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To be fair, I'm published (poetry, long long ago), have written for a living, and am generally a pedant about grammar, and YET... I often screw up their/there/they're. Not that I don't absolutely know the difference, but something goes wonky between my brain and my fingers when I'm typing. Never hap...

Very good post G13 . One quibble: there are things one can do, and a wise person should do, to reduce the chance of being raped. For example, don't get drunk with strangers and don't go walking along alone at night. The fact that such things should be avoided doesn't change the fact that, morally, t...

RedCelt is quite right. The literature on rape tends to suggest that opportunity is more important than allure. The rapist gets off on the act of rape , not the appearance or 'normal' appeal of the victim. Fundamentally, a rapist views women as sexually available by default, and what a woman is or ...

I think Hennessey 's point had more to do with cultural practices than religion, RedCelt . Attacking religious prejudice is a strawman. There are much better ways to attack the issue: For example, the crime data from Sweden... just because a group is over-represented in the prisons for a particular ...

With all due respect, I was also in HRH's year, and apparently in GO5 's as well. One of those facts is something I sometimes impress weak-minded people with at parties, guess which? About two weeks after I arrived in St Andrews HRH damn near ran me over on a bicycle. His security detail chose to sp...

And Gaddafi is a clusterfuck that we shouldn't be involved in. NATO/UN/Us have completely fucked up there. Oi! We only got involved at the behest of your government. And the French. I wouldn't expect you to blame your chaps, so why not lay it on the French? Just... this one's not a mess of our maki...

One theory that I have heard is that the Jews were not originally slaves in Egypt, but rather were military colonists settled on the frontier of the empire, in what is now the Sinai. The "Pharaoh" in the Bible 'enslaved' them by forcibly disarming them and incorporating them as subjects, i...

Heh, you're right. I just looked at the dates on the non-spam posts. Oops.

Way to sensationalise, Foo. Lived around dogs all my life, in the country. Never bothered the pick up the droppings in the yard (the yard being an acre and half). Probably stepped in more dog shit in my time than is proper, not to mention horse shit, deer shit, turkey shit, squirrel shit, etc etc. N...

Never underestimate the invigorating effect of arguing with your tutor. Rollicking disagreements loosen tongues.

Oh come now, haven't we all had similarly inane and embarrassing conversations with lovers? Right? RIGHT???

Hey! Not all of us Americans are rapid* anti-monarchists. I personally find the opinion, frequently held by my country-people, that the technical ability of any citizen to rise to power is the fundamental Good of a society. I doubt you'd find many serious political philosophers who would suggest as ...

Maybe.

Religion does deserve protection, gentlemen, because it falls under freedom of conscience. If you don't protect the right of individuals to have religious beliefs and to live their lives according to those religious beliefs, then you are placing arbitrary restrictions on everyone's right to believe ...

In more general terms, regarding the main point, I realise I approach this as an American. As such the problem looks like this to me: If the right of religious conscience is protected (and it's hard to see how the free exercise of religion can be protected if religious conscience isn't), then anti-d...

WQ and Jollytiddlywink - I do think you're being uncharitable to Bean. The formulation "Well, I know a [minority] and he/she says..." is usually suspect and rightly so, but I think you're reacting in general terms to a specific usage that is acceptable. First, in this case it wasn't used ...

Regulation creates complexities and paradoxes. Could a decision not be made that businesses providing lodging inside a proprietors private home fall into a special category? It seems pretty clear to me that instead of restricting rights and playing fast and loose with conscience, we could all just a...

Just goes to show that, in some things, the University isn't in this century. Or the last, for that matter.

I have to call this round for Wild Quinine so far. Pains me to do so since my position is somewhat further down the slippery slope than jollytiddlywink 's (though not as far as Hennessey 's) but good argument is good argument and I think he has you over a barrel, WQ, regarding the trustworthiness of...

I'd bet £100 nobody from St Andrews who posts on this board will ever commit a murder, if I'm wrong you can have it in packs of cigarettes and porno mags to share with your cell mates. There is no moral relationship between us and them, there is no debt owed by us to them, for anything. They have a...