ToadMan

but lets shorten it to PEBKAC (how they always do it). "Man this dude has a wicked case of PEBKAC"

I vote boba-fet... oh wait, that's an in joke that none of you will get...

I hate to hit an run, but 'man' is widely considered a sexist term. In Robert's Rules of Order the use of 'man' was changed in the 10th revision to reflect this. Though I don't consider my university an authority: "The use of he to refer to a person of either sex and the use of man or mankind to refer to humankind in general are no longer acceptable." (http://www.usask.ca/english/requirements_for_essays.html) purdue is more authoritative: I would also point you to: http://www.ucc.ie/equalcom/language.html#Page2 http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/writecenter/web/genderfair.html http://www.english.upenn.edu/~cjacobso/gender.html You are correct in raw definition the word is gender neutral, in practice, and in all scholarly writing, it is not. When Jefferson said "All men are created equal", he was referring only to white, land owning males (he himself had slaves).

Dang it, I just heard this, came here to post it, and it's done!

I split this off as it isn't really related to the original topic.

I split out all of the off topic discussion (that I had a part in also) You can find it at http://www.nearfantastica.com/bored/index....mp;#entry324425

Mixed Member Proportional Representation is a superior electoral system. The reason is simple, it prevents spurious majorities from happening. A spurious majority is when a party wins a majority government despite having less than a plurality of the popular vote. Case and point: To win a seat in a 4 member riding you need 26% of that ridings votes, if every riding received only this many votes, then you would have 74% of people against the government with majority control. Although this is a radical example, spurious majorities have occurred several times over the past few decades. MMP creates a threshold that requires parties not winning a riding seat to receive a minimum amount of popular vote to get a seat. In New Zealand this threshold is 5%. I have a few more arguments for MMP and can direct you to some great scholarly papers on the subject if you still don't agree.

Though it smacks of poor debate skills to say this: Your not making any sense. Is so far as I don't know what we are arguing about, or what kind of misunderstanding of my opinion you have.

I think that can be deduced directly from his comments regardless of how he answers the question.

I'm not sure what your point is about suicide... Natural law exists that determines what would happen if you discharge a gun towards your head, and it would happen that way whether or not you knew why. Suicide being unacceptable is a societal invention. Some societies actually embrace the practice. So to say that there is an underlying consistent ethics would be wrong. In terms of women being mistreated, and please don't take this to mean I am a sexist, within those countries the acts are not consider amoral. It is in fact our own western sense of morals that determine the actions to be amoral. So if the entire world was to exist with those morals, then it is likely that few people with morals normal to society would consider it amoral. Which again shows the fallacy that ethics are an underlying force of humans, but that they are a creation of society. If ethics was a truly universal underlying force, the question would be mute, as the people mistreating women would know their actions to be amoral and therefor wouldn't do it. I think you have hit on an important point though. A societies morals can be studied, they can be documented, and they can be traced. Indeed this is somewhere in the realm of philosophy. I am willing to waffle just a little in saying that out and out calling them not a science may be incorrect. However, in the strictest sense of the word science refers to natural and physical sciences, or at lest areas of knowledge that can be systematized (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/science). Since philosophy and the other study of ethics lacks this property, they are not treated as sciences. More correctly they are humanities, which are the study of things not strictly within the realm of science (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/humanities).

I would have to agree (shocking). Rights and morality are entirely human creations. They have changed several times over past few years, let alone the past few centuries. Unlike natural sciences, in which the laws that we write down would exist whether we record them or not, human laws only exist because humans chose them to.

I know this isn't really the topic of debate, but one thing I cannot stand is when people correct me on the use of a word I remember looking up in a dictionary before using: cynical: bitterly or sneeringly distrustful, contemptuous, or pessimistic. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cynical) Which is exactly what your sentiment about government was. pragmatic: of or pertaining to a practical point of view or practical considerations. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pragmatic) Which is hardly a reasonable definition of your anti government rhetoric. My view that people are fundamentally incapable of making such decisions is not in reality based on extensive expose to drug addicts. I can't refute that any would have taken the choice differently had they been properly educated. It is however hardly cynical, antagonistic perhaps. With regards to the continued sale of alcohol and tobacco. I don't believe I have said I support either. The government would ban them if they where free to act entirely in the interest of public good. However, people at large would not support such an action. I don't believe that anybody in government thinks that tobacco is actually that bad. With regards to fluoride. From what I have seen in my last 10 minutes of researching it, fluorides negative effects have only been seriously considered by researchers in the past few years. Prior to that there is a body of evidence that suggests fluoride in 0.7 ppm (fluoridation of drinking water) is safe. With regards to aspartame. It's tough to come up with any hard evidence (a with fluoride). There are a lot of opinions, but I've had a hard time coming across hard evidence. This also is the likely reason why it is still in the market place. My comment regarding boundaries was meant more to articulate that if we stretch the borders of law to make it such that nobody commits a crime, then we subvert the rule of law. Accepted we might live in a society where people don't violate sane laws, but I am doubtful. A meaningful reason to change a boundary is when a majority of people feel the boundary is wrong. Laws must fit the majority of society. I think that every law can be traced to a reason, and you would be hard pressed to find any law to which no reason can be fixed. In this case, does the potential risk out weigh the individuals rights to chose to take that risk? I believe so. I hardly see how the reasons that instituted Canada's drug laws are false pretenses. As a final point we should maybe take a minute to consider the ridiculousness of this whole thing. In that we are arguing about whether our drug laws are sane, and contending that they exist for the government to control us. In the grand scheme of global politics, if this is how our government 'controls' us, I think I will take it over the barrel of a gun that is the 'control' in other less western democracies (yes, those places have elections too, but there is only one name on the ballot).

