AkagiRitsuko comments

If the US wants to protect its citizens from such attacks, it shouldn't focus on tightening security but rather on avoiding the temptation to stick its nose into everyone else's business.

If the US wants to play god, if its economic and military might afford it the confidence to act as a god, then it should do so with a precise plan, a clear and ordered morality, and the readiness to go all in on what may be a poor hand should that morality lead it to such a point. Its Western ethnocentrism is not appreciated by anyone if it such a value system only serves the valuer.

Simply folding every time the odds of success don't look good whilst still persisting to play is only going to piss off the other players who must gamble to develop in a world that has modernised and developed a hundred times faster than they.

The fact of the matter is that the US wears the mask of the virtuous savior but only acts when it would stand to gain money or when inaction would result in a loss of money. It would probably stop making so many enemies if it either committed itself to some kind of genuine effort to assist nations in need or simply stopped interfering halfheartedly.

It's a terrible song. Gangnam Style was catchy and the video was amusing. It was a worthwhile parody, this new song is just decadent.

Bellpeppers → Japan: bribe = US: lobby

Perfect comment.

It's a good plane, if it wasn't it would have been canceled. Yeah, like the 787. ( ´・‿-)

Of course, if a similar service done by cute girls is started somewhere, western audiences get all angry and accuses everyone of misogyny or sexism or even modern soft prostitution. Indeed. If there is no objection from Western observers or feminists to this phenomenon, men are obviously assumed to be capable of deciding to use their bodies to make money by appealing to a target audience and supplying to a demand. If Westerners or feminists were to object to women doing the same thing, they would be implying that women cannot make such a decision themselves and are being manipulated without their knowledge, that women are too stupid or naive to wilfully manipulate the same demand-opportunity and must instead be the victim of the big bad lecherous men.

Even oh-so-intellectual feminists sometimes fail to realise that by trying to protect the rights of women they act like women have no brains or power.

China is a rich kid bully. It isn't respectful, wise or trustworthy, it is courted by some for its wealth and others simply out of fear. The bully is typically a coward, and even a bully of genuine strength has only to be faced with a united front of previous or potential victims and it will be beaten.

If China has a legitimate claim on the islands, it should conduct itself with more dignity. If not, it should stop trying to intimidate its neighbours as it only throws its insecurities and paranoia into sharp relief. As in the case of the Falklands disputed between Great Britain and Argentina, has anyone given consideration to what the actual residents of the islands desire?

This man ruined Chanel's aesthetics and sold out. Such decadent luxury without artistic style is empty, disposable and sickening.

Science, medicine, politics--any aspect of human society that requires rational, objective judgement--must by this definition be secularised. Faith is personal, private and detrimental to the advancement of the species in anything but a spiritual regard.

I am not saying that there is no merit in exploring or enhancing one's spirit, but spiritualism/religion doesn't aim to preserve life; in nearly all cases, religious or spiritual beliefs lessen the emphasis on this life and help individuals accept suffering and death as necessary steps along a finite path to something better than this life.

Spiritual people will not see the good in circumventing traditional ethical restrictions on scientific [esp. medical] research for the sake of preserving life because, in their eyes, this corporeal life is insignificant. It is not for a spiritual person to stand in the way of such research when it is in the interests of all the people who do value their material survival above everything else, which is just about everyone who is remotely doubtful or entirely critical of ideas like an afterlife, god, heaven, reincarnation, or of any kind of psychological/conscious existence post-mortem.

Returning to the matter at hand, if parents believe their child may make a miraculous recovery, they must believe in miracles. If they believe in miracles, do they not also believe in other spiritual concepts like the immortality of the soul? Do they not believe that, if their child's physical body is so utterly impaired, to keep the soul bound to it is simply imprisoning it and perpetuating its suffering?

If the parents do not believe in miracles, but rather in medical fact and pragmatism, the rational choice is to give the organs to someone with a higher chance of actually surviving as a functional human being and either having another child after mourning their loss or taking solace in the fact that their child's death gave life to another.

The reason why doctors are trained to be objective is in order to make ethically difficult decisions. The reason why doctors are usually not the attending physician to their family members is to avoid subjective dilemmas caused by emotional distress. Subjectivity compromises good decision-making and is often characterised by irrational thought.

The biggest problem here is that if the problem in the eyes of society is the reluctance of parents to sacrifice their child's minuscule chance for life, then there must be an implicit obligation to make such a sacrifice and this would make one wonder: by this logic, should we not simply breed humans by a method of cloning, keep them in a state of perpetual hibernation and sensory deprivation, and simply harvest them for the organs we require? They would not be individuals, they would have no parents who might be attached to them, there can be no conflicts of interest and there could be an enormous surplus of organ donations. Thousands of lives would be saved and without the sacrifice of anyone who could be considered truly alive or cognizant. But why should these clones have fewer rights than normal humans? Should we not also breed a working class and all live like kings?

Since this is obviously a morally horrific concept, is it truly right to think of brain-dead children in the same way? As husks just waiting to be harvested by people with a better shot at life?

Its popularity is forced in the UK. I am indifferent to the phenomenon itself, but judging Japan for not latching onto the latest trend is like persecuting the quiet kid at a party for not caving into peer pressure to take drugs. Sometimes it's wise to abstain.

Buddhism isn't about worship at all. It is the process of perfecting the self through selflessness. Westerners understand it as a religion but it really is a misnomer. Buddhism revolves around the subject rather than a deity, and it revolves around the subject, the individual, through the opposite of worship. It is easier to compare true Buddhism to philosophy, to a form of secular idealism.