Dak

what a bizzare thread! 23/m/uk, and how many others here had to think for quite a while before they remembered their age?

hang on, do you mean insert their genes, or just insert RNA, which then binds to and inactivates specific mRNAs? if so, your talking about nucleosideases, or nukes. i think. or is that when non-standard nucleosides are introduced to be incorporated into the elongating mRNA to halt transcription? dammit, now im confused

arent there some thermaphillic archaebacter that can survive the kind of temperatures found around the mouth of a volcano? i assume they have some way of protecting their DNA?

ill try and find some studies of the effects of consentual underage sex. i meant that if the AoC was lowered, then more childeren would have sex before they are ready. if raised, more people who are ready would be denied the right. so there are arguments to raise the AoC and to lower the AoC, but it is a seperate issue as to wether we should abolish the AoC. that would have a much greater impact. (or i suppose a better way of saying what i ment might have been 'yes, the AoC is an arbitary age, but it still needs to be there -- its presence is more relevent that the actual age chosen') define both rape and abuse. actually, i know from experience (when i was about 6) that thats not true, and a friend had a similar experience also. i believe that childeren do become curiouse at that age, although 1/im not sure how common it is, and 2/ that doesnt mean its ok for adults to have sex with them.

about half of them. but under by how much depends (on the standard distribution etc). it doesnt nessesaraly follow that half of them are significantly under 42.4

how would you propose that childeren be propotected from rape and abuse, then? if theres a better alternative, then tell us.

well, i didnt know that you could do that. might experiment with trying to squish avast in next to my AVG.

im not entirely sure what you mean. i dont remember canabis ever making me feel like this; i remember it making everything seem funny, and almost nothing seem worth doing.

youd have less control over what genes were re-introduced... but given the context of the discussion i guses that might not be a bad thing, as it was broadly speeking that which put the bananas in their present perdicament. one thing the article in your link didnt make clear was, if banannas are steirle and seedless, how do they reproduce? dus anyone know? i dont know wether this has only been tested in petridish cultures of human cells or wether its been tested in actual huamns, but genes from other species have been plonked into human genomes, usualy to fight disease, cancer or genetic disorders. only rule is yu cannot put genes in the germ line (ie the subjeects kids cannot inherit the gene), they must go in the somatic cell line.

Sure, but a few plants wouldn't be enough to save an entire population, or to keep the world supplied with bananas. Certainly all the banana plants would not die off, but enough to effect the market. ah, but if we took all these different alleles and put them into lots of mummy banannas, then the new generation of baby nbananas would have regained a relatively high level of genetic diversity, and would be abtle t o adapt to the environment, basically even if the nanbana species has lost a lot of its versatility, this will likely be due to a change in the frequensy of the alleles present in the banana population, not due to any alleles actually becoming extinct, so to speak. so, the bannana population will still have lots and lots of alleles, as much as it did before we started selectively breeding it problably, but most the alleles will be present at a much lower number BUT tehy will still be there. so if we find tehm, and genetiscally modify them (the rare alleles) into lots of new bananas TA DA genetic diversity will be reintrodused, the banana species will have been save d and monkeys everywere will rejoice. if that doesnt makes ense im sorry, iv been drinking sothern cumfort.

type [/hide] at the end of wat you want to put in the spoiler, and [hide] at the beginning. ::edit:: ah, i see youv found out. well, now my post looks silly ::edit::

actually, couldnt genetic modification save the bannannas? there must be a few non-wyld type alleles in the banana gene pool, even if only due to the base level of mutation. they could be gathered and artificially spread throughout the bannanna population. or if not, simalar genes from banannas relatives could be introdused by GM. does anyone know what the closest relative of the bannana is, off the top of their head? and are there no wild banannas?

if you dont reference, most scientists will instantly disreguard the conclusions you make based upon these alleged studies. no offence intended, thats just what we're like. if the above statement was referenced, then it could actually be quite relavent to the discussion.

nooooo... we allow those risks -- even for childeren -- when we consider the potential benifits to outway the risks. there are, of course, risks in everything. but we deny people certain things when the risk is too high, more so of childeren that adults due to their lesser ability to make informed desisions. ok baldur, lets define a few axioms: 1/are there any curcumstanses whereby it would be acceptable for an adult to engage in sexual activity with a 1 year old baby? 2/is there any argument against allowing 30-year-olds, suffering from no mental disorders, to have consentual sex with other sane 30-year-olds?

could you please cite your sourses, preferably with a link.

may i reccomend taking over sealand first. its quite small, so it should be a good contry to be your first conquest, although i believe the prince has a few SAS friends... if you use diseases (espesially viral haemorragic fevers like ebola) in your conquest, you will not be left with many people to rule over.

