h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I never said Lewinsky was squeaky clean. But you won't make anyone believe (including yourself) that it was anyone but Clinton who called the shots. If you'll forgive the unfortunate metaphor.

Of course you're sore about the latest derailment of a Democrat project, and I agree with you that the US needs it. But the party itself created the risk of losing to another idiot by putting up a very uninspiring candidate in Gore, and Bill's indiscretion tipped the balance.

Face up. It was your own side's fault you lost. The incumbent had feet of clay; the candidate...
* tap tap *
...yup, substantially more than just the feet.

If you play badly enough, you can lose to anybody.

Another one of the ironies of this discussion, is that we've got the best Democratic candidate you could ever dream of over here. Absolutely correct political credentials, and near-perfect image for US consumption. Just a shame Tony Blair has a job already, and isn't a US citizen.

But what you call liberal, we call moderate.


I'm still trying to figure out how to get McCain in the White House. Or maybe Max Baucus. He'd make a good president, and it would be nice not to have an easterner in the White House (California is implicitly *NOT* the West, mind you).

Someone just said :
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Me and my colleagues get around the world a bit, and you should know that sympathy and friendship towards America has never been higher. This time last year I even saw Red Chinese engineers tearfully embracing Americans.

There are some unrepresentative ideas in h2g2 sometimes, and some big egos that don't always think about other people's feelings when they want to sound clever. Don't let them get to you.

Branding people with their country's politics, yeah, I know what you mean. I've had fingers poked in my chest for everything from Irish internment to poisonous beef to Sinking the Belgrano to setting up the World's First Concentration Camp to not looking after Diana properly. When it happens, I grit my teeth and remember that I'm prone to it too. Like suggesting to a Russian that his side was in the wrong in Chechnya, only to learn that the guy's brother was holed up there with bullets flying even as we spoke.

You know what the finest thing in this world is? It's people who make the effort to spread understanding, so that others can see the world through their eyes. We don't all have to agree, but just to know how things look from another angle can make disagreement amicable, instead of dangerous.

Keep at it, MR. You're an Ambassador. Or, as Pin-the-Would-Be-Poet once said : A675182

Anyhow, less of that. You don't think Tone would make a good Democratic candidate? (Apparently one of Clinton's 'helpers' last week told the press that Blair had all of Bill's charisma plus a couple of improvements, such as incessantly getting his OWN wife pregnant)
I'm going to have to go read up on McCain and Baucus (the latter I admit to never having heard of). And I'll take a look at a map while I'm at it. I wouldn't have thought that Texas, or even Arkansas, were exactly Eastern. Georgia I concede is Eastern. Oh yeah, you said. The Californian guy who beat him doesn't count, right?

...and gimme a

Pin

Thanks for that, Pin.

Anyway, Shrub is eastern. Oh, he may think he's from a western state, but there's something very Washingon Beltway about the man. Now, Max on the other hand...
http://baucus.senate.gov/

I know, it's his official site, but I really think he's a good guy who actually knows his stuff, and frankly, I would like to think that a democrat who has won 5 elections in a predominately republican state might not be a bad candidate.

Can't reach that server after several tries, but I've looked around a bit. Very little mention on European sites. Seems OK for a politician, but the step from Senator to Candidate is probably impenetrable to anyone not living in the US.
I guess all these folksy guys in the White House were folksy even before they got there, yeah?

Isn't it a little unfair to apparently characterise "Washington Beltway" as Eastern? I have no basis except what I've read, but I've always assumed that "Inside the Beltway" = another planet entirely.

The Washington story that really is hot over here is the sniper. How's the gun lobby over there downplaying this one? Do you know the UK's Dunblane story, how schoolchildren shootings lead directly to a ban on keeping handguns?

You interested in the "right to bear arms" as a conversation topic? I should say that this issue is about Number Two in my list of things that most of the US has got most wrong. (Number One, incidentally, is capital punishment).

Both of these are topics about which I know less than I'd like. I guess I've been a bit squeamish about raising them with American friends on the whole.

