Dak

this is going round in circles. if it was as simple as getting a better payed job, there wouldn't be so many poor people. ergo, 'they should just get higher payed jobs' is not an answre. if it's not worth minimum wage, then it'll be uneconomical, and they'll be no lawn men. simple. kids will no doubt pick up the job. i'm certainly not reccomending that adults get minimum wage for paper rounds. or, rather, they should if they do it, but i see no reason why kids shouldn't do that work. if not, then there are only two alternative options: 1/ the person has a full-time job, but doesn't earn enough to live on. what then? crime? starvation? being supported by state handouts? 2/ no one peels gum off the pavement. menile, yes, but still needs to be done. of all these options, i think minimum wage is, at the least, the 'least bad'. not quite what i said. you still haven't answred what these people should do instead of these crappy jobs? there aren't enough decent payed jobs to go round, and the crappy jobs really do need doing by someone. so how would you propose we solve this conundrum? meh. that's wrong. i allready said i think kids should be exempt from minimum wage, pretty much for the reason you outline above. but then, kids dont need to support themselves. how is that so hard to get? if someone contributes to our societies, then they should be able to live their lifes to a basic minimum standard. more valuable work should get more pay, yes, but no-one who works should be payed so little that they cannot survive to a certain level. i'm not naiive. i'm well aware that 'the poor' include many drug-abusing, wellfare scrounging criminals, who doss about in crappy jobs and actually get more than most people do, when added to their social security and crime takings. i just objected to your 'all poor people have never bothered looking for a better job' attetude, as if all they need is an epiphany to get the local paper, go job hunting, and actually ask the wages being payed before accepting the job, and -- heer's the cunning bit -- accepting the one that pays the most, and then all their troubles will be over and they'll no longer be poor. or that all they have to do is buy less drugs, maybe... again, tho, poor people are poor cos they have shitty jobs and little chance to get better jobs. there are actually enough poor people that if they strike en mass, they can be replaced. to take (non-kid) mcdonalds employees as an example: if they all struck, do you think they'd get higher wages? or sacked and replaced with other people, who also get payed as little as possible? with most jobs, that cannot be done. but with poor, unskilled jobs, it can be. so, strikes are relatively inefective. the simple fact that no unions/strikes have fixed the problem since the last minimum wage increase pretty much demonstraits that your claim -- that it'll fix itself better without govournment interference -- is wrong. -------- I do kinda see where you're coming from. for example, if a poor person was being supported by the govournment to the point where they could afford to have 10 kids, i think that'd be stupid. if someone can't support 10 kids, they shouldn't have 10 kids (i know you didn't state this, just fishing for some common ground). If minimum wage was too high, i'd share most your concerns. and if kids aren't employable for menile work/aren't exempt from minimum wage then i think there'll be a whole boat-load of problems associated with that. but i feel that your approach is inpracticle. answre this one question: what should the situation be, with reguards to low-payed jobs? should they not be done because they dont pay enough (in which case, who will collect our bins, work our shitty factories, etc), or should the people who work in them just accept that they'll have a crap quality of life in return for servicing our society? or should they be given state hand-outs (which we'll have to pay for) in order to cover medical etc? or should they turn to crime when their car breaks down, and they can't afford to get it fixed but still need to go to work? or should they just get payed enough in the first place to afford basics, and get money for luxuries if they earn it by performing more valuable work? pangloss' story pretty-much illustrates my point: if someone is skilled, they can go to pang's whife's buisness, and earn more because their labour is worth more. if they're less skilled, they wil go with 'the competition', and get payed less, as their labour is worth less. this is as it should be, in order to give people encoragment to work hard*. however, consider that you're one of the unskilled workers for 'the competition' by your argument, you should fix your situation by getting a job that pays more -- eg, at pangloss's whife's place. but pangloss' whife will not hire you. so....... you're stuck at the bottom of the heap. and, with no one below you, theres nothing to stop your wages sinking. theres no incentive on 'the competition' to not lower your wages, 'cos you can't quit and go somewhere else, because the only places that will hire you pay equally shit. the sheer volume of minimum-wage jobs testifies to this fact. you can't afford to, say, go on a door-making cource because you're poor... so, what happens? minimum wage ensures that you dont get shat upon too much. theres a minimum you can get payed, so your full time work will at least get you food, shelter, gas etc. if you want to make more money, you'll have to figure out a way to improve your door-making skills and get a job with pangloss' whife. otherwize, you're stuck making the bare minimum neccesary to survive (if you really read this last centance, you should savvy why i'm having trouble understanding your objections... do people who put in 9-5/5 work -- most of their waking life -- not deserve this?). ---- * note that, despite your strawmans, i never claimed that workers should not have to compete, just that there should be a minimum that they can get payed. no-one should work full-time and not be able to afford a basic lifestyle.