i disagre, for the reasons put forward in my last post. it is not the validity of the desision that is the issue, it is the act of making the desision; wether the desision is correct or not is irrelevent. it has been desided that allowing people to deside wether people under the age of 16 can have sex entails too great a risk -- so we stop people making this desision. to properly enforse that law, all who make that desision have to be punished, reguardless of wether they made it correctly or not. "you cannot deside that a person under the age of 16 is ready for sex, although if you do and you happen to be correct, you will not be punished" equates to "you can deside wether someone under the age of 16 is ready for sex". which, as stated, it has been desided entails too much risk. which person making the judgement? the child: as said, they are forbiden from having sex because, reguardless of the existence of some childeren who may be ready for sex, AS A WHOLE if allowed to have sex, childeren under 16 would make an unnaceptably high level of errors. so, for the good of childeren as a whole, they are not allowed. an adult having sex with an under age child could be considered as 'aiding and abbeting'. and as said before "childeren should not be allowed to make the desision as to wether they are mature enough to have sex because they have too high a risk of being wrong, unless they feel that they are ready to have sex, in which case they can" is non-sensical. in most cases id agree with you. my oppinion is 'stuff the law, do whats right'; however, there are two flaws with this argument as applyed to the AoC: 1/it requires a desision on behalf of the child as to wether they are ready for sex, and an assessment on your behalf as to wether the child is mature enough to soundly make that desision. the flaws being that a) as has already been pointed out, below a certain age allowing childeren to make that desision entails too much risk so they shouldnt be allowed by you to make that desision, and b)you could be incorrect as to your assesment of how ready they are. as i said, i usualy ignore the law and follow my morals instead, but as far as sex goes its both. ie, if theyre over 16 and i feel theyre ready, then ill have sex with them. only one (ie, over 16 and unready or ready and under 16) and i wont. now, the 'must be 16+' part of that is pretty much a formality as i dont actualy find people under about 17 attractive, however those are my rules and id stick to them even if i was a paedophile, for the simple reason that the AoC thingy is the polocy adopted by the country to protect childeren as a whole, and id be more than willing to support that. 2/ some people are nice enough and intelligent enough to be trusted to make an unbiased, intelligent judjement of wether something should be done or not, even without posession of all the facts, and taking all points of view into account. other people are bastards. the latter is the reason that laws have to exist. and any laws desighned to basically say "you have to be considerate when desiding wether to have sex with a kid" would not work for a variety of reasons already layed down. in many ways the exact age isnt inportant: the existance of the AoC laws is wat matters. but what makes you say 12/13 as opposed to 16? i think an AoC of between 14 and 18 would accomplish what the AoC needs to accomplish, with arguments for both the lower end and the higher end, but 12 seems a little young. i manage to love most my female friends without having sex with them, although -- to complete the analogy -- i really really want to. but cant. cos most of them are going out with my male friends, and so it would be wrong. so i forget about it and just love them in different ways.

