She was most likely 14/15.

...and absolutely dead certain not to have been a virgin.

When the law allows pics of dead children with their guts all over the street to be posted on the internet without the consent of the children

And how would one get this consent? Via a medium, I presume? Dead humans are dead meat. No more, no less. No people. These dead bodies can't give consent, and the idea is ludicrous anyway -- they can't care. Because there is no "they."

I grant you that any specific interest in this is *quite* peculiar, but then again, it isn't the first time. There have been entire fads of drawing, painting, shooting, and collecting, pictures of dead humans. I refer you, regretfully, to memento mori (definition) and, even more regretfully, to the various flickr groups.

with necrophilia, bestiality, and underage sex, it is questionable whether or not one party is capable of truly giving consent

In the case of necrophilia, there is only one party, and obviously they consent if they choose to engage. The "other party" is strictly in the imagination of the beholder -- there's no one home. The problem I have with it is that what very likely is home are legions of bacteria who are presently engaged in consuming the host, and are likely just as interested in consuming the, er, visitor. If this is understood (and really, just how ignorant do you have to be to not understand this), then I conclude that choosing to engage is an indicator of self-destructive intent. And no, I don't think condoms sufficiently obviate the risk.

Animals can't consent any more than a trumpet can, but, presuming you don't hurt them, I doubt they care, either, and so what. No one seems to be concerned if the animal consents before we knock them over the head and eat them, so it really seems ludicrous to me to worry if they consent to playing North Dakota to your South Carolina given that the "don't injure them" caveat is in play.

Underage sex is a legal position; there are obviously those "underage" who are capable, competent, and eager -- and who are being abused by the law, not by the sex and/or the partner. There are just as obviously those who are forced and who are injured, and just as in any other case when people are coerced and harmed, society needs (and has, in almost infinite degree) remedies for that. Unfortunately, as long as we define "problem" as "age mismatch = shit one's self and then fall in it" we're just making it worse for the vast majority of people. Getting the politicians off this horse is nigh impossible, though. It's the low hanging fruit, and no, that wasn't a pun.

Federal law defines child porn in the US.

Ok, granted, the feds are complete idiots with unbelievable numbers of stupid, often obviously unconstitutional laws, and just because the feds say "no" is a terrible reason to write anything in particular off...

But regardless, actual child porn -- not of sexually active teenagers, of course, but of children -- presents a problem for the child, even if, as some would argue, the majority of the harm comes from the adults hysterically imposing said harm upon the participants. Regardless of its source, the kid is going to suffer some emotional fallout. So child porn is bad, period, in our society. Because there is harm done to the child.

One of the best examples I can think of for "bad law" are the lines in (ok, all over) the sand that the law draws about consent. I can easily find you teenagers who are quite capable of informed consent; and I can just as easily find you adults (that is, people 21 and over) who couldn't even tell you what informed consent is. You know what those age lines really are? A complete cop-out delivered by a society that is too immature to deal with the issue of sexuality in any kind of reasonable fashion -- a late stage superstitious society that squeezes its collective eyes shut in literal horror at the idea of a 16 year old having pleasurable, consenting sex, but watches eagerly when kids the same age -- and younger -- are portrayed in movies as engaged in bloody combat with injury and death both being commonplace. In other words, our lawmakers, our citizens, and the cultural mores that drive them, are nothing more, generally speaking, than a bunch of sick, ineffective failtards.

But hey... you keep rolling with "it's a federal law." Because, you know, that's a sure thing.

First of all, IQ is only relevant to a particular population. Even among humans, an IQ test issued in one region won't accurately reflect the IQ of those in another because of built-in language, cultural and technological bias issues that are integral to the testing process. Secondly, measuring the IQ of an animal with a human IQ test is going to get results that are WAY off, probably far underestimating the animal's capacity for induction and reasoning because there's an entirely different sensorium involved, but even that isn't certain. Please don't quote psychobabble without a background in it. It does no one, including the animals here, any good. It just looks uninformed and clueless -- because it is.

I know of no one who is more pro-animal than I am, or who would more like to see them achieve a level of rights in our society far, far beyond where they are now, but it still tweaks the living heck out of me to see nonsense promoted as fact.

You have *zero* comprehension of what IQ is, lol.