is there a stable fork? I'm tired of my DNR borking. also, will internet3 have a spel checker?

there are ways to circumvent this, same as there are ways to prevent the problems associated with raw capitalism but it's slightly OT. you asked for a more scientific aproach earlyer: i'd accept russia as a 'failed experiment in communism' ONLY if it all else was equal to succesfull countries, thus allowing the failure to be asigned to communism. ie, if it were a democratic communism that was left alone to succede or fail on it's own, as opposed to a despotic communism that had to tolerate WWII and america throwing billions at trying to make it fall. as you said later, china's a hybrid, not a capitalism. heh, my history's a bit off. i was talking about the wall st crash. my point was just that it's not as simple as 'communism doesn't work, capitalism does'. capitalisms have failed before, communism has never, imo, been given a 'fair run'. there are problems with both, but also ways to circumvent these problems (eg: minimum wage laws) do you hear yourself? perhaps because they have to live? or, what, should they foad? seriously, if you actually think about what you said... it's not interesting, but our countries run on menile tasks like putting labels on buckets. we need people to do these jobs. it's just a case of wether or not they should be exploited. I never said that. i'd be prepared to pay more for services. ultimately i'd pay either way, be it through tax for social security, or through COL increases for minimum wage. again, i'm pretty sure that poor people -- what with their lack of money being quite hard for them to ignore -- have, in actual fact, concidered the posibility of getting a better payed job. if you think that poor people are 'bumming about' in low payed jobs and idling-about taking drugs, as opposed to working much more than you do just to make enough to make rent and bills, with bearly enough left over to buy food, let alone drugs, then you are just a teensy bit out of touch with reality. this is about people who are unskilled, and competing for jobs with lots of other unskilled people, and who the companies will pay pittance to if they can get away with it -- and who have a sub-acceptable level of existance (no, sub-acceptable doesn't mean 'cant buy enough drugs'). ok, seriously out of touch with reality. fast food outlets aren't the only plases that pay minimum wage, lots of factories, manual labour, etc, plases also pay minimum wage in the uk, and i'd assume it's similar in the us. and no, no ones trying to advocate that minimum wage gives someone 'your level of living standards' (asuming your moderately confortable), just that it's enough to guarantee that someone isn't in abject poverty. they seriously won't be buying any ferraris on minimum wage. yet, i'm sure you'd be first in line to complain if all the companies in your sector got together and agreed to not pay anyone more than minimum wage. "oh, but my labours worth more than that" you'd cry. "meh, but we're getting your labour for as cheap as we can. Your a resourse, bitch, and now you're a cheap one". you'd winge about illegal cartels, and 'unfairness', and your inability to get another job 'cos they're all that low payed, nor a job in another sector 'cos your only skilled in this one... but think it's perfectly ok for other people to be in exactly the same situation sans cartel? or would you accept the above state?

