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Is there anyone who won't pick the Fire starter?

I suggest something trance-ish, like psytrance or goa trance. Not distracting in the least, and obviously present at the same time.

Have you ever considered getting a hobby that doesn't involve the internet?

To Spam Zone regulars, that's like asking to paint The Last Judgment with your nose.

If we print out the entire thread from top to bottom, I bet we could cover, say, a gila monster with it by now.

I have an easy time finding hope spots, but if even I have run out of them completely, I'd have no qualms about pushing the eject button. The "but your family would be sooooooooo sad" argument holds no value to me because my life is arguably the only thing that's truly my own. I have no obligation towards anyone, and blackmailing someone into not doing what they want with their own life is sick.
Besides, if even one person cared enough I'd most likely feel loved enough to keep going. Like I said, I don't have much trouble finding hope.

It feels like you've been gone since forever... Or am I blind as a bat? Anyway, happy new year and everything! How are you doing?

Problem: Civilians being defenseless against black market guns.
Solutions:
A) Throw guns into the laps of friend and foe alike and see who comes out on top.
B) Restrict gun laws and actually prioritize hunting down the black market.
[sickeningly sweet Dora-The-Explorer-like voice] One of these doesn't actually solve or even reduce the problem. Can you find it? [/voice]

I wonder if William Spengler played violent video games.

"An armed society is a polite society" is what rednecks like blurting out. Even if this would be true, I wouldn't want to be a part of a society that is polite only out of fear. Pointing the finger at violent video games is just another example of this lazy, convenient logic: it's easier to just blame the games instead of parents who fail to teach their kids the difference between reality and fiction.

I've always wondered if I would ever see the day that an atheist would become president of the US. Guess I know the answer now.

Let's make rape legal then, seeing as it's been illegal for so long and there are still rapists.

Our victory came too late for one man. We discovered Ransack’s body upon ambushing the guy guarding him in the control room. Apparently he thought the shattering glass was a stunt on Marcus’ part and decided to pay him in cash for it. He probably expected his buddies to let him out once they had it under control, seeing as he wasn’t as vigilant as he should have been. We disarmed him and left him in the room, figuring there was time to mourn Ransack later.
With three guns circulating in our four-man band, rounding up the rest of the dazed and confused gang of government agents proved to be relievingly easy. None among them cared to be the brave but stupid hero and they all reluctantly accepted their fate. We stuffed their lot in the control room, threatening to mow them down if they tried to fidget with J.J.’s mainframe.
Cyberia had been abandoned. Some of its customers, even regulars, had opted to have their memories wiped of this nightmare, and by extension of all of Cyberia. They had been tranquilized and driven home by peers. I guess brotherhood doesn’t always need to be glorious or flashy in order for it to be in effect. The simple act of helping friends or even strangers deserves as much praise as going on a rebellious crusade, probably even more so.

“Permission to ask personal questions?”, I addressed him.
“I owe you that much.”, J.J. laughed.
“Vance talked about you crossing over to our side. And still you kept this place booming. You kept Vance and Teka in their positions. Why?”
J.J. chuckled.
“Cyberia is a beautiful lie to believe in, Styx. You know that as well as I do. Aside from the music, Vance had no power here. I control everything, from the lights to the distillers and the neural scanner. I made the laws; Vance could only wait for a suitable moment to overthrow me, and that’s exactly what he did.”
“And he did it through us...because he was afraid of you?”
“You saw what my generators could. They’re omnidirectional, and I have several more installed in the back room. Vance didn’t want to be held responsible for an imploding government official, I guess.”, he joked.
I had so many questions that I just fired them off one by one, picking one from the pack in a random order.
“How did Rei warn you? How did you react?”
“By believing her. She had my undivided attention when she wrote YOU ARE IN DANGER on the tap using her finger. And well, what else could I have done but play along? I told everyone who cared to listen that whoever fished the golden marble out of one of the bouncers’ pockets would receive an exclusive prescription. It was...fairly effective, if I do say so myself.”

