of crime); punishment and rehabilation the drug addicts are criminalized (gaol time) this costs society plenty, and as the rehabilation is poorly resourced and managed, recidivism is criminally (pun intended) high; organised crime because prohibition demonstrably doesn't work, and because it supports organised crime, the society has to deal with more powerful crime lords, which leads to terrorist support. The fact that the addicts get free drugs is neither here nor there, except that it undercuts the potential profits made by organised criminals. Decriminalization will also help the addits to find better treatment. They certainly won't feel as ostrocized as now, and won't feel trapped into a cycle. Point of fact: Holland has the lowest addict population of Europe.

OH NOES THEY'RE ONTO ME!!11!!!!eleven!!1!

Thanks for the clarification. I haven't heard the information you are referring to (I am not a citizen of North America, so I am deprived of the privilege of watching CNN: I prefer to get my news elsewhere, such as the BBC World Service ) and I haven't seen any poll reports such like, either. I have seen the Iraqi Foreign Secretary interviewed on the BBC in the last month, and that was why I was fairly sure of myself. Again, as I said to colrom, it's not up to foreigners to tell the Iraqi people what they want, when they have a legally and unequivocally democratically elected government. A bit like the citizens of the USA didn't particularly appreciate it when a British newspaper took out full page advertisements in the local papers prior to the last Presidential election explaining why the locals needed to vote Bush out of office. :D Using the prism of "good governance" to examine other governments is a dangerous precedent ... because it is very easy to reverse the process, and not many incumbents are interested in taking the hypocrisy-rectitude test ... That's a very easy opinion to have, if your young family isn't depending on you for their nurturing, especially if you are not blessed with a wealthy background and/or a college education. The armed forces provide a very reasonable career for people who might otherwise have very limited options, even with the risk of an unwanted war. But you don't have to worry about that, obviously, so you are quite free to make swingeing statements about the morality or lack thereof of these people.

Lucky me, last time I checked my legs, my knees were still below my hips. Actually, they were located at the end of my thighs As for leaning back... I'll print this one out and show it to the CEO next time he asks why the heck I'm just sitting there, leaning back on my chair <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It's quite common for people to have their knees on the same level as, or even above, their hips when seated.

Such is life. Mediocrity is not a desirable trait.

Glad to see everyone has completed this task successfully, with the able help of Jags!* *Our society is built on the value-add of middlemen.