just click the quote buttons, and the first one should have the quotees name at the top. I'm not sure i get your point? people should, at the least, get enough to live on to an acceptable standard. that means no $2/hour jobs, even if the companies could get away with it without legislation. if you're getting towards the point that certain small enterprises couldn't afford the wages, then i have two retorts: 1/ if they can't break even, they fold. simple law of economics. its up to them to figure out how to make an enterprise profitable, and if they can't they collapse. 2/ humans come before buisnesses imo. if it's a choice between people being forced to work for pitance, or a few buisnesses folding, i'd choose the latter. if a buisness needs to profiteer on peoples poverty in order to break even, then it shouldn't exist. a few companies may fold, but i doubt that huge sectors of the economy will collapse because they're too unprofitable. otoh, i do think it risks widening the gap between big buisness and little buisness, and i think certain people should be exempt from minimum wage. childeren, for example -- when i was a kid, the only jobs i could get (with my lack of experience) i got because i was cheaper then adults (paper-round and working in a pizza place), so it's a good way for kids to get work experience, and less profitable enterprises to break even. another one springs to mind: i'm going to start work in a lab soon, and, given that i'm unexperienced, i'm likely going to have to do it for free in order to actually get the work. now... say i'm there for a while, and my enployers think i'm worth a pittance. i'd accept, as i need the experience, but they likely wont even offer me a pittance, because afaik for them it's a choice between nothing or at least minimum wage. so, at least till i can proove that i'm good enough for minimum wage, i'll be getting nothing -- less that i'd be getting without minimum wage laws. not atall. the people who can take initiative for themselves are not the people to whom this law applies in effect. i've never taken minimum wage since i was 17, even doing shitty data-entry jobs. if i'm offered minimum wage, i'd refuse, barring it being lab-experience related. again, tho, it's the people in abject poverty, who are unskilled, who can't take the initiative. these people need a minimum, as they can't control their own wages. if a person cannot stop a company from paying them as little as it can, then they'll get the govournment-descided minimum neccesary to live on. if they can stop a company from paying as little as possable, then they'll get what their works worth. communist russia was a despotic communism, which had the US spend quite alot of money trying to make it fall, and the majority of western europe wasnt exactly friendly towards russia. i think it's clear that russia demonstrated merely a slightly atypical experiment in despotism. and, like all despotisms, conditions were not nice. (tho, interestingly, they were quite fair -- they were decades ahead of the west in terms of racial and sexual equality) so, what have we learnt? well, communism is not enough to counterbalance despotism. that's all. see also despotic communist (lately hibrid) china. or any other despotism, for that matter. I could dig out a few links of despotic capitalisms if you want, to prove that it's the despotism -- and not the comunism -- that caused the nastyness. if you're talking of economic instablility, then communist china -- which, iirc, wasn't part of commiform and so wasn't targeted as heavily by the US -- is still going strong, and, my history's a tad wonky, but iirc democratic capitalistic US's economy kinda collapsed around the same timeish that russia folded.

what people are willing to work for. BUT, this only works if the workers aren't in over-abundance, or have a union to back them up, or are slightly 'bulshy'. take doctors, for example -- they're rare enough that they can be pushy, and get a high wage (fitting for their worth) by quitting and finding work elsewhere. most workers can skoff at a pitance and find work elsewhere. if all of the available jobs pay peanuts, then workers with a union can strike, which is effectively the same but en mass. because unskilled workers (e.g, the poor) can't do this. if they say 'hey, i'll not work for this low, give me a pay rise', they'll just get sacked and replaced with another poor person -- poor people aren't exactly in short supply, and theres no 'poor people and unskilled workers union'. and people dont want to work for $2/hour. they have to, to just-about get a sub-acceptable quality of life. or did you think that the thought of looking for a higher-payed job never occoured to poor people? no, they can't wait for the price to go up. these are poor people we're talking about (minimum wage isn't exactly for laywers and doctors) -- they have to work, and can't afford to wait around for the price to go up. and, if they did, some other poor person, in desperate need of a job, will accept it before the price goes up. 'find a different job' -- if they were skilled, and could get a different job, they probably wouldn't be poor. all jobs available to poor people pay crap (else they wouldn't be poor). the market isn't 'settling back down' tho, it's inflating -- which is why the minimum wage is going up. yes, there'll undoubtably be a cost-of-living increase, but not enough to negate the minimum wage increase from a poor persons pov. from a non-poor persons pov, they'd be paying either way -- either through social security or through COL increases. the flip side, of course, is that having less extremely poor people = having more people spending. people spending is good for the economy. no, the buisnesses will charge as much as they can get away with. obviously, when a competetor starts to charge less and yoink their customers, they'll be forsed to lower their prices. however, this doesn't work with workers, unless, as i said, workers are a rare commodity. poor workers are not a rare commodity. companies will not try to 'steal' them from one-another, thus naturally forsing wages up in order to be able to hire. they'll try to get them as cheap as possible, using their poverty against them. why pay them a decent wage, when you can pay them a pitance and they'll have to accept it 'cos they're poor? if you're getting at what i think your getting at, then i'd point out that £3 used to be a pretty decent yearly wage in the uk. now the minimum required to survive is concidered as being >£10,000. inflation doesn't matter. it's rapid inflation that hurts.

