I think it's a good sign that "believers" have to spin the situation so much in order to seem credible.

"You're not supposed to take it literally," they say, with varying degrees of verbosity. Oh really? Why not? Is the book holy or isn't it? Is it the word of "god" or isn't it? Does it mean what it says, or doesn't it? Put up, or shut up.

"You're just as bad as the religious fanatics." No, we're based on empirical evidence and such. There's no comparison, and if you can't see that, you aren't very smart.

"You ignore the vast moderate majority." The moderates are apostates. See above.

"You're being disrespectful!" Why does religion get a free pass? I'm not obliged to respect anything else.

"Hitler was an atheist..." No, he wasn't. But besides him, do you really want to compare the 20th century Communists and 19th Century French Revolutionaries against all the religous tyranny in the past, present, and future? Atheists overthrew Pol Pot, by the way.

"Religion = Morality" Explain Scandinavia.

"You have to take it on faith." That's a delusion, by definition.

"You believe in nothing." I believe in lots of *real* things.

"Most wars aren't relgious." True, but do we need another reason? Religion stops a thinking brain, it's probably the most potent reason there is.

And so on and so forth.

... who finds this movie really boring? I was excited when I checked it out (on VHS) from my university's library. I watched it, and was terribly disappointed. It didn't shock or disgust me, it just bored me. I knew what he was trying to say, basically, but so what? I came in expecting to be shocked and horrified and came out feeling like I wasted my time. I felt the same way after watching Pink Flamingos.

Am I the only one?

Obama isn't even really a leftist, let alone a bona fide socialist, or some kind of radical. It's so hard to have a political discussion in America; people's frames of reference are completely skewed to the right, if they exist at all.

Search for "Obama's Audacious Deference" by Paul Street, or go to Antiwar.com and look for Justin Raimondo's column *before* the current one. Should Obama take the Oval Office, I don't know if his haters will necessarily deal with the cognitive dissonance that results as he fails to live up to the image they have of him. They still hated Clinton, who was, in most ways, on the Right. I expect Obama's glowing acolytes will either be shocked by disappointment, or fall lockstep into the ensuing Bosnia-style "humanitarian interventions" and other Clintonoid crap.

The Socialists have a candidate, one Brian Moore. He was actually on Faux News recently, and did an OK job presenting his case.

Others have hinted at this, but let me make it clear:

A UFO is anything flying that the observer(s) cannot identify. They exist, they are observed all the time. Sometimes they are eventually identified, sometimes not. Lack of an explanation does not thus mean that the UFOs are in fact spacecraft. This fallacy is like all those people who say that they believe in "God" because "Science hasn't proven everything yet." Not having an answer is no reason to make one up.

In fact, you would be crazy not to believe in UFOs, but perhaps you would be crazy and/or delusional to be convinced that any UFOs are non-human spacecraft.

www.livejournal.com/community/sextips

A few years ago, I would read it all the time, because I thought (mostly incorrectly) I might be having sex sometime soon. The "memories" section is very useful.

Free Speech violations involve prior restraint and/or legal consequences for one's speech. You can complain about Political Correctness all you want to, until it applies to you, but quit whining about free speech.

That would probably determine if there is a victim here.

I agree with the others who have said that this girl needs an intervention, because clearly this isn't wise. I imagine the whole town has seen her naked pics by now, of course, she may absolutely love that. It's not like streaking in a crowded stadium or at the Oscars, but it's the same idea. A more sensible course of action would have been to print hard copies and give them to her boyfriend, though that's still foolish, and like I said that might not be what she had in mind.

Consensual nudity isn't in any way harmful, is it? Since she took the pictures herself, there is consent, and that might be the only loophole in age-of-consent laws with relation to child pornography.

Stupid people in large groups sometimes pass laws (and things) that are unconstitutional. This often occurs because of their prejudices. Sometimes, judges rule these laws as unconstitutional. Reactionaries then complain about "legislating from the bench."

Of course, clever litigation and use of the courts is also another way to improve society, ahead of the slowly evolving preferences of the teeming masses.

Somebody else mentioned tetanus shots. Am I the only one who thinks that parental consent is pretty harmful across the board? Doctors are pros, most parents don't have a clue.

There's not a lot of humor in those other spawn of McCain and Palin, since it's not funny when somebody willingly decides to participate in imperialist, neo-colonial war.