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Originally posted by Joss Weatherby Sushi, you'll be happy, I debated between my two best offtopic subjects and I didn't choose circumcision this time!

Are you admitting that circumcision is most commonly a choice in general? I'm pretty sure you just insinuated that.

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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

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Originally posted by Joss Weatherby Sushi, you'll be happy, I debated between my two best offtopic subjects and I didn't choose circumcision this time!

LOL

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Originally posted by Joss Weatherby How is possessing a picture criminal though? With that logic any picture of any crime should be illegal because the victim didn't sign away their rights for distribution.

But why would you want to have possession of such pictures? Why fight for the right for people to own these type of pictures? I'm sure looking and having possession of such pictures could start a coded glitch in someones morals to the point they might want to stop buying these pictures and start being the picture taker. Just a natural progression I would assume. Just like most Djs eventualy want to start Remixing or Producing their own Music. And even though Djs might never do this progression they think about, that's for sure.

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But the subsequent collision of fools...
Well versed in the subtle art of slavery.

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Originally posted by Bierheld It appears to be true though, There are two reports by the Congressional Research Service that indicate he's right: 'Cigarette Taxes to Fund Health Care Reform: An Economic Analysis" ('94) 'The Proposed Tobacco Settlement: Who Pays for the Health Costs of Smoking?" ('98) There's more too but i don't feel like doing anymore tedious C+P'ing. Google will help you here.

Those reports are US based, in Australia the government pays for everything in terms of health care.

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Originally posted by narcism There is no way the tax meets the health care expenditure. If you just take cancer for example from diagnosis options are: surgery (costly & most often a lengthy stay), chemotherapy (insanely expensive) & radiotherapy (expensive). Added to that CT scans, PET scans, x-rays. Long hospital admissions, IV antibiotic's, medications ect ect which come's all out of the government's pocket.

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Originally posted by narcism Those reports are US based, in Australia the government pays for everything in terms of health care.

Yeah, I mean that its hard to say that the government pays for people's smoking. How much illness is SOLELY caused by smoking? It might be a lot, I'm not sure (so do correct me!), but I generally took it that smoking is more of a makes-everything-worse type thing than a cause-all-these-illnesses type thing.

Not to say its in any way good, but it seems to me like those arguments are saying that if nobody smoked all those illnesses would suddenly dissapear, and everybody would be healthy-- Smoking certainly helps out heaps of illness, but its pretty hard to say its the direct cause of many (excepting things like throat cancer, lung cancer, emphasyma (HOW2SPELL??) etc which is really rare to get if you're NOT a smoker)...

But yeah, if you smoke enough to get an illness caused by smoking it seems like you'd have payed for a lot of your treatment through tax by the time you get sick

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-Everything I Say is a Lie-

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Originally posted by EgosXII But yeah, if you smoke enough to get an illness caused by smoking it seems like you'd have payed for a lot of your treatment through tax by the time you get sick

Still doubt this greatly, not going to sit here and type figures and the resources you waste because of smoking. All im going to say is, the place where i work, has run out of g'ment funding for this year. Still two whole months left

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Originally posted by EgosXII But yeah, if you smoke enough to get an illness caused by smoking it seems like you'd have payed for a lot of your treatment through tax by the time you get sick

That is a very short sighted view because, first off like narc said its probably not the case that what you put in covers the entire cost of what you withdraw when you are sick, and if that is the case, the money you put in is not reserved for you, its already going, probably immediately to help people that are already sick. Not to mention I doubt the funds are 100% dedicated to just treatments for smoking related disease, so they are probably eaten up in a number of general funds.

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Originally posted by Desiderata But why would you want to have possession of such pictures? Why fight for the right for people to own these type of pictures? I'm sure looking and having possession of such pictures could start a coded glitch in someones morals to the point they might want to stop buying these pictures and start being the picture taker. Just a natural progression I would assume. Just like most Djs eventualy want to start Remixing or Producing their own Music. And even though Djs might never do this progression they think about, that's for sure.

I wasn't fighting for anyones rights by the way, its a thought experiment. I could have used euthanasia or something else, but the group here is pretty liberal and probably would already have fairly open opinions on it or opinions for it (and its not as an effective thought experiment when people are for the thing being argued). The topic I used is pretty much universally regarded as grotesque but none-the-less it can, like ANYTHING, be rationalized and the shades of gray can be argued, but it is very hard for people to drop the emotional pretext and consider them, that is why it is an effective experiment.

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Originally posted by Lews I don't really know. Clearly this won't stop anyone from smoking.

The cigarette companies started off by claiming this. They really went hard along the line of saying "it won't achieve anything, it's a waste of time" etc

If it wasn't going to do anything, why are they fighting it so hard?

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**Man I'm Pretty**

Who's Nou?

Nou = Joss Weatherby