kindof inline with what mokele's saying: we know that buisnesses, if left unrestrained, will produce some undesireable results. we know that companies will strive to, and sometimes succede in, gaining a monopoly, which they will use to their advantage at the expence of the people -- hence, we have anti-monopoly laws. we know that companies will join together to form cartels in order to raise prices etc, again for their benifits and again at the expence of the people, and so we have anti-cartel laws. we know that companies will treat employers as a material commodity and strive to get them as cheaply as possibly, which, unless unenployment is pretty-damn low, is again to their own advantage and again to the detriment of the people, and so we have minimum-wage laws. or. look at it like this: if someone looks for work, but cannot find any work that pays him enough to cover his traveling-to-work expences and leaves him enough for food/bills/rent then his options are: # become a bum, contributing nothing to society and burdening it with giving him basic medical cover etc, not to mention looking after any of his innocent dependants. # draw social security to make ends meet: in other words, have a net negative financial contribution to society. # turn to crime to make ends meet. # get payed enough to meet traveling costs, rent, bills, and food in the first place. which would you all prefer? pangloss it's not 'everyone earning the same', it's 'everyone earning an amount in proportion to the worth of their work, or $x/hour, whichever is higher'. or, in other words, 'everyone earning at least enough to survive, and more if they're skilled'. if you expect people to work for their ability to survive in your society, as opposed to, say, robbing, defrauding, drawing social security from other tax payers, being a bum, etc, then they have to have the option there to actually earn enough to survive through legitimate means. i.e.: unenployment must not be too high, minimum wage must be set and realistic.

hmm... if someones academically good enough to be put on a pedastal and made a show-piece of, then they should be good enough to be put on a pedastal and made a show-piece of irreguardless of black-history month; if not, then i dont see how being a quite good student + being black + february should suddenly make them pedastal-worthy otoh, there are alot of people -- both black and white -- who dont see that black people can actually get degrees and be academically successfull i'd imagine: black people with potential who dont bother trying to fulfil it 'cos they dont think they could succede, and white people who think 'them dum negers are stoopid', so i guess for them it's worth actually making a point of showing that black people can succede academically. on the other other hand, if that's the intent, then an exclusively black 'success parade' is a piss-poor way of achieving it: as you say, it could smack of 'good for a black man'; it'd be more useful to parade the best students, reguardless of colour/sex/etc, and just hope that enough of them happen to be black etc that it gets the point across -- 'these are our best, and some of them are black' would be better than 'these are our best black students'. the latter obviously leaves open the possibility that black people aren't as academically good as white people, so need their own category to compete in (like the special olympics) you could allways reccomend your best black students, but ask their permission first, and explain your concerns. that way, they can descide for themselves wether it'd be an honour or an insult. if you wish to make a point to the organisers, then you could allways include the fact that x notable black students declined the option to be reccomended due to the fact that they found it insulting along with your reccomendations.

he presumably has to be assumed innocent at this point (untill proven guilty -- i believe the burden of proof for terrorism etc lies with the accuser, not the defendant, the same as with most crimes in the US). so... what if he's found innocent? what then? will he be re-embursed those 5 years? and, with allegations that he'll not face a fair trial, you've got to concider what motive america has to actually acknowledge him as innocent, even if he manages to persuade the military (and presumably closed) trial that he's not guilty. should america hold it's hands up and admit that they held lots of people outside of US soil so that they wouldn't be protected by US laws, allowing them to be detained for years before their trial, and then, whoops, turns out this ones innocent and shouldn't have been inprisoned without a trial for 5 years. our bad. or, should they sweep him under the carpet as guilty, rather than put up with the political back-lash that would undoubtably follow such an obvious ****up and infindgement of human rights, by both the international convention and the declaration of independance? must be quite hard to be honest under those circumstances. and, unlike the highest court of lawyers in the land (not shure what you're equivelent of our law-lords are, sorry), military magistrates aren't known for their devotion to upholding the law, as opposed to, say, protecting their country. seriously, i'm not one for conspiracy theories, but i'd be forced to give credence to the theory that your country has put itself in a position where there's a lot of pressure on it to conspire to ensure that no one in the bay ever gets found innocent, because that'd be embarassing.

