I was reading this thing on Netscape about how some parents spank their kids, and it made me very sad. Some said it was needed to enforce rules, but I think it's really lazy parenting. I've never been hit by my parents in my life, and I've never done anything really bad at all. No drugs, sex, alcohol, comming home really late, anything. There was also this thing about how some people think teenagers should have to tell their parents if they want to get an abortion. That is a horrible, terrible rule. I still don't understand the anti-choice group: they seem to have this misconception that 1. a group of 500 cells is a thinking, feeling person and 2. all babies will have good lives. They won't. Many people don't seem to realize that children can not be raised only on love. They need at least 1 supportive, educated, employed, dedicated, prepared, intelligent parent, health care, food, shelter, clothing, dicipline, and education. To bring a child into the world and not be fully prepared to take responsibility for it is one of the worst crimes a person can commit in my opinion. I seriously think anti-abortion groups are so full of shit (if you couldn't tell). Perhaps I would have more respect for them if they were all strict vegans. Or if they stopped supporting capitol punishment. Then maybe they woudn't seem like such complete hypocrites. These are the same people who complain about teenage girls who are leeching off the welfare system. Ovbiously, if you force people with no income to raise kids, there is going to be a negative economic impact. I also hate the phrase "anti-life." Only a suicidal person is anti-life. I think the whole of Christianity has committed serious crimes against humanity, and those who blindly follow the bible need to open their eyes. I don't understand why many Muslims, Christians, and Jews all seem to hate eachother. THEY'RE ALL THE SAME FUCKING RELIGION. Really. The Koran, Old Testament, and Torah are EXACTLY THE SAME TEXT. They all even want to live in the SAME EXACTY CITY. It honestly makes no sense at all. Buddhism is the only religion that makes any sense what so ever, and much of the very little that I know about seems very confusing. I do think it's bad for some of the Muslims to want to kill every single Jew in existance. This is another reason why I think large, organized religions are detrimental to civilization. They always seem to end up with extreme points of view that are rather harmful. Think about it - the Spanish Inquisition, book burning of the Aztecs, genocide of the Incas, the degradation of women and gays, Crusades - all of these were started because of religion. I know there are many more, but I can not think of them at this moment. Christianity is really a pagan religion. For example, Jesus was really born in the Summer/Early Fall about 2000 years, ago, but around the 25th of December, there was a festival (called Saturnalia), that honored Mithras and the winter solstice. Easter just happenes to fall on the celebration for the spring solstice and the goddess Ester. Christianity has the holy trinity, which came from civilizations such as Egyptians, Indians, Japanese, Sumarians, Chaldeans, and Babylonians. The image of the Pieta came from a statue of Isis holding Horus, immaculate conception came from the birth of Romulus and Remus, and there are too many to list. Read here and here for more instances. It seems to have come from mostly the Egyptians and the Greeks/Romans. I regard book burning as a crime against humanity. It's so horribly wrong, and harmful to the future to completely eradicate any knowlege, no matter how werid/vulgar/unethical it seems at the time. Think of how much we could have learned from the Aztecs - the were able to predicts planetary movements, eclipses, the exact days in the year, with no astronomical instruments at all. Brilliant. I think the Israeli government comes off as highly arrogant and dense. Well, yeah, if you displace several thousand people off of the land that has been their family's home for a thousand years, then institute strict curfews on their daily lives and build a huge wall through their villages, people are going to be angry. And probably blow themselves up if they have no other weapons. And the United States supports this stupidity!! Bastards. If Israel didn't recieve the billions and billions of dollars that they do annualy from the Americans to fund their weapons programs, there would be alot less problems with the Palestinians. I find it ironic how the Jews were unhappy that they had no country for so many years, and they now don't seem to understand how this other ethinic group is unhappy at having no country. It is highly interesting that everyone is angry that Iran is supposedly building nuclear weapons, but no one mentions that Israel has some. Ovbiously if one country has them, the other ones around it will want nukes too. It happened in the cold war.