blimey, that was alot to read the way i see it is this. in the uk, you are not allowed to drive a car if you have imbibed more than 2 units of alcohol in one 24 hour period (thats equivelent to one UK pint, or oooooooh about 27 of your american 'beers' ). now, this isnt to say that everyone who has drunk less than two units is sober enough to drive, or that everyone who has had over two units to drink isnt sober enough to drive. the logic behind the 2-unit limit is as thus: at a certain level of drunkeness, people lose the ability to safely drive. their reaction speed and their ability to make sound judjements decreases to the point where the risk of an accident is unnaceptable. bear in mind that the repercussions of an accident can be severe (death, paralysis, injury -- both to the driver and to innocent bystanders). so people shouldnt be alowed to drive when too drunk. how do we define too drunk? well, its not easy. people get drunk on different amounts. 2-units? well, like i said, some people seem to get too drunk on less that 2 units and some can have 10 and still be sober enough to drive. but 2-units seems an appropriate point to deny people the right to drive at. above two units, and the risks are unnaceptable. so how do we deal with the people who can imbibe more than two units and still drive safely? simple. we treat them as criminals. if someone has imbibed more than two units and they get cought driving, even if they can deminstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are sober enough to drive safely then the fact that they are on the wrong side of this number (ie, 2-units) takes presedence over the fact that they are sober, for the very simple reason that the law is desighned to protect people AS A WHOLE, and based on the actions of people AS A WHOLE. if someone thinks they can drink more than 2 units and still be able to drive, they are still prohibited because the risks of allowing people, as a whole, to use their own discresion as to wether they are sober enough to drive after having more than 2 units are too great. and so, even in the case of someone who genuinely can drive safely after more than 2 units, they are still punished in order to enforse the law. saying "you cannot drive after 2 units unless you are still sober, in which case we will not punish you" basically would be the same as saying "dont drive after more than 2 units unless you think you are still sober" which of course would be going against the entire reasoning behind the law, ie that the risks of allowing people to chose wether they are sober enough to drive after 2 pints are too great. analogising to paedophiles: the way i see it is this. in the uk, you are not allowed have sex if you are under 16. now, this isnt to say that everyone who is over 16 is mature enough to have sex, or that everyone under 16 isnt mature enough to have sex. the logic behind the 16-year-old limit is as thus: under a certain age, people are too inexperienced (both sexually and just in general), and also to vulnerable for a variety of reasons (phisically weak, easy to coerse etc) that they do not have the ability to make sound judgements as to wether they should have sex or not. bear in mind that the repercussions of making an incorrect desision can be severe (see below, in red). How do we define 'under a certain age'? well, its not easy. people mature at different rates. 16? well, like i daid, some people seem to be ready before 16, and some people seem to be unready after 16. but 16 seems an appropriate age to allow people to have sex at. below 16, the risks are unnacceptable so how do we deal with the people who can, genuinely, safely have sex before they are 16, and are mature/experienced enough to make the desision before they are 16? simple. we still deny them the right to have sex. if someone is cought having sex with someone under the age of 16, even if they can deminstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that the child is mature enough to have sex then the fact that they are on the wrong side of this number (ie, 16-years) takes presedence over the fact that the child is mature enough, for the very simple reason that the law is desighned to protect people AS A WHOLE, and based on the actions of people AS A WHOLE. if someone thinks that a specific child under the age of 16 can have sex and not suffer as a result, they are still prohibited because the risks of allowing people, as a whole, to use their own discresion as to wether someone under the age of 16 is ready to have sex are too great. and so, even in the case of someone who genuinely has sex with a child of less than 16 who genuinely is mature enough to have sex, they are still punished in order to enforse the law. saying "you cannot have sex with childeren less than 16-years-of-age unless they are mature enough, in which case we will not punish you" basically would be the same as saying "dont have sex with people who are younger than 16 unless you think theyre ready" which of course would be going against the entire reasoning behind the law, ie that the risks of allowing people to chose wether they are ready before the age of 16 are too great. what are the risks? well, prettymuch everything that coral rhedd has been saying. yes, she seems a little over biased against paedophiles due to her work with the child victims, but im not asking you to accept coral's account of the victims of paedophiles as representative of childeren who have sex before the age of 16 as a whole. but they do represent what can happen to some childeren if they have sex before the age of 16. and although the fear of direct abuse/rape is a factor in prohibiting people from having sex before they are 16, im sure in many cases that coral has seen the victim will not have been forsed, but will have given consent, and still suffered the psycological trauma. yes, not everyone below 16 will suffer if they have sex and many people over the age of 16 suffer these repercussions from having sex (both forsed and consentual), but the chance of sex being detrimental increases as the age group to which you are reffering to decreases, and there comes a point where the risk is no longer acceptable. hence the age of concent, and also hense why people are punished even if it can be conclusively proven that the child suffered no ills from the encounter. those of you here who are paedophiles, you have my simpathy (and i hope that doesnt sound to patronising) but please bear in mind the very real possibility that you may be wrong if desiding that a child is ready for sex, and that the chances of that error increase as the age of the child decreases. yes, there is no majical event that happens overnight when the child reaches their xth birthday (where x = the local age of consent) which transforms them from someone who is physically and mentally unready for sex into someone who is phisically and mentally robust enough to get gang-banged (im sorry if that sounds crude, but that is the law - at 15 years 364 days, it is illegal to have sex; one day later at the age of 16 you can get legally gang-banged -- just trying to make a point) but there are very good reasons for the law, and for adhering to them no matter how ready you or the child perseve him/himself to be, and its in the best interests of the child. even if it werent the case that allowing people to chose wether an under 16-yea- old was ready for sex would carry to many risks, the consept of judjing each case of sex with a pre-16-year-old individualy to determin wether any harm was done etc is, as far as i can see, completely unworkable, for these reasons. and these few! that was a long post. sorry if i waffled at any point, and hope that addresses your points, ezekiel.

i also do that thing where you push your finger underneath your ear, move your jaw sideways, and theres a loud pop. cant stop that either. why is it so hard to stop? is it purely a habbit, or do you think theres an element of endorphine release when your joints are poped?

what kind of party? are we talking political, or will there be jelly and blancmange?

i think kylonicus' idea of being smaller has a lot of merit. wed use up less resorses and thered be more space for us - so hopefully fewer wars. less polution aswell and all our houses would seem like mansions.

did u do anything special to make them run next to each other without conflicting? i thought that the active-protections of AVs almost always start having bitch-fights with each other if you have two on the same pc? oh, and you seem pretty computer-savvy, but just to check: you do run the AV scans regulaly, yeah (ie, you do know that you dont actually have a virus)? just curiouse.

they're called townies where i come from. remember three things: as you get older, the size difference between you and the townies will (probably) decrease. as you get older, and the people you come into contact with also increase in age, more and more of the townies will have been weeded off and put into jail. as you get older, you will come to realise how truly pathetic townies are, and every time one bugs you, rather than being bothered by it, you will instead be thankful that you were not born a townie.