BLOKDAK

Every time I go to church from now until I die, I will be disappointed to not hear a treatise on Ezekiel eating a scroll. And yet I will be happier for the thought that the possibility exists. Thank you.

Would you please explain why you were instructed by the fatcats and the bigwigs to make the worst search engine possible for any website ever?

Also, how often did you rub one out while at work? Ever get any help with that from your colleagues? I heard that reddit is the kind of place where folks don't wear pants, after all...

That's just Conde NASTY, dude...

I love how they call it "non-GM."

Mobbing is a well-documented phenomenon that happens within academia, even laterally within the hierarchy. I wonder about the dynamics involved when you have institutionalization of exclusionary behavior based on, e.g., reputation. Even a whiff of controversy can ruin someone's career, often to the detriment of all. Even though it's not written down in any department's employee handbook, if you end up on the wrong side of the right argument then self-preservation seems to take over in everybody else's minds since controversy is seen as such a poison pill.

Sure it was stooping. Retributive justice doesn't care about morality. It's a question of whether or not you think premeditated murder is the proper reaction to premeditated murder. I'd argue that society should seek to be better than that, given all the advantages and power that the state controls. We can be better, so why not be?

I'd also argue that always resisting the impulse to kill, except in the face of imminent danger, is always being better. The cost of sustaining the lives of guilty murderers (rendered harmless by imprisonment) is always going to be less than the cost of losing the moral high ground. Certainly for society, for the state.

And why do you think the Nazi example is so compelling? And why not then execute American soldiers and officers responsible for deaths covered by amendment protocols I and II of the Geneva Conventions? Because America didn't agree to those, or else all sorts of normal, everyday people would be murderers. Especially the officers.

Now I'm not saying crimes committed during wartime are the same as raping and murdering your neighbor because you were drunk (or whatever). But to the families of the people who are killed it's not too much different, and in refusing to accept a common definition of "war" the US (and others, but in particular) took a stance that killing was okay whenever we say it's okay. When the same government (or subsidiary ones, like the states) also take it upon themselves to kill their own citizens, well... The credibility begins to be questionable.

It's a complicated topic, and I don't think you're giving enough credit to the nuances of the morality and ethics involved in state actions.