Well, the gun control issue is a hot one. Now me, I have owned and shot guns since I was very young (my father gave me a 22 pistol when I was 6). The thing is, my dad is a gun collector, and a federally licensed gun dealer. Before I ever touched a gun, I had to know safety first. But my father and I have quit the NRA over differences. There is a point, Pin, where guns are no longer sport, but simply killing machines.

Case in point...why is it that 9mm's are available to the public? They shouldn't be. They are made specifically to wound and kill. Same with assault rifles -- if you aren't in the military, then why have them?

The fact is that I believe very strongly in the right to keep and bear arms. HOWEVER, I also believe there should be conditions: if there is no legitimate use for the gun other than killing someone, it should not be legal to the general public...this includes hollow point bullets, assault rifles, 9mm's, and any ammunition besides hollow point that is designed specifically to cause massive trauma.

On the other hand, shotguns and hunting rifles are perfectly legitimate guns to own, as well a sport handguns like 22s.

I also think that ALL guns should be licensed, and that there should be a federal data base of gun registration, and when a gun is bought, sold, or stolen, it should be input as such into this data base, so that the gun can be traced IMMEDIATELY. Serial numbers can, at this point in time, be removed with acid or filing. I would like to see the serial numbers in more than one location. Perhaps in a location that if someone did, in fact, attempt to remove the number, it would render the gun unusable.

Guns really don't kill people. in the hands of responsible, law abiding citizens, guns are a good thing. It is the NRA and its immovable position that all guns, no matter how destructive they are, should be freely available to all that has created the problem.

First let me say that I heard within half an hour of that last post of mine that Jimmy Carter had won the Peace Prize. I hope that really pleased you, though I think it was a shame for Mr Carter that the Nobel guy made those remarks about the current administration.
Funny lot, Norwegians. I can't quite work out how the rest of us have allowed them to become self-appointed arbiters of human greatness. It's a bit like letting the Swiss look after most of the world's money, completely inexplicable.

I'd kind of guessed that growing up in Montana would mean you know guns. We're going to have to differ on this one. I agree completely that high-powered stuff has no place in civilian hands, but I have to go further than that.
I think Blair and Co. got this one about right in the UK. Sporting guns (by which I mean shotguns and hunting rifles) are OK, but must be licensed and traceable, and may not be stored within city limits. Any violent offence means unconditional disqualification from gun ownership, with very serious penalties for transgression. Handguns are totally banned except in licensed clubs, whose premises they may not leave.
You describe a 22 as a sporting pistol. I don't agree that there is such thing as a sporting pistol, except in the context of range target use which can be legitimately managed as above. Handguns are unsuitable weapons for field sports; why should they ever be out in the open?
Easy to conceal, and frighteningly easy to obtain and use, handguns seem to me to fuel a vicious circle of crime and public insecurity which plagues the USA.
You're technically right, of course, to say that guns don't kill people. But the people that kill people would find it a lot harder to do so if they couldn't hide guns on their person in the street.
I don't expect to win you over to my way of thinking on this one. Guns are part of your birthright, literally. I just hope they never do harm to someone you love, that's all
Bad note to end on, that would be, so I'll just add that you're not missing much in the Quiz. Last Q up, I did 90% of and they still gave it to the other guy. It must be a conspiracy!
Pin

Pin, when I said 22s were sporting guns, target shooting was what I meant. They're lousy for hunting!

And yes, they should be regulated the same. So perhaps we aren't too far apart. I just think the gun lobby has too much power to ever get weapons out of the hands of the people who use them to commit crime.

I also think that, unfortunately, a lot the problem with guns is that no one teaches anyone how to use them responsibly any more. My father is one of a dying breed, you know. Much of the US's problems with guns can be directly tied into such things as latchkey kids and single parents. Don't get me wrong...I think women and men should work if they want to. Where the problem falls is that while the government is busy spending millions to build new prisons, after school programs are being shut down for lack of funds. I am a strong believer in prevention. Teach them what guns do, and when someone hands them a gun, they aren't nearly as likely to kill someone with it.

And, just so you're aware, one of my good friends from college was killed in the WTC attacks. So maybe it isn't guns we should worry about.

No one I know has ever been shot. However, I did shoot someone once. A woman who lived down the hall broke into my apartment, screaming that her husband was going to kill her. We called the police, but before they got there, he came in brandishing an axe. I shot him in the leg to save our lives.

