Freedom of speech is one thing, it's fine for anyone to stand on a soapbox in the park and rant about immigration or the death penalty, or whatever floats their boat. But it doesn't follow they should be allowed a slot on prime-time news TV to express the same opinions.

News is supposed to be balanced and fair, and randomly selecting opinions could lead to very skewed coverage (or worse, purposely only selecting opinions that agree with a particualr agenda).

To be fair, the BBC are prime offenders at this vox populi crap too. Quite apart from the prime idiocy on display on their "Have Your Say" comments pages, they practically plead for viewers to text or email their views which they then proceed to display and read out live on air. Obivously this is driven by their need for content, any content to fill airtime on their 24-hour news channel, but it is ridiculous that they stoop to parroting some randomly selected half-wit's opinion on complex issues.

For your example to work, you have to take as read the assumption sex is somehow inherently bad! That assumption is the product of the archaic society you describe. The free love society would see no problems.

BTW, how can I join this free-love society? ;-)

Nope. I guess the combination of touch screen and dual screens makes that one a tough nut to crack!

Well, the DS has it too, you just close the clamshell.

I totally agree with the article about the lack of backlight on the GBA. It was invisible unless you were in very bright light - if there was no sunshine, you had to somehow angle yourself directly under a lamp, merely being in a lit room was not enough. And then the irony of the DS Phat screen, where they made the exact opposite mistake - you can hardly see it in anything but pitch darkness! You just sit there squinting at the reflection of your sad little face staring back at you - in two screens at once, for added insult.

I think we are actually in agreement here. I was saying that there is no point saying the universe would be better off without us ruining it, because the only entities we are ruining it for is ourselves - making it a circular argument.

"Risk" by Dan Gardner ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/Risk-Science-Politics-Dan-Gardner/dp/0753515539/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1248449605&sr=8-9 ) is an interesting book, with a lot to say on these matters. Basically, this is the best way for organisations like this to get into the news and thus justify their existence and funding, they whip up a scare story press release, lazy or overworked journos run it practically verbatim and the organisation gets their name in big lights all over the news. Everyone is a winner. Except the mis-informed public, of course.

To say we "Pollute" is entirely subjective. There is no Gaia entity that is crying over all the bits of discarded plastic floating in the oceans. The only people who care are US. So, to fantasise about humanity killing itself off to "save" the universe from being ruined is ludicrous, as if we weren't here there would be no-one to even care. The Earth has no perfect state save for any we would project onto it, born from our own sensibilites.

So, the "International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament" releases a report saying Nucler weapons are dangerous? Who would have thunk it?

Next time you think you have a tight deadline:

"Final exam (for the advanced student)
Prior to the descent of Apollo 14's LM to the lunar surface, a short in the LM control panel caused the abort switch to be triggered intermittently. If this actually happened during the landing, an abort would have automatically occurred (meaning that the lower stage of the LM would have been jettisoned and the upper stage would have blasted back into space). No landing would have been possible, and the astronauts would have faced the grave situation of needing rescue by the command module. It was therefore necessary, in the orbit or two before descent, for the some of the software designers to work out a fix for this problem that allowed a software lockout of the abort switch during the initial phase of the descent, but also allowed reenabling the abort switch later in the descent, in case the astronauts needed to use it. They did, in fact, work out such a fix. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is this: Work out such a fix and send it to me. Remember, your fix can only involve erasable memory, since the core-rope containing the program cannot be altered. The fix needs to be keyed in at the DSKY by the astronauts. You have about 90 minutes to figure it out. Go!"

http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/index.html#Final_exam_for_the_advanced_student_

There are many degress of belief.
One, maybe yours - though you are a little coy about exactly what you believe God to be so it is hard to tell - is some sort of belief in the numinous. Something must be out there, outside the universe - who knows what? Let's call it God! This is what passes for sophisticated belief as it attempts to "un-ask" the question "What is God?"

Another is the more common belief of an interventionist being that one can pray to, and who watches you in the bathroom to make sure you aren't jerkin' off in there. Or looks at your thoughts to make sure you aren't fancying same-gender partners.

One of these beliefs is harmless, the other toxic. And of course there are many shades of grey in between. I suspect most people don't really know what they belive in.

Well... yes!

No doubt. Does that not mean we shouldn't get rid of at least one of the causes? Then we can work get to work on the others, one by one.

I guess we decide by consensus, as a society. Or perhaps it is innate? As Christopher Hitchen's says, were the Jews murdering and coveting with abandon for hundreds of years before the tablets came down from the mountain? Of course not. Therefore this morality must have a basis in something else.

Also, if the only thing keeping the religious good is the fear of punishment or reward, then surely they are not inherently good at all - the athiest who does good works must truly be a saint, however!

Also, in Firefox there is a specifc Javascript option in Tools->Options->Content->Advanced that disallows JS from replacing or disabling context menus.

Just tried it, that works. You need to restart the browser though.