Aardvark

All the hypothetical man had to do was stand still. Everyone is aware of the terrorist problem, running away from armed police is simply asking to be shot. Yes, yes, yes and a thousand times yes. I want to know that the police will not hesitate to kill if they suspect a suicide bomber is about to make an attack.

Shades of strawmanning there. Firstly the scenario is highly unlikely. Secondly' date=' lets look at it from another angle, how are people going to feel if a policeman hesitates to act allowing a suicide bomber to detonate in a playground full of children? That isn't such an unlikely scenario, it's already happened in Iraq. If you are refering to the shooting on the Tube, the police did have reason to suspect he might be a suicide bomber. Irrevant aside. The police never use guns when dealing with such criminals as purse snatchers. If a purse snatcher were to be halted by armend police he would know this was something far more important than purse theft and he'd stop. That's not good enough. You can't give a possible suicide bomber the benefit of the doubt that he might not understand what the police mean where they are telling him to halt. You are happily evading the pertinent points. It wasn't an 'instant death sentence' Plain clothes police or not is irrelrevant, if men point guns at you in England and order you to halt, show your hands, ectera, then it's the police. No one else does that, England isn't the wild west. On being confronted this man ran straight into the Tube station torwards a packed train. Under those circumastances shooting to kill was warranted. Actually, in the real world that question does have to be answered. The police don't have the luxury of your fine philosophical digressions. They have to make a judgement call, if a person is fitting the profile of a suicide bomber and is refusing to stop and is running toward a packed train then the police need to make a decision. Considering the 8 bombs this month against exactly such targets the police are quite right to shoot the suspect in those circumstances. It's all well and good stating that a question is unanswerable, but it does have to be answered. It's a matter of preventing more slaughter, not playing God or demonstrating some adamanite idealogy. I think most people are more intelligent than that. Burdening the police with the standard of seeing a bomb which by definition is out of sight would be idiotic. Suicide bombers hide the bombs on their person, under clothing or in bags. Instead police use their judgement as to the potential threat someone poses by their behaviour and then try and stop that person. The shooting is done only if the police judge there is an imminent danger of a detonation risking the lives of innocent bystanders. I doubt it. Most people don't live in your lovely fantasy land. They actually have to confront the reality of suicide bombers rather than agonise about 'unanswerable' questions.

That would seem to be a result of short sighted stupidity rather than deliberate design.

He had been identified as behaving in a potentially suspicious manner. He was followed until he made to move into a Tube station. At this point he was challenged and ordered to stop. He ran into the Tube station and toward a train ignoring repeated demands to stop. As you can see there was no 'immediate' decision to shoot him. He was shot only after refusing to stop and running into a crowded Tube station. There was, therefore, plenty of recourse, not none. The fact that if challenged by police i won't charge into a crowded Tube station. That would be reasonable in all cases except for suicide bombers. We are not talking about the possiblity that a suspect might pull a gun and shoot someone. We are talking about a possibility that a suspect will detonate a bomb, killing large numbers of bystanders. That scenario requires different guidelines, shooting to wound isn't the answer as it can't prevent a suicide bomber detonating the bomb, the police are obliged to shoot to kill. If someone is acting suspiciously then when challenged runs into a crowded place where a detonation would cause a large number of causalties the police must premeptively kill that person. It is not an option it is an obligation.

I don't understand. What are they worrying about? Censorship against violence in video games?

After repeated suicude attacks on the London Undergound, anyone who, when challenged by armed police chooses to run into the Underground is going to be seen as a likely suicide bomber. The police have the choice of either allowing a potential detonation killing innocent bystanders or shooting the suspect dead. It is sad but under the circumstances the greater risk is to allow a detonation. I would be upset if the police did not respond so sharply to possible suicide bombers. This individual had the opportunity to stop. He choose to run and mendacious excuses about how he might have been scared of being kidnapped and beheaded (this is London remember, not Bagdad) or how he might have language problems (he'd been in London more than 3 years) don't hack it. He should have stopped, instead he put himself and the police in a situation where they had to assume the worst. It was interesting to see how quickly the dead man relatives started to talk about money.

Hurrah!

Coquina, My Uncle has raised several orphaned pigeons and he recommends a product called 'growers crumble'. You mix it with a little water and feed the pigeon 4 times a day with an eye-dropper, you have to squirt the food into the birds mouth. The end result is a healthy pigeon which thinks you are its Mother. Hope your ready for a serious emotional commitment

What sort of applications is it used for in medicine? Some sort of simulation of the bodies inside?

Ten years ago Virtual reality was the next big thing in computing. Now, it's nowhere to be seen. What happened? Is VR coming, is there any progress being made or was it all just a fantasy? Any experts out there?

I'd love to know how you'd make that distinction.