(Which may be why I think guns should be closely regulated, but legal)

Sorry about your friend in the WTC. I knew a couple of guys who died too. A whole different scale of things.

The guy with the axe, yeah. Sometimes, I guess, guns will save lives. But I'll always see that as the exception rather than the rule.

The only person I knew well who was hurt by a gun shot himself. I suppose he'd have found another way, so that doesn't prove much.

Guns beget guns, that's the irony here. People need them, people who are hardly trained to use them, because other people abuse them.

I just remembered a story which seems to be related to this idea, but I can't do the logic. There was a guy I used to work with who was notorious for not wearing his hard hat. He got hospitalised when something finally fell on his head. It was another guy's hard hat.

I think I should maybe leave it there. The thread about disgusting vegetables seems safer, somehow.

If you're worried about us getting into delicate areas, look at it this way...what am I going to do, come to your house and beat you up?!



So, what's not to like about the death penalty?

The simple answer to that question is that I don't believe in anyone's right to take another's life. Death is too high a price for any crime, and it's a price paid by the executioner as well as the criminal. Answering one murder with another diminishes us all.

At least that what my heart tells me. But in my more pragmatic moments, I'm a bit of a Benthamite. I try to understand and justify actions in terms of their total effect, for good or ill.

So let's hypothesise. Say one of the WTC hijackers miraculously escaped, and is found guilty of all those murders. Should he die? Now you have to weigh the pain and affront to a whole nation if he lives against this much more tenuous idea of the lessening of us all through his killing.

And it might surprise you to hear that this pathetic pinko agrees that he should die for his crime.

But here's the rub. There should be no pleasure, no sense of redemption through revenge in his death. Neither should be their any casual acceptance that he got what was coming to him. Every time a man dies in the name of our justice, we ought to search our hearts and repent.

I guess you know where Hemingway got the title for "For Whom the Bell Tolls From", yeah? Go back and read Donne's poem, and think hard about the awesome responsibility of dispensing justice.

If you don't like Donne, then here's a personal slant on it : A823141. The thing I don't like about the death penalty in America is the way that people take it so lightly, and in doing so often fail to see the two sides.

Lighten up, Pin. There's a more mischievous way of looking at this heavy subject, picking up on several earlier conversation strands.

Let's say I'm on trial for shooting you. Let's say you'd come to my home to beat me up.

In America (most States anyway) I wouldn't have a case to answer. But if it was somewow decided that I'd killed you without reasonable provocation, then it's possible that the court would decide to take my life away in punishment.

In Britain, I would definitely have to face court for starters (so would you have done, for leg-wounding the axeman, had you done it over here). A verdict of guilty of manslaughter would not be an impossibility (you know what that is? It's like unwilling killing, one notch down from murder). Even if I'd deliberately and callously killed you, though, and even if I'd then gone out and shot a few neighbours too, there'd be no way I could hang.

Perverse, isn't it? Probably neither system is right. The one thing I'm sure of is the earlier point. That judgement is an awesome responsibility, and it takes its toll. If you think you can judge your peers lightly, then you ain't fit to do so.

...There. I wasn't too squeamish about discussing it, was I? (and someday when you do come round, I promise not to shoot you if you promise not to beat me up)
Pin

Alright, we have a deal. I won't beat you up, and you won't shoot me.

I don't know what to make of the death penalty, frankly. I think that unless there are many witnesses, and you confessed freely, death should be off the table. There's something about using all of that circumstantial evidence to convict someone to death that just makes me nervous. And there are plenty of cases over here of people being put to death that shouldn't be...people who were insane at the time of the crime, mentally deficient people (if your i.q. is below a certain level, do you really understand what you did?), and those who were under the influence of mind altering substances.

But yes, there are those who should be put to death. Anyone who abuses their child to death, yep. Wife beaters who kill their wives, you bet. Gang bangers who kill innocent bystanders, oh yeah. Serial killers, too.

So I am conflicted. Does it deter crime? No. What it does is make sure that we know we are safe (yeah, right) or at least make us feel like we are. And sometimes, we execute people because frankly, incarcerating them, and paying for it with tax dollars, is ridiculous.