Cynical a little? So this might seem a little fascist of me, but I believe that people who are going to use drugs even though they are illegal, are also fundamentally incapable of understanding the consequences of doing drugs. Sure there will be a few fence dwellers who would be deterred, but I'm not sure that they are a significant statistical factor. I truly believe that restriction and approval of drugs belongs in the hands of government. Why? because the government employes researchers who are much more qualified to make educated choices about the effects of a drug on a persons system, then most people are. Would you expect an emergency room doctor to consult you before administering a life saving procedure? Honestly we are not qualified to know the answers, which is why people study for years to be qualified to answer these kind of questions. Even countries with liberal drug policies still impose prohibition. Holland classifies 'hard' and 'soft' drugs. Where 'hard' drugs are those which are considered to be "to great of a risk". Even legal 'soft' drugs are prohibited beyond certain volumes. It is a fallacy to state that prohibition doesn't work. Prohibition is ingrained in us, it exists in almost all things we do. Just try and go about your day with out encountering one thing you are prohibited from doing. I believe that prohibition of things is a natural consequence of a society of law and order. It is the price we pay to avert anarchy. To say prohibition doesn't work is to say that societies of law and order cannot exist without inevitable destruction, which is clearly not the case. Yes, people will always violate any boundary placed on them, but that doesn't make the boundaries invalid.

Every high efficiency product has a tradeoff somewhere up the line. The power efficient computer chips you talk of use a lithography process that is extremely toxic and environmentally damaging. I'm not a mechanic, so can't speak on fuel efficient vehicles, though I would assert that the complexity of their design incurs an added energy cost at production. If we talk about hybrid vehicles (which I do know a little on), the production of their battery units is extremely toxic. I'm not sure if we are in any position to speak on what the real gain is for these things. The product life will determine what if any positive impact these things will have. There are certainly things that appear to have a positive impact that really don't: Ethanol, burns cleaner, has greater energy density that gasoline, and comes from grains good idea right? It takes 0.2 MJ of electric energy and 9.5MJ of heat energy to extract 1 liter of Ethanol... which means the cleaner burn is lost in burning natural gas to produce heat, and in generating electric energy. That's not to say I'm against high efficiency products, I'm simply pointing out that we are not in the correct position to know that we are doing any real good for mother nature.

I can only provide prohibition examples that utilize gratuitous amounts of hyperbole, so I will refrain. I would however encourage you to think about what is prohibited in our society, and consider the effects of lifting those prohibitions.

I reject that personal experience should be weighed. I assert that people (especially youth) are incapable of grappling with the negative tradeoff involved in taking drugs. I believe that an immediate positive experience will always be favored no matter what the negative long term impact. We can see this to be evident in many things, kids speeding in their cars on the 401 spinning out and killing themselves. Many instances persons high on LSD leaping from buildings believing they can fly. Though I admitted that the gun example was hyperbole, I think it is also flawed to assert that drugs potentially only hurt the user. Many addicts commit robbery when they can't amass funds by other means. This directly relates the use of drugs to injury to people other than the user. I doubt that you will accept my argument that people can't make good choices about addictive mind altering drugs, then we better just agree to disagree.

It's nice to throw around words like "regulate" but what would that really mean? How can we legally and willingly supply a drug that has no known benefits, and only negative consequences. I can't honestly understand what that would really gain us. It would simply mean that instead of debating the legality of it, we would be debating the carcinogenic composition of it. There isn't one simple solution, kids who want smokes/drugs/anything will get it. If we expand the argument of legalization in any situation where kids desire something illegal (and forgive the hyperbole) then we might as well hand them AK-47, and rocket launchers. I know plenty of people who as kids wanted guns, so lets legalize it and regulate, right?

I disagree... I don't really mind if the smokers are killing themselves faster nor that the tobacco industry is losing money.

"Put out your light"

On what grounds, cite your source (it's on)

I can neither confirm nor dispute that. What isn't in dispute is that the original run of Underdogs was released under the label "Darktown Records" and later by Universal.

Though this is a throughly interesting discourse, I think we have reached the point where your are engaging in attacks of a somewhat personal nature. If we could keep it reasonable. Thanks

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that all of the british at that point where Christian (Anglican). Given that being any other religion resulted in reduced rights (Catholics couldn't vote), it is a reasonable assertion. I haven't read this thread at all, so I have no idea how this is relevant.

10/10 because I feel like a jerk from last time

I was thinking of duct taping a shoe box to my crotch.