That's not so different from how most people feel I think, at least as far as their life partners are concerned. Physical attraction may be a factor but long-term relationships are mostly forged by emotional preferences. And yet you worry about society and how it sees asexuals, hence this thread. Ironic, isn't it? It almost seems as if you're trying to justify your asexuality, even though you know you shouldn't have to.
You're fine with it but you don't like it? What the what? Also, I hope you realize that solutions in fiction can't blindly be extrapolated to reality. If you'd want such solutions to work, you'd have to apply them to a large scale (global or at the very least continental). Even if any single country would take such drastic measures, the impact would be comparable to using a teardrop to douse a brushfire, and that's without even mentioning the "grass is always greener" realization that will almost certainly play a part in it. I could have sworn this place was called Debate Corner...
Vangelis --- Heaven And Hell [Part 2]
---------- Seriously though, why don't you? What's the point of posting in the thread if you're not gonna lay out your point for everyone to...
Scott Matthews --- Elusive
X Days Left This leaf is not coping well, Despite seeing spring turn to summer. The shift makes fate look all the dumber: Stubbornly reviving a verdant shell Around a single person's hell. This leaf dies young, what a bummer... Should I struggle or undergo it all? This visible loss of reason, This visceral change in season... Bleak skies should foreshadow fall, My fall... But outside summer skies are still a teasin'. But this leaf still has places to go, Even if leaves are of impact devoid. In my recent nightmares I have seen A destiny I wish to avoid: To turn rotten before passing green, To shrivel before my chance to grow. Don't ask this sore leaf why or how But the weather means so little now. I just ask for all the seconds I can get. Wind be still, be still as death I hear your whistle and beg your breath Not to scrape me off this tree just yet Comment: This was a past poetry contest entry here. This is one of my poems that are easier to understand. It is about someone who is terminally ill but fights for his life regardless. I hope you like it.
Hammerfall --- Hearts On Fire
Relationships are strengthened and/or upheld by sharing a variety of experiences. Going to the movies, meeting eachother's families, making love, arguing face-to-face etc. Online relationships are limited in this variety, and I think I'd be bored with them before long. Conversations running dry, the lack of common memories to reminisce upon and possibly the temptation of (wo)men of flesh and bone when you go out... Not my kind of thing.
Not this again... Yes, I am for the death penalty, but only if reserved for extreme cases. Spoiler In before "Define extreme." by pseudo-philosophical smartasses.
Runescape. I got bored with it after two days.
I agree. I have about 60 CDs in my collection. The vast majority of them are bands I wouldn't even have heard of, let alone liked, were it not for pirated material. Even NOFX, one of my favourite bands, falls into that category. So far I bought 1 CD and attended two festivals they were headlining. They couldn't have made that money and wouldn't have gained me as a fan if I hadn't pirated their songs beforehand. Another example would be Crystal Castles. Not my primary genre, to say the least, but I like their music. The chances that I would have heard their songs or seen them live without piracy on my part are slim: their songs don't play on the radio stations I listen to, and they usually don't perform at the kind of festivals I attend. Piracy is much like alcohol: healthy in the right amounts and when alternated with the alternative, and detrimental when used in excess. I may as well leave then, and I suspect that replacing the tidbit of vitriol with even more political correctness will do the Debate Corner more harm than good. Some people don't see much in debates where you can't even make someone else's arrogance explode back in their faces, myself included. Pride resolves itself. If you act high and mighty and get wiped the floor with in a hot debate, then you'll be muzzled by your own embarassment before long. Contrariwise, if you wipe said floor with others, then it's your damn good right to be arrogant. Also, I strongly disagree with your theory that arrogance doesn't help in making others see your point. Believe it or not, I used to be an idealistic politically correct debater too (by which I mean that I threw tantrums if my opponent acted all cocky towards me). My arrogant opponents back then showed me just how ridiculous my points of view were back then, and I'm still grateful they did it in such a way. Their insights wouldn't sink in unless they were hammered in, and it'd be absolutely mulish to believe that I'm a stand-alone case in this. The studies are solid enough, but finding causality is a difficult thing indeed without degenerating into conjecture and storytelling. It's a common woe for many kinds of study, not just the ones on piracy. An unfortunate example would be studies on phylogeny, which are often at risk of shots in the dark. Further investigation is mostly needed. That being said, not knowing the mechanism is not a reason to reject or ignore data we already have.
I meant everyone who claims to be protective and selfless.
