Marinus

Both Father's Day and Mother's Day do exist here, but they're not very important celebrations. I don't think there's a special greeting, but "Fijne Vaderdag" (Good Father's day) should be OK.....

Entschuldigung für mein Erbärmlichen Deutsch aber Englisch ist nicht genug um meinem Missachtung für das Knabenschaft aus zu drücken. Das einige was Deutschland jemals hat beigetragen zum das schönes Spiel Fußball ist die Schwalbe. All einem Deutschen Fußballer braucht ist Schauspielern Lektionen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjVmWysWLBQ

You know Godwin's Law right? As for the 13th: we kicked your ass before and it's about time we do it again. In the meantime, be afraid be vary afraid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voG4mZYgvUw PS: could you ask Merkel if she diverts the Rhine to the Baltic Sea for the remainder of this month this month. I life near it and I sight of all that German water is a bit offensive to me and the other Dutchies around.

"Gefeliciteerd met je verjaardag" (Congaratulations with your birthday) is the most common.

Hello Godwin, goodbye discussion.

I pot is smoked in moderation it won't be to bad for your physical health and since the stuff isn't very addictive this will usually be the case. Nicotine OTOH is one of the most addictive substances known to man, so it won't usually be used moderately and will cause significant damage to the body. There is a link between schizophrenia and smoking pot, but it's unclear if smoking pot causes or triggers schizophrenia or that schizos smoke pot in an attempt to self-medicate. It's well established that drug abuse is often caused by an underlying mental issues.

Ironically same sex marriages where rather common amongst native Americans, so in a way adopting same-sex marriage is doing what Americans do when in America. Personally I think it's very hard to define what marriage is, if you look at it's many manifestations in different cultures, but in a world were same-sex marriages exist and have existed for a long time still claiming that marriage is between a man and a women is not very wise. And what about a a woman and a man whore 50+ who want to marry. Since this will rarely result in kiddies they can't marry right?

That would be a great plan, and while one's not spreading her legs, it might be a good idea to have some condoms etc. ready anyway. Sex-drive has the tendency to overwrite common sense. I don't know about this case, but the abstinence only approach is a great way to have loads of teen pregnancies, STD-s and other fun stuff.

We're so liberal we call that feline-born mass-abortion.

Yeah, that would be the ignorant Western Christian definition of marriage. In the meantime on planet earth people marry trees etc. Gay marriage is in fact a rather boring variation on the theme of marriage that pre-dates Christianity and Western society. And even if you didn't know this, how he hell did you miss the fact that polygyny is common even in this day and age?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Xsj1UWol7l8#t=61s

You're right, only one half of the caveat is nonsensical. And there's something about me being hypocritical (?) of changing my ethics when it's me or my loved ones that will be victim. I am, and most likely you, Davjohns and 99%+ of humans are too. If you've to choose between the life of your spouse and that of me and my spouse, you'll probably choose to save your spouse, if you OTOH have to choose between saving 2 random strangers and saving 1 random strangers, you'll probably safe the couple. When it gets that personal people generally make an exemption on their ethics. So if you know upfront your family will be victimized in case of an escape or something, it might influence your decision. Edit to add: I can, but the result has probably little to do with the standards I try to hold myself to, because I've to put my loved ones on the line which would make me more in favour of eliminating that threat by killing the murderers. With the methods used in the US killing wouldn't be that hard to do because of the methods used. flipping a switch just hasn't the impact of beheading or even shooting someone, so th psychological consequences are probably less severe. That would be even more the case for a recidiving (sp?) drunk driver that will kill my whole family if I don't execute him but instead sentence him to a normal punishment for a DUI btw.

The caveat is rather nonsensical. At the time you make the decision you've no way to know that your family will be the victim in case of an escape, unless the criminals threaten you they'll rape and murder your family if you don't sentence them to die. Other than that it's a variant of sorts on the "Imagine it's your family..." which is a great way to develop some seriously flawed ethics.

