Recent content by Spiny Norman

Prejudice against smokers is one of the few prejudices that is acceptable in public. Some may argue that fat people prejudice is still acceptable but if that is the case it is still much less acceptable than smoking prejudice. People feel justified saying that smokers are either stupid or low...

If it is assumed that changing one's appearance and body in general on a genetic level is as easy and safe as changing clothes, than I would certainly go ahead with it. I probably wouldn't do anything drastic to start, maybe just eye color and hair in addition to the general long life...

He did say that if it was purely for appearance than no. All the things you listed were cosmetic as well as mechanical changes to the body. Changing eye color is purely cosmetic but getting a human version of cat eyes is cosmetic but also provides actual measurable changes to the body's...

I agree with the first part of your statement, as long as the teacher stops there and doesn't keep repeating it. However, I disagree with the second part of your statement. I think a World Religions class is very useful for students (generally High School age). Religion is a large part of our...

The truth is most of these blanket policies are in place for fear of lawsuits. School districts are very afraid of students feeling that the teacher is imposing different beliefs on students. I have to say though, that the addition of God to the pledge of allegiance is total Red Scare paranoia...

The issue is not a teacher who is proselytizing to students but if a teacher is allowed in any circumstances to reveal his religious beliefs. If it is relevant to the lesson or if students ask out of simple curiosity and the teacher feels comfortable informing them, it would seem OK that that...

No, never. A teacher is in a position of authority that is exploitative. It's the same reason relationships between teachers and students are made illegal, because of the positions of power between teacher and student. Just giving a teachers personal beliefs is not exploitative. If they make...

The Jupiter missiles in Turkey were actually a real thing. They were in place shortly before the USSR started moving missiles into Cuba. It was one of the reasons that the USSR thought they should install their own missiles in Cuba. Pretty cool that the movie is actually kinda working with...

I fail to see how Bin Laden's humanitarian rights were violated. He was an international fugitive from justice who was killed after firing on troops that were trying to apprehend him.

Liberal generally refers to lack of social control with economic control. Objectivism is no social or economic control. They're not really opposites of each other. Many kinds of liberal could be seen as objectivism with some governmental economic control.

And the book he worked on before that was the illustrations for Gravity's Rainbow, but neither of those have any bearing on his D&D campaign setting. I think that Zak really has fantastic ideas for D&D that he puts in his campaigns. The problem is that it is really difficult to capture it in a...

Everyone loves a woman with a good C-section scar. Double points if they can make it clap.

The speech in no way is going to talk about health care or global warming. It is going to be a speech about education and how students should stay in school. "The goal of the speech and the lesson plans is to challenge students to work hard, stay in school and dramatically reduce the dropout...

It's a stupid over reaction that is being drummed up because fox news doesn't have anything better to do. The kids don't even have to go to the speech if they don't want to.