So no, expensive plasma TVs are not common outside bars and the homes of the more affluent.

He said big, not plasma. Plasma is not the only way to go big. A projector and a bare wall and some paint will get you a bigger TV than any plasma made, and at a relatively low cost as well. A projector capable of delivering a 300" 1080p display is about $860 right now.

But the majority of TVs in the US are 4:3 CRTs

Um.... no. You're a little out of touch, there. Do you realize a 17" LCD with HDMI, etc., is about $100? And that all the old CRT TV's can no longer receive on-air broadcasts without an external converter system? I haven't even seen a CRT TV in some years now -- outside of the local landfill.

Yes, most people have TVs and even cable TV

Also changing. Cable doesn't hold a candle to streaming -- both in convenience and WRT content -- and again, everyone I know streams. Computers, Roku, AppleTV, Bluray players with built in apps, iPads, Fires, phones, etc... Satellite systems and cable connections are being let go when the contracts expire. Most dishes around here (Rural Montana, so you'd think we'd use em if we needed em) are disconnected, wires hanging at the dish. The cable company gave up last year, so it's no longer even an option.

If you want to see a 3rd world country, come to the US, and visit the 80% of it that still doesn't have cell phone coverage

Oh, come now. Again, I live in an extremely rural area. We're 300 miles from the nearest city worthy of the name. There's cell coverage all along the highways, in every town, and over a surprising amount of adjacent area, including the entire lake (Fort Peck lake, the thing is blinkin' huge.) Most of the US that doesn't have cell coverage... doesn't really *need* cell coverage. There's a distinct difference between "3rd world lack of needed infrastructure" and "no one goes out there into the boonies because there's nothing of interest." And even out there, we have ham radio repeaters, sheriff's department coverage, ranchers have radios and wired telephones... nah, sorry, that whole third world thing... that only applies to our government's current abandonment of the constitution in favor of fiat rule. Our infrastructure is outstanding, if a little frayed around the edges here and there.

or the east side towns where people live from hand to mouth

So... your thesis is, if the country allows poor people to exist, it's a 3rd-world country? I dunno about that. What about a country -- like this one -- that allows one to get out of that situation by virtue of paying attention in school, learning well, applying a quality work ethic, and not adopting fringe cultural variations such as your pants hanging below your butt, tattoos all over your face and neck, and a mangled form of English only understood by fans of rap videos? Personally, I think we're pretty advanced in that we allow such cultural choices to be made. If you want to be a fringe element, you can do that. If you want to get out, as it were, your odds are excellent if you simply observe the successful strategies that lead to your goal and emulate them.

Personally, I think the worst cultural negative we apply is school sports; young people often follow, usually at the behest of their schools, a sports-centric approach in the hopes that this will bring them the cultural status, position and wealth they would like to have, not realizing that the odds are hugely stacked against them and that following an academic path instead would serve them far better. This is something I see locally -- trying to hire young people with adequate reading and writing and even basic math skills is quite a task; on the other hand, if throwing a ball around were the criteria, I'd be swamped with qualified applicants. But again, the kids have the evidence right in front of them, and they can make the better choice. So they share in the responsibility for making the wrong one.

Well, it's simple enough: The technical elements of the story, which itself is clearly fictional, are scientifically possible, as far as we know. Longer life (immortal youths), artificial service beings created as dark-eyed virgins, custom food creation, that sort of thing. We don't have most of these things yet, but they are certainly possible in a scientific framework, just technically very difficult for us at the moment. The same applies at the time the Koran was made up; those things were more fantasy then, as science was considerably more jumbled as a process and the technologies required for these not even in view on the horizon at the time, but the bottom line is they are technically possible but fiction as written. A God -- a being with enormous abilities compared to ours -- also possible within a scientific framework, but also not in evidence in any way. Ergo, science fiction. More clearly so today than ever before.

Notice I didn't say it was *good* science fiction. That's something else entirely. But it's good enough for some.

...the Cartesians. Just a bunch of squares. Cubic, man.

It's trivial to prepare a response ready to go when an article goes live.

That was actually what I was implying. If true, this show how desperate this fanboy is.

Sigh. No, it doesn't. It shows that he had as much as 45 minutes to create a post, perhaps even a thoughtful one. That's all it shows.