I argued two things: 1) One can make a solid argument that CP is murder or in some cases murder. 2) I look at the big picture, not isolated cases. In my case the big picture is CP as seen on Planet Earth in the present and recent past. I can in fact think of situations in which CP is the most ethical choice. For instance: if you're in a society that doesn't have them means to reliably lock up certain criminals you've to kill them to protect society. But then again, I can also think of situations where CP is the appropriate punishment for stealing. But those situations aren't really relevant to the USA as it is. I don't get the impression that loads of inmates escape from death row as it is, so why would they escape if you get rid of the executions and Apply more rigorous safety measures? As for CP in this (im must admit rather "perfect") case: to be honest I do not know if it's justified. Emotionally I would say yes, rationally I would say no and ethically I just don't know but I lean to no. In a sense the jury is still out on it. But I tend to concentrate on the CP system, and in the US it's so flawed it's simply irresponsible to execute anyone in. To make matters worse, the US has the best and most civilized CP system ever AFAICS, and it still sucks. So to me it seems CP never works out right and if this case had happened in the Netherlands, I would not want to reinstate the death penalty over it. To me the death penalty doesn't seem beneficial to society. Usually it's a sign of barbarism and primitivism, and even if it isn't, like in for example the USA, I can still see it's less than beneficial effect on society. People who barbecue outside a prison to celebrate that someone is fried to death in a chair inside it. Thanks, but no thanks, to steam punk medieval for my taste.

Fair enough, the phrase "two animals" probably put me off track. I'm pretty sure that all the opponents of CP don't want those two men to get out ever again, and I think that with current technology it's not that hard to achieve that. Give them a high grade steel neck collar with GPS tracker etc. and for good measure add some redundant systems as well, and I think it must be possible to reduce the chance of escaping to virtually zero.

For someone who blames others of having emotion based arguments, you're pretty good at making them yourself.

The argument "Capital punishment is murder" is not necessarily an emotional argument, and is in fact defensible without playing word games. I'm undecided, btw, if I consider the American variant to be murder, and if it is, it's a very understandable type of murder. Btw, I'm emotionally often in favour of capital punishment, but ethically/rationally against it. Are we? I thought we're discussing the death penalty, which includes for example the state sanctioned murder excuse me, killing of rape-victims excuse me, promiscuous sluts in Iran and witches in Saudi Arabia.

If I go to my local prison and euthanize a convicted murderer without his consent it counts as pre-meditated murder.

This is only one (rather famous) example of evolution of a species to adapt to a (in this case) man-made change in the environment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution And this is no micro evolution, because that is simply a nonsensical term used by creationists to help them to deny the evidence of the evolution we see happening all around us. Making the distinction between micro and macro evolution is about as stupid as making op the words shortwalking and longwalking with the intention to claim that walking less than a mile is a completely different activity from walking longer than a mile. There's only one kind of evolution whether it's small changes within a species or the change from one species into another. As far as I'm considered there's three different positions in the debate: there's evolution for people who have basic knowledge of evolution and some common sense, there's the agnostic position for those that know nothing about it or those that don't care and there's creationism for the ignorant fools that prefer the bronze age ramblings of tribal barbarians about talking snakes and trees of life over modern science.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cQ2xhpZfenk/SmCTAwh5DeI/AAAAAAAAKMg/Gg4649Q7IDI/s400/nun.JPG

Well, you also don't want to send out the message that killing people is wrong by killing people as a society. Or so me thinks.

Islam sucks too, darling, mainly because it's related to Christianity of course. Over all Christianity is a bit more degraded depraved in the sadistic department. Christians engaged in some very creative torture until normal people made that illegal. It's of special interest that Christians tortured people to dead for fictive crimes.

Pops, I think you would also consider it pathologically rude if someone started to meddle in your love life. Imagine what it would feel like if I came to you door to tell you what you can and can't do in bed, an who you can or cannot marry. It's no different from me. People are entitled to their religious views, even if those religious views are homophobic, but just like their sexuality they should keep their religion to themselves. All the bull-shit about same-sex marriage being a danger to the institution of marriage or society or whatnot is just that: bull-shit. There's no examples of societies that came into trouble for tolerating homosexuality or same-sex marriage. OTOH there's loads and loads of examples of fear-mongers who claim a certain demographic is a Cancer2Society to induce fear and hatred for said demographic. It's not good to dwell on the past too much, but it doesn't hurt to remember that the worst thing that ever happened to homosexuals is Christianity. I don't blame every modern Christian for that, but there's still plenty of homophobia among Christians. I don't buy those claims that Christians are genuinely worried about the institution of marriage. Sure there might be delusional idiots who think gay-marriage will destroy their marriage and society, but for the most part it's the same tactics Christians traditionally used to induce fear and hatred for certain groups.

Both war and suicide are mere drops of water in the dessert of Malthusian catastrophe. We really need to develop Super-AIDS for population control, me thinks.

I think there should be a compromise: no more fossil fuels or green hippy stuff but 4th generation (?) nuclear power based on thorium. No green house gasses but there's radiation, there's abundant thorium reserves (example: the USA can run on its own thorium for the next 1000 years) but it's no permanent solution, there's no chance of nuclear meltdowns but everyone has to drive faggotty electric cars. The perfect solution: the energy crisis is solved for the next 100 generations or so and everyone has still something to bitch about.