He chuckled again, but I didn’t see the humor in it. I was amazed at how easy my peers were bought. Prescriptions: the most valuable currency in Cyberia. Nothing else mattered to some.
J.J. saw through my glum expression. If I had not known he was a computer, I never would have figured it out. He knew humans better than we know ourselves.
“Hey, if I had told them the truth, they would helped us all the same. Vance lost because he refused to believe that you could be the sum of your parts, let alone more, but I never doubted this. I still don’t.”
“You sure?”, I skeptically asked.
“Positive.”
Always the diplomat, but I guess he was government-created after all. I wasn’t sure he fully convinced me, but it was another beautiful lie to believe in. I stuck with it.
“Look out!”, he suddenly warned me.
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Vance rushing towards me, mad with rage and wielding what was left of the broken whiskey bottle. He was out for my blood, having discarded all sense of logic like an infuriated beast. Before I could play the matador, however, Ordy tackled the berserker and pinned him to the floor. Vance growled with a gurgling wheeze.
“Want to stuff him with the others?”, he asked me.
“Not yet.”, I decided, before turning to J.J. again.
“Do they have their memories marked too?”
“Vance doesn’t, but all the others do. They wanted to be able to stuff their project under the carpet if needed.”, J.J. explained.
“Good idea.”, I concluded.

And thus it was done. We called out the goons one at a time, and under threat of a gunshot, had them walk to the neural scanner where they had their memories wiped and were tranquilized. A slick, incidentless operation, which Vance had been forced to watch under Ordy’s weight.
“Take this.”, J.J. offered when the last bouncer had been taken away. He pulled out an unlabeled bottle of green liquid from under the tap.
“What is it?”, I questioned him.
“A necessary evil.”, he vaguely answered. Recalling that this was Cyberia’s definition in all its forms, to all sides, I took it from him, knowing exactly what role it would play.

Vance was dragged to the control room, after taking his keys from him. His desperate insults and taunts went ignored; the man was little more than a pathetic lump. I was the last to leave the control room. I left the bottle green fluid on the floor.
“In case you get thirsty.”, I said as I closed the door behind me. We baricaded it with whatever we could find, after which I had my final talk with J.J.
“He’ll want to destroy you.”, I predicted, more than a hint of sadness in my voice.
“And I will let him.”, J.J. resolved. “There is nothing left for me here. Cyberia is no more. I’m sure you will get your thrills elsewhere.”
“It won’t be the same.”, Rei interjected. “This place was a relief from everything that’s wrong aboveground: a sanctuary.”
“I’m glad to hear that guys, I really am.”, J.J. smiled. “I will shut myself down knowing that I have accomplished something. I hope you realize the same.”
“We...find it difficult to see any kind of success in our actions at the moment, but we’ll manage.”, I confessed. Rei nodded to indicate that she felt the same way. J.J.’s smile only widened.
“Indeed you will. You’ll survive. You’ll evolve. You’ll decide and you will err. Forgive me the sentimentality, but you are human, and you made me transcend my original purpose into something quite like it. You have that kind of power.”, he told us, and with that, his hologram vanished forever.