They are unlikely to be the ones causing problems for homosexual worshippers, so chanting at them probably wouldn't have much point. Chants such as 'You're honest, you're out, you're trying to make the Church a more humane place, errr .... carry on then'

That is the same definition i have been using. If those people find that their beliefs/actions are incompatiable with the faith/Church they have grown up with then i'm afraid that leaving that faith might be the only reasonable thing. Yes, it is a problem and yes the Church should try to avoid hurting its flock. But ordering it change its behaviour by law would be mistaken. Just because some behaviour is foolish and reprehensible doesn't mean it should be illegal. Tolerance also means tolerating Churches which has foolish rules and procedures based on prejudice. If people want to go to the Church of the sexually repressed, in serious denial, bigot then they should be left alone. Homosexuals should conversely be left with the choice to walk away and go to the Church of the better things to worry about than sex. Objecting to the discrimination is fine. The discrimination is unpleasant and illogical, but people are allowed to be prejudiced, unpleasant and illogical so long as those feelings are not forced upon other people. It might be a sad matter for a worshipper to leave, for instance, the Roman Catholic Church, because of coming out, but that worshipper can leave and go to another Church. I am not denying it is unpleasant, but the worshipper does have the choice of whether or not to attend that Church, nothing is being imposed. You have identified some unpleasant prejudice which can cause problems and make people unhappy. True, Churches which preach homophobia are both hateful and theoloically dubious, but they have the right to that, as long, and this is the important point, as they do not impose those preaching on the public sphere. A homosexual may be unhappy in that Church, but the second he steps outside the bigotery should cease. One analogy could be that a person was brought up in a strong Conservative Party supporting family. That person then comes to the realisation that they really believe in the doctrine of economic nationalisation. That person has to make a choice, maintain support for nationalistion and leave the Party they were brought up in or abandon that ideal and stay with the Party. It's not a perfect analogy, you can argue about whether a belief is based on prejudice or reason or theology, but it boils down to a private organisation being allowed to make its own rules, however stupid or wrong they may appear. Churches may be hurting people, but it would be wrong to force them to act against their desires. Persuasion, not complusion should be employed. And Worshippers have the right to exercise the choice to leave and join whatever religion they deem most correct. If enough worshippers move to more tolerant Churches then it will create a pressure for tolerantion. To take the logic to its absurd extreme, imagine a Rabbi being forced to eat Non Kosher food as it was decided that only eating Kosher was a prejudiced act which harmed Non Kosher food producers such as shrimp fishermen and pig farmers.

Assuming they're still in the closet they are probably too screwed up and unhappy for it to be any fun to chant at them. Which is a shame because the santimonious feeling of virture and superiority that derives from being part of a chanting mob looks like it's fun. Esp the part where you completely abdicate all personal responsibility to the mob.

I've heard theories that it made the jump to humans in a batch of Polio vaccine. I don't think it's been established as fact where this is true.

Yes, a small, hyper-saline lake with no life. Where once was a sea with large numbers of unique species, rich fisheries and moderating effect on the local climate. The sea was killed by diverting water to agriculture. Without the sea the climate is more extreme. So the agriculture has been wrecked. A rather bitter irony.

True, in which case we can all stand and point at them and chant 'Prejudiced men in frocks, scared of any challenge to their sexuality.' 'Ha Ha Ha.' 'Losers' Ectera.

Those institutionalised prejudices may be unpleasant but in a society with freedom of religion and person experiencing such prejudice is free to simply walk away and find another Church. If the religion is one that condemns homosexuality then the homosexual should simply walk away, no one has the right to enter a religion and demand it make changes to accomodate that person. However reasonable those changes may be. That would only be the case if those prejudices were allowed to be imposed in the public sphere. If a Church refuses to perform weddings for homosexuals that is its business, if it then trys to prevent homosexuals getting married outside its Church then it is intruding on the public sphere and imposing its preducies in an unacceptable manner. The law recognises the distinction between the public and private spheres (public and private sectors have a different meaning). Churches are private organisations, they are voluntary establishments made up of the coming together of likeminded people. As such they are entitled to whatever sort of internal rules they want, wise or unwise. As voluntary establishments people are free to walk away if they don't like them. As long as those organisations don't impose their prejudices outside their structures and as long as participation is strictly voluntary then they have the right to be left alone, however odd or unpleasant we may consider them.

That's the high-up clergy's right. High-up clergy are allowed personal opinions, whether we agree with them or not. If the homosexuals have that disagreement with the Church then they can leave and go to a different Church where the clergy have different opinions. It doesn't matter if we think that the clergy are acting according to personal prejudice or religious teaching. They are allowed to be as prejudiced and idiotic as they want in the private sphere. Part of living in a free society means tolerating people and behaviour you dislike or disapprove of.

Unfortunately your information is now out of date. The Aral Sea no longer exists.

It actually scares me that supposedly intelligent people can hold and express such opinions. Esp teachers who are responsible for introducing children to the concepts of logic and reasoning. If there was a way to combine a Meme like the ' deferred success' idea with a dose of drug resistant Anthrax i think the human races bloodstock would improve considerably. Homo Sapiens is one species which needs some urgent culling.

In a free society people should be allowed to hold arbitrary prejudices, just as long as they don't impose those prejudices on anyone else or cause a person harm throught the those prejudices. If a Church decides that it will not marry two people because they are homosexual we may condemn the Churches decision but we should also respect its right to make that decision. The homosexual couple are not being denied their right to marry by the Church, rather they are merely being denied the right to marry in THAT Church, which is an important distinction. We may strongly disagree with a religions beliefs/prejudices/practices, but as long as it is not imposing on others then no one has the right to impose on them. If a Church refuses to marry people because they are homosexual or because they are of mixed race or because they have green eyes that is the Churches perogative. Laws which are appropiate for keeping prejudice out of the Public sphere are not appropriate for the Private sphere.

Please don't do this, it would be a serious mistake that could end up causing a lot of pain and trouble.