It's been from "Was Sora justified?" that we've opposed each other in a debate. A real shame we never got to finish that one. I don't really...
Not helping them isn't the same as hurting them. They'd make no money off me, but that would be no different from someone who doesn't care for video games at all. Not if you only pirate what you can't/wouldn't buy. (Disclaimer: I don't actually pirate games. Not because of a moral standard; it's just that I hardly get to finishing the games I already own). Protect them with what? Copyright laws? Don't make me laugh. What kind? I might download their CD. Spoiler Just kidding. Fixed. And if calling you out on your questionable ways of argumentation is considered a personal attack, then what has this butthurt world come to? Reasons which still aren't reasons as far as I'm concerned. You claim to refute our arguments while you do nothing of the sort. It's cute when you try though. Yes, I realize the example was horrible. The gist of it was that if I were the "victim" of an illegal activity, yet would only benefit from the outcome, I wouldn't mind a bit. Can't see how anyone would. Even if piracy would be an unethical crime, it's still vastly different from theft. Theft removes the original from public access while piracy makes a copy of it. I once bought the only copy of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne from a game store. It was a rare find in my country, and I'm still proud of owning and playing it. If someone were to have stolen it before I got it, I would have never gotten the chance to play it, and may not have heard of the Shin Megami Tensei series altogether. But if someone were to have seen it lying there and went home to download it, the game would still be there for me or anyone to buy (in fact I'd have benefited from him/her pirating it). The store/game company/etc. could also still make money from it. Thus, theft affects more people than piracy and in costlier ways, so I will not have you refer to it as such.
Author is slightly drunk They don't get hurt if the pirates are people who wouldn't buy the game regardless. For what it's worth, the pirates may be impressed by its quality and just may buy upcoming products of that company. If piracy would actually lead to a (steep) decrease in sales, then people would "get hurt" and your argument would have made sense, but like Slaughtermatic tries to convey, nothing seems to point out that it does. And they won't get their hours of work back, regardless of whether someone actually buys the damn thing or not. "This argument doesn't quite suit me, so I'll just say it's biased. Am I smart yet?" The very least you could do to back up your confidence is to find a study with real people that proves the exact opposite. Either you didn't look for one (in which case your arrogance is inappropriate) or you didn't find any (in which case your arrogance is also inappropriate). Nobody ever said that they used that as an excuse, as far as I've read. Thanks for lockpicking a door that was already open though. And even though you're right, if the aforementioned points stand (which they do, since as far as I'm concerned, you don't have an argument), then it doesn't matter. If someone hacked my bank account to deposit money, then believe it ot not, I wouldn't quite sue 'em. Keep telling yourself that. Meh, I buy and pirate music, and I go to concerts (read: pay for them). They make money off me, more so than off most of my peers (although I realize that's not an argument on itself). Somehow I don't feel like a villain. In fact I chuckle at the thought of it. We debate precisely because we believe we are knowledgeable and the others ignorant. We respect knowledge but not the lack thereof.
I can't be arsed to register on yet another social networking site and build and update a contact list all over again. Facebook does the job for me. Whichever one is better doesn't matter; I promised myself to just ignore whatever comes after Facebook.
I'm not sure who I'd die for, if anyone. I like to tell myself that I'm not particularly clingy to life, that my self-exteem is low enough to deem someone else's life above my own, and that death doesn't scare me because I won't even know it happened afterwards. I may be lying to myself about any and all of those though. I honestly don't know. I won't make the half-assed assumption that I know myself like the back of my hand; I've surprised myself too often already. Everyone probably thinks they are though.
You're all still here, which means you value your life in one way or another (even if it is only for others' sake). Life doesn't suck until you lose your reason(s) for valuing it completely, at which point you wouldn't be posting here anymore. I sell games that I don't like one bit. I delete music I have no love for. I sever ties when they turn too sour for my taste. I keep the others. The gameplay may be clunky but the story may be compelling. The vocals may sound awful but the guitar solo may be outstanding. My friend may be a jerkass but at least a funny one at that. They may be full of flaws, but they don't "suck" as long as they serve their function. Life is pretty much the same, really.
Righteous Kill The twist didn't "wham" me as much as I'd hoped. In fact it was rather predictable.
How so? Which ones? Ironically humans are arguably the only species that don't just kill for their survival. Do you honestly think the ozone layer is the only problem Earth has to deal with? Thanks for agreeing with us but your post could have been a little more thoughtful.
