Since we’re all been tripping all over ourselves in Great Debates trying not to get ourselves banned for our reactions to this particularly touchy OP, I figured I’d start the Pit thread to keep us sane.
The Thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=124537&perpage=50&pagenumber=1
The OP: pluralgravity
Have at it.
Esprix
he’s been smoking Dirty Tina.
Twisty: If ‘Dirty Tina’ is an extremely potent mix of crack and Draino, I’m right with you. (What is Dirty Tina, by the way? I steer clear of slang in general.)
[spontaneous channel of Shakespeare]
What a piece of work is pluralgravity! how lacking in reason! how limited in faculty! in bile and spittle how annoying and deplorable! in posting how like a turd! in apprehension how like a slug! the pitstain of the fora! the bad joke of the animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of crack? shit delights not me: no, nor illogic neither, though by my parody I seem to say so.
[/spontaneous channel of Shakespeare]
-Hamlet I ain’t. 
A man
A plan
A canal
Panama
I have this theory. Try to follow me.
I think that people like plural and brutus and others who insist that All Our Problems[sup]tm[/sup] would be solved if everyone were monogamous (preferably heterosexual) and moral and uptight… I mean upright… citizens and all…
Aren’t getting any sex.
Not only aren’t they getting any, but they’re completely incapable of getting any. That’s what sets them apart from the people who choose to be celebate, or the ones that are simply going through a dry spell. No, they recognize that there’s no way in hell they’re ever going to get laid. So, since chastity has been forced upon them, they use their frustration to make miserable the lives of others.
I’m reminded of something Mr. Kitty said once about a friend who is the most undersexed person I’ve ever met in my life. I truly feel sorry for her husband. I mentioned, after a particularly turbulent period in her life, that perhaps she should consider antidepressents. Mr. Kitty looked at me in horror and said “No! Then she’ll be going to other people’s houses and making them stop having sex!”
It’s just a theory. But perhaps I’m right…
-BK
Oh well, sadly there are many asses like him in this world.
Thank you, bobkitty, for that perfect example of an ad hominem argument…Timmy
[ul][]**Debating the desirability of a vaccine that would benefit forty million people – worth it?[]Oxygen for people displaying pluralgravity’s sociopathic lack