i'm really intruigued. do tell. it's almost not worth pointing that out. i'm sure there's alot of rapists associated with the rough sex scence. im sure theres alot of paedos associated with the uniform scence (for the 'schoolgirls'). it makes sence that someone with a totally unnacepted fetish would gravitate towards semi-legitimate substitutes for their fetish. whilst that would make it true to say there are lots of bestiophiles/rapists/paedos associated with the furry/rough/uniform scence, i can kinda see where the 'normal' pervs are coming from when they say they're annoyed at the association. more a comment than an argument or anything. an it harms no one. cartoon charectors cannot be sexually abused by being forced to pose for porn when they're childeren. certainly, if your into cartoon child porn you should take a long, hard, look at yourself and seriously think about what else your into, and the ethics associated, and premptively mentally fortify yourself to do the right thing if your ever in a situation where you need to, BUT at the same time it's astoundingly clear that the act of looking at cartoon child/'cub' porn (dear god ) is perfectly non-harmful to anyone. maybe, for the non-actual-bestiophiles, they merely recognise the difference between a harmful fetish that needs to be supressed, and a superficially simlar, yet fundamentally dissimilar in effect, fetish, and how annoying it is to confuse the two and suppress that which does not need suppression.

can you support your claim? if not, then i think you'd be forced to admit that you have an innacurate view of women. it shouldn't be too large a mental jump from this to 'sexist' and/or 'mysogynist'. now, this probably isn't as bad, at least overtly, as, say, thinking all black people are criminals... however, if it leads you to treat women as if they should be docile, then... well... 'docile' is more commonly applied to well-behaved farm animals, so you shouldn't have trouble seeing how its not a nice way to treat people, nor a nice oppinion of people to spread across the interwebs. i think inferring that he beats his wife from the fact that he stated that 'women are docile' is a bit of a stretch...

ah, sorry. just to clarify, when i said public, i meant owned by the govournment on behalf of, and for the benifit of, the public. --- private v govournment aren't neccesarily the only options. the govournment can own exclusive rights to, say, public transport, but commission a company to provide the service, allowing them to dictate the level of service that needs be provided, whilst commissioning, say, a few coumpanies to provide public transport across different locations would allow for competition, with poor services resulting in loss of contract and the location going to one of the other providers (eg, with aspects of both govournment ownership and capitalistic competition). or you can set targets for any companies operating within a 'public service' area, and pay them from the tax coffers for providing this service, and/or charge them for not meeting them, thus forsing a level of service above meer profiteering. in some cases, competition is not strictly speaking possible due to a neccesary monopoly -- air traffic control, for example, and the people who own and maintain local train tracks.

anecdotally, it seems that privatising something is a good indication that the quality of service will drop; however, it's hard to tell wether this is attributable to the media winging about privatisation (as they do in the uk), the govournment screwing stuff up just before they sell it, etc. i dont know of any hard data, but some low-grade armchair-science should be quite easy, i think: just compare, say, alcohol in new hampshire (where i believe its govournment controlled?) and the rest of the us, postal services in the uk a decade ago v america decade ago (i think govournment v private), im sure you could find examples of govournment and private transport in various countries, etc.

ooh, the iruny

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hehe... when i read that, i assumed it should have been spelt 'thees' an adjective

i dont know for sure, but id assume that, in the cource of trying to pin down the location of a gene, we've forced human chromosomes and monkey chromosomes to co-exist within the same cell. we've grown pigs that have human genes, to increase organ compatability for transplant purposes, and we've put unmodified animal organs into humans. but try to put a complete human genome into a cow cell (pretty much making it a human cell) is a no-no? as canada' said, the objections pretty-much stem from ignorance. ask an objector what a genome actually is, and wether the cell is human, cowish, or a hybrid, and why/to what extent, or why the above are ok if this is wrong, and i doubt they'd be able to answre; yet, this doesn't stop them from knowing enough to know its unethical? aert: im certainly no expert, but iirc this experiment is to test a way of potentially curing people with a degenerative muscular disorder that is caused by mitocondria depletion -- i think the idea is to see how cells will tolerate 'mitocondria transplants', or something. using a cow stem-cell is purely due to a shortage of human stem-cells.