(Although the reason I have issues with prison-happy government is entirely separate from the death penalty.)

Have you read Beccaria? His death penalty argument has been used since the 15th or 16th century. Basically, he says that any society that cannot find a better way of dealing with criminals than to kill them is barbaric, and must change if it is to survive.

Something to think about, that.

Broadly agree with all that. Repelled by the tax-efficient punishment bit, but see what you're getting at.

<>

This is maybe the most interesting point, because it's another example of a declining fund of public acceptance, like the earlier issue of Jews and the Holocaust.

The events around Washington/Virginia at the moment must be making people wonder. Certainly they completely discredit the idea of the death penalty as a deterrent. In the UK around the time of the ending of the death penalty (this was early 50s) public perception actually flipped from deterrence to provocation. Meaning : we used to believe that people might be deterred from murder for fear of hanging; now we believe that the threat of hanging will provoke them, ie they might as well be hanged for killing a few dozen people rather than just one person.

This perception might have been politically insinuated, but circumstantial evidence also supported it. Its no coincidence that Britain first confronted problems of serial gunmen at the same time that it was dealing with thousands of demobbed and shellshocked WWII soldiers with poor job prospects.

This is all related to the retaliation fear that might be growing post-9/11, ie : They hit us hard, we hit them harder - but now what are they going to do next?

Maybe, just maybe, the US is about to experience a similar opinion tide to Britain's in the 1950s. The people who are the problem are screwed up enough to characterise themselves as martyrs. You can't punish a would-be martyr with death. You can only encourage him by threatening it.

Well, yes, there is that whole idea, in for a penny, in for a pound, which has created mass murderers. After all, no matter how many people you kill, you can still only die once.

When I say that I don't like supporting prisoners with my tax dollars, I mean that I think my money can be better spent on deterence programs. After-school programs, in particular. Also, drug rehab programs instead of prison. The three strikes law, as well as the mandatory minimum sentencing for drug sales in this country are nuts.

I think part of it, too, is that prisoners tend to have better lives than those who are economically disadvantaged (the poor). They have a roof over their heads, three meals a day, tv, exercise equipment, access to free health and legal care...it's a lot more than poor folks have. Which is why, believe it or not, I am totally supportive of Joe Arpaio in Arizona. Make jail HARD, make it unpleasant. No tv, no privlidges...it's a hell of a lot more of a deterent than what we have now.

Mmmm...

You could be right about a tough prison regime + long sentencing being a more effective deterrent than the death penalty. What troubles me about prisons, though (UK ones anyway) is whether they do remotely rehabilitate criminals, or just harden them.

There are occasional moments in the history of various cultures where they seem to have hit on something in the alternative punishment line. Transportation was a half-decent idea while it lasted, I always feel. The usual Brit remark on that one is that we should have left the proto-Australians here and set sail for Botany Bay ourselves.

Castration is another fascinating idea. Now we really are talking serious deterrence. And, if inflicted, there's an effective pacifying influence too. Probably have a little trouble getting it past the European Court of Human Rights, though...

On a more serious note, I'm sure we're all looking at the pictures from Bali in dismay and incomprehension. How can you possible punish the perpetrators of that? It's wishful thinking, but maybe a future Kofe Annan might one day declare that anyone prepared to create carnage in the name of their god is an enemy of humanity.

You religious? I guess we might as well set light to that issue too. Do the whole set, sort of...

Pin

You mean talk about ALL of the polite unmentionables? Well, certainly.

here goes.

I am religious, but in a very odd way. I believe in God, but the God I believe in is more akin to George Lucas' Force than any anthropomorphic, limited God of hellfire, damnation or love. I tend to believe that God is not in any way shape or form anything like us, but that somehow, we as human beings contribute energy to something that is greater than the sum of the parts, and that's what I call God.

I think Jesus and Mohammed both existed, and both of them were probably pretty radical guys, and enlightened for their time. I also think that if either one of them could come back (because I don't believe either one was bodily assumed into heaven), he'd be pissed at what passes for what's happening in his name. I don't think Jesus is the Son of God any more or less than I think every person plays a part in God, and I don't think Mary was a virgin...I think she participated in a sacred orgiastic rite in which all children conceived at it were called the children of God.

