The very same quote popped up in my mind immediately. However strange it may feel to refer to Tolkien on this issue, this particular quote has something unusually profound and humane to it. I ascribe it to Tolkien's experience in world war I, when death must have become very real and familiar to him.

It gets clearer if you flip a couple pages of the magazine and read the "In this issue" box:

You understand that the second statement might be perceived as conflicting with the first one. Or maybe plain cynical.

Caviar is available for all, too.

I work under tight labour laws, and if you insist on calling that tyranny, then yes, I am perfectly okay with at least this much tyranny.

Maybe that's just as well, and there's no need for insults. It's not such a bad idea. We'd need precise data to decide it, but as far as myths go, homeopathy could be a myth with some social value - that is, if you get significant results with innocuous and inexpensive treatment. As this friend of mine said, the placebo effect is strong with this one...

The main thing is, information is and should be freely available. Anyone who can read can spend some time on the internet and find out the scientific viewpoint on homeopathy. That, of course, is very important. But for those who don't, why rub it in their face?

Yes, at an incrediby slow pace, and only until you reach the same partial pressure of helium inside and outside the container. Which will give you a ridiculously small amount of helium after a huge wait. That's why no one does that.

Nice job quoting sources. Try reading them next time.

From TFwikiA:

I wish they all were, I really wish. The problem would be so much easier to deal with.

That's an interesting one. So far, no, because of the extraordinary risk to potential children, plus the cultural taboo of incest. Over long times, taboos change though.

It might eventually, provided that that you can properly document the consent of all parties, and that no one is getting abused in the process. There is also a cultural component to it.

That is clearly violating someone else's basic rights.

I don't think you can document the mare's consent, plus, it (she?) can probably not fulfill a number of legal responsibilities. Basically, it's not much of a citizen.

You can address all these questions. Some are trivial, some are much more subtle. But the ones that are actually at stake in the political debate these days are mostly on the simpler side of the spectrum.

When someone pushes a new law about polygamy, I expect to read some interesting arguments. The reason it's not going to happen soon is that there is very little interest for it in society, so it stays mercifully out of public debate.

This dialogue is very much to the point (probably despite its author's intentions). If you just grant lesbian and gay couples the *right* to have babies, there are plenty of ways they can have them. Like adopting them. The same way straight couples who can't make their own babies for medical reasons often find ways around that, and that is their right under the law.

I found the book "In the Belly of the Beast" very enlightening on solitary confinement.

One impression one gets from it is that given sufficient time in prison, many initially sane people may end up suffering from mental illness. At which point they become all the more "eligible" to solitary confinement.

Doesn't matter, it's pronounced the same in Ireland.

Did you mean: "Sbaitso...write a program to do X."

Too bad for you that you live in one of those socialist countries with no sense of how free markets work.