===

“What was in that bottle anyway?”, Rei wondered. We had adjusted our car seats until we were practically laying flat on our backs. We had returned to the abandoned industrial district that concealed Cyberia after bringing Telda and Ordy home (they swore us to respect the omerta, and we believed them, after seeing what we saw of them that day). Only just now did we realize how fitting a location it had been: hidden among the collateral damage of the government’s greed and stupidity.
“Amanitin.”, I coldly replied, knowing full well that I couldn’t be sure but finding it a good enough guess anyway. Rei didn’t respond, but I knew her mind was overflowing with emotion and insecurity. What’s a person to say in such a situation?
“You know...”, I began, “I’d never have entered the Interface if it wasn’t for that prescription you gave me.”
“Well...It wasn’t as much a gift as it was an exchange, was it?”, Rei argued, and for a second I hated her for killing the moment.
“You don’t understand. It doesn’t need to be a gift in the economical sense of the word. I treat everything you give me as a gift, because I like to be reminded of you wherever I go and whatever I do. I love having you with me.”
Rei managed a heartwarming smile, the kind that leaves me numb as a corpse yet hot as a stove.
“If you’re trying to get into my pants, it’s working.”, she joked.
“I wasn’t, not this time, but good to know.”, I teased her back.
“You should know already. I’m an open book to you, without any dark secrets. I think we had enough of those. If there was something about me, I’d want you to know. You have access to my every level.”
That word again...
“Mind if I ask you a difficult queston then?”
“Shoot.”, she said boldly.
“Well, I was thinking... With Cyberia gone, we’re basically down to two options, aren’t we? Either we fall in line, or release our anger in less...scrupulous ways. I was wondering if you had already made that choice.”
I know I had. Society had disappointed every shackle in the chain gang we never asked to be part of. We had been mesmerized into a Bread and Games scenario, a war of attrition that we were scheduled to lose, and the only thing that had thwarted the decision-making class was the sheer revulsion of the past, of the measures they had taken and continue to take. Vance said he would learn from past mistakes, but that promise wasn’t reflected on the government’s overall conduct. They were still whittling our patience down, stacking a debt they could no longer hope to ever repay, not after abolishing the one potential miracle they had shown me.
I looked Rei in the eyes and saw that her smile had developed into a grin that would make the devil jealous. I knew she had made a choice, and I knew we had chosen the same.

The End

That all depends on how strict or lenient the government will be in its execution. Some folks will always wipe their asses with the law and then some, but others can be kept in check if their wallets and/or freedom are being threatened by a strict enforcement.

Actually, angel dust can directly cause schizophrenic symptoms, and overindulging in it can cause prolonged psychotic states. It's only a hypothesis as of yet, but it is plausible that the underlying mechanisms (blocked/malfunctioning glutamate receptors) are the same. Genetics seem to support this: people with a mutated variant of glutamate receptor genes suffer a higher risk of developing schizophrenia.
That, and drugs like amphetamine can cause schizophrenia-like symptoms as well (the so-called amphetamine psychosis) by promoting the release of dopamine. Whether this can actually be called schizophrenia is debatable, because the relation between dopamine and schizophrenia is more complex than was first assumed.

That being said, schizophrenia is said to develop during puberty and adolescence and schizophrenics have distinct brain morphologies so whatever those drugs cause might not be true schizophrenia. Whether the difference is relevant is another can of worms: the right narcoleptics can relieve symptoms, be they natural or drug-induced.

So yes, drugs can cause schizophrenia in a way.


Source: Biological Psychology by S. Breedlove et al. (4th Edition, 2005)

You claim the Westermarck effect isn't "that strong", and then the examples you give are all nobility or of royal descent. For a biologist, this is an extremely unscientific argument because this isn't a representative sample. The wealth and power that stays in the family through incestuous marriage is likely to be a confounding factor. There may still be aversion (lack of attraction) but it may be counteracted by the benefits of keeping your kin in a privileged environment.
Furthermore, claiming that the aversion is "cultural" does not preclude a genetic basis. A great deal of cultural practices originate from genetically controlled genes, at least in part. Extant hunter-gatherer populations demonstrate this to a large degree.

That being said, I agree that blaming genetics for sexual aversion for siblings is all too easy. This wasn't my point either. My point was that incest will not become a widespread phenomenon simply by legalising it. The mechanism for preventing this doesn't matter, be it cultural or genetic. Granted, social acceptance may serve to overwrite cultural aversion eventually, but this is a long way from home for now and expecting Greek/Roman situations where we bunk with anything that moves would be blatantly ignoring the current zeitgeist.

Midget is a politically correct term as far as I know.