I don't go to church, mostly because I haven't found one I like. Don't really care about dogma, although I do like Anglican, Catholic and Greek Orthodox services, because frankly, when in church, I like the pomp and circumstance. Otherwise, why go?

I also believe strongly in mysticism, although I think the notion of uniting with the Godhead is a bit anachronistic. I think it's more of an unfolding of the awareness that everything in the universe is intimately connected in some way or another. If I were living in the Middle Ages, I would have been burned as a heretic, although of what particular sect, I am not sure. Perhaps a Waldensian, or maybe a Cathar, although not as a perfect of either...I like food too much.

And you, dear?

Hi MR
I thought about this one a while. Needed a considered answer.
You explain what you believe in, but not why you believe in it. So my next question to you is 'Why?'
But here's my answer to yours.
For as long as I've lived, I've never felt religious. I've never felt a need to call on anything beyond my understanding or on anyone beyond my reach. I've never understood the need to seek a God, or to pray.
Some of my best friends are devout, and practice different religions, including Christianity (Protestant and Catholic), Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism. They're all good people, but I don't want understand what they mean when they talk about faith.
I've always declared myself to be agnostic, but over the years my agnosticism has shifted from "willing to be shown that God exists" to "frustrated by the impossibility of proving that God doesn't".
God is eternally uncertain. The one thing I am certain of is that the organised Churches are as ungodly as anything ever could be.
These are views that have got me into trouble before, in both h2g2 and elsewhere, but since you've asked, I'll elaborate :
There almost certainly is a God, in the sense that there is an agency responsible for the workings of the Universe, and that this agency is beyond mankind's understanding.
There almost certainly isn't a God, in the sense of a being who created us in its own image, and with whom we can somehow communicate and ultimately "come to".
Scientists are pretty arrogant, believing that they can reason such a God out of existence. But the ultimate heretics were the primitive men who defined God in human terms in their religions, closely followed by the modern-day practitioners of these religions.
The Western set (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) are the worst of the lot in this respect. They venerate long-dead prophets who have little to teach us that has present-day relevance. Worse, They admit no interpretation and prescribe a way of living which harms the planet and its people (if you want an example of this, think about the rightness of a religion that forbids birth control in a world where most of the problems ultimately derive from overpopulation). They have no real function in the modern world except to focus and articulate malice, making them the principal fuel of war and terrorism. They delude people and stifle rationalism. They create false expectations of salvation and forgiveness which diminish individual responsibility. They obstruct change in a world that must change to survive.
In short, Western religions not only have nothing to do with God, but they are the principle force for Evil (in its real sense) in the world today. Any religion that even hints that the persecution of non-believers is acceptable should be proscribed. Whilever such religions exist and attract adherents, the world would be a better place without any concept of God.
One thing that really depresses me is that I've expressed these views in debate, and people have interpreted them as anti-Islamic (or sometimes anti-Semitic) without any mention of a particular religion from me. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing that makes Christianity better than Islam is relative decadence. Islam is still at the level of maturity of medieval Christianity, ie the witch-burning phase, metaphorical or literal. I find it hard to avoid a conclusion that many adherents of Islam are hot-headed, intolerant and dangerous. But the best I can find to say about Modern Christianity is that it's a shadow of its former self, and so has lost much of its destructive capacity. And Judaism is an eternal enigma, almost an inferiority complex in the form of a divine creed. Some of the Jews I know are so highly strung that I'm convinced they'd be better off denouncing their birthright. But Jews rarely see it like that. They almost seem to consider themselves as a distinct and immutable species, for good or ill. Truly weird.

In summary, there are terrible things happening in the world today, and so far as I can see they are all being perpetrated by people who profess a belief in God. Atheists are more reasonable; they cannot fall back on an irrational belief in a glorious hereafter.

Wooh. Glad I got that of my chest. Just an opinion, you understand

I'm married to an atheist.

And most of your "opinion" coincides with mine, so we're in agreement there.