i've only ever really studied evolution from a molecular pov before, and i just realised that theres something that i really dont savvy about the bigger picture of evolution. if we take one gene, and it mutates, and this mutation is a slight inprovement, then natural selection will propogate it throughought a population due to the increase in the fitness to survive/reproduce it confurs upon the organism. i get that it's a bit more complicated than that, but i get the principle; what i dont get is how loads of different genes can be subject to natural evolution at once. eg, imagine you have a whopping great big genome. the organism is going to have one fitness to reproduce, which will be an aggregate of the 'fitness to reproduce bonusus' of all the genes. if we examine one gene, then, my problem is, it seems as if this gene will have it's 'fitness bonus' effectively masked by the millions of other genes (unless it's a huge benifit -- eg, sterility would, obviously, be such a huge disadvantage that it couldn't be masked by the other genes); so, then, how does one gene ever have enough of a relevent effect on the organism to become subject to natural selection? in other words, how does natural selection 'see' an individual gene amongst all the others? (i also see how NS works on an individual level; i'm just having trouble seeing how NS acting upon an individual translates to NS acting upon individual genes simultaniously, even over generations; how does NS acting on individuals translate to a change in allele frequency dependant upon the 'benifit' of said allele?)

imo, whilst not 100% certain, theres enough reason to believe in global warming that it seems prudent to assume gw is occouring. completely modifying all our industries etc and then finding out that gw is a myth will waste alot of effort; not doing anything and then finding out that gw is happening may wreck our planet.

urgh... i've had a 19 hour stint at the computer, trying to get an essay done in time... it's not nice (tho a game should be more fun) load up on water and carbs (not just caffien and sugar... that'll just screw you up over such a long period).

whilst SH and gay marriage might not directly effect you, the way in which they're handled might. eg, if gay marriage legislature -- something that doesn't directly effect you -- is handled stupidly, what's to stop legislature that does directly effect you being handled stupidly? similarly, even if SH's death doesn't directly effect you, the way in which it was handled might.

lol @ perry bible fellowship apart from the famous ones (like pvp, ctrl+alt+del, 8-bit), i quite like: order of the stick: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0391.html last days of foxhound: http://www.gigaville.com/ nichtlustig: http://www.nichtlustig.de/toondb/061004.html the last one's not really a web comic, and hardly ever updates, and is in german... but despite that, i thought it was worth a mention as the cartoons that i can understand are pants-wettingly funny (tho, that probably sais more about my sence of humour than the cartoons) tbh, i think the fact that i barely understand them makes them funnyer. hehe... bad pantomime

black people: unfaithful, cowardly, work-shy social-security-spungers. but even they have the common decency not to murder foetuses. vote republican.

genius i dont believe no one thought to actually, you know, read the string a cookie for you O

no. if someone murders their classmates then it's their fault, not computer game's. if 'they did it' because of a computer game, then it's still their fault, not the computer game's. after all, lots of people manage to play the games without going postal. the difference, i suppose, could be seen as 'intent'. the makers of GTA intended to use violence (criminality, whores, whatever) to sell a game. the makers of LB seem to have intended to use a computer game to sell religious violence and intolerance. unless the game has subliminal messages or something, that still doesn't stop it being an individual's fault if they descide to emulate the game.

the violence in GTA isn't aimed at anyone specifically. the violence in doom is aimed (pretty unobjectionably) at daemons. the violence in LB is aimed at 'non-believers', ie a group of real people, and the (percieved) problem with that should be obvious -- if not, imagine the game aimed at anniholating christians/jews/blacks/whatever. another difference, afaict, is (like the tree pretty-much said), GTA just goes 'here you go, heres some pretend violence, enjoy', whereas LB goes 'heres some pretend violence, see how morally good it is', the difference being that the latter is an actual attempt to promote violence. violence can be bad and pretend violence funny, but violence cannot be bad and pretend violence morally laudable. or, at least it can (imo), but it's much less obvious that this can be the case. or, another way of looking at it: in GTA, you can, for exampl, hire whores, drive them to a secluded location, shag them, pay them, and then, once they've got out of the car, run them over to get your money back (tee-hee), but at no point in the game does it suggest that this is a good thing to do. LB, on the other hand, seems to be designed to actually present the concept of persecution of those who dont believe in your particular religion as a morally acceptable thing to do. having said that, the idea that the game should be baned is crap. if someone is genuinely going to be influenced by a computer game, then they're stupid beyond hope. what else would they have to be prevented from exposure to, in order to stop them succuming to the 'influence' of being a violent, intolerant bigot? the passion, the bible itself, films, tv, real life, their peers... ateotd, if someones going to actually be influenced by this (or any other) computer game (or film, or band, or book, etc), then theres a problem, but the problem isn't with the game, it's with the person, and it'll manifest itself in one way or another even in the abscence of computer games.