Why do I think there's a God? Because we use some laughably small part of our brains, and the other 3/4ths of it must be doing something....might as well be communicating with the divine. I don't think organized religion knows what God is, that's for certain. I figure if you take an omnipotent force and hem it in with all sorts of strictures like "jew" or "christian" or "monolithic" the omnipotency is gone, and you're left with something that resembles a really powerful human being (i.e., Jesus). Mohammed and Jesus were real people with radical ideas. We'd call them lunatics now, or terrorists.

If there's only one thing I know about the force that I call God (in a shorthand sort of a way), it's that God is ineffable. Human beings are finite, and God is not. Nuff said.

Yeah, I've been told I'm anti-semitic, anti-american (God is an American, did you know that?! I didn't) and all sorts of names. The one I like best is blasphemer. I really think that's sort of an odd word....it makes me laugh. What it really means is that I can think outside the strictures of a dogma.

ASIDE: Speaking of Dogma, did you see the movie? I spent much of it laughing my head off. Quite funny, although Alanis Morrisette as God just didn't do it for me.

And now back to the regularly scheduled topic:

I think all three of the main western traditions are full of bullsh**. Jews need to get over the whole victimization thing. Yes, okay, so Romans kicked your butts. They kicked the Gauls' butts, too, and you don't hear them dragging on about it 2000 years later. And the Holocaust was bad...but it was bad for Catholics, homosexuals, independent thinkers....damned near everyone who had a brain in their head. The Spanish Inquisition was run by the Church in collusion with the Habsburgs...and look at Carlos!

The Christians also need to lose that whole apostolic mandate thing. Get over it, not everyone will convert, and they shouldn't. Also, the Pope is a man, and therefore fallible. Now if they put a woman in there.....he, he, he! One of the first things Jesus ever said was that there were many rooms in his father's mansion...get it? And the thought that Paul was some sort of divinely inspired messenger! The man was a misogynistic, homophobic, self-hating putz. As was Augustine, and Aquinas. And all the other fathers of the church. Jerome was evil, Origen just confused.

Islam...now there's the interesting one. For three hundred years, it flourished, and encouraged art and music and math and poetry and thought and philosophy....and then suddenly someone decided that that was it, no more. The idjtihar (probably spelled wrong, but it means the "doors of interpretation") were closed. And now they stone women to death, and force people to live lives of silent terror and fear. Lovely.

I don't know that the Eastern religions have it any better, though. Indian caste society was built upon the Vedas (or was it the Upanishads, and held people down. Modern India says that it has abandoned castes, but don't believe it....it's just less noticable.

And as attractive as Buddhism seems, there's something intrinisically wrong with a religion that demands that you deny the body. It's western dualism wrapped in a warm and fuzzy wonton, if you ask me. And Western buddhists always try to make Buddha a god-like figure....so what's the point?

(See, honesty just brings out the catty bitch in me)

You've evidently studied world religion more thoroughly than I have. I've never managed to work up much enthusiasm for the field.

The Western ones, I can't really see as being philosophically distinct. They're at different points in their lifecycle, but that's the only real difference. Interesting point about early Islam being creative, and then getting stifled. It's arguably a natural course for churches to regress that way. Churches are run by people who lack imagination, resent imagination, suppress imagination.

One point we clearly differ on is that you seem to get some lift from collective worship. It leaves me cold. I can't really deal with other people being buoyed up by an experience that I see as utterly synthetic.
I got into an argument with a girlfriend once - she was appalled when I praised a magazine article that said that religious euphoria was as ugly and emphemeral as shooting up heroin. Brave to say it, but I still think that's basically true.

You're right about sectarianism wringing the mysticism out of religion, too. Without mysticism, there really is no appeal whatsoever.

No, I haven't seen Dogma. To be honest, I know nothing about it. Alanis Morrisette I just know as one of the better sounds to emanate from elder daughter's bedroom. Seems a slightly incongruous God.

A female Pope? The zillion-to-one odds are actually going out, of course. Half the world suffers in self-doubt, emasculated, gradually realising the travesty of its supposed superiority. Men are going to get nasty and defensive before they're finally brought down, Madam.

Maybe that's the next topic. Just how many of the world's ills are down to the fact that men are in charge, and losing their grip?

Have to run to get the kids, so let me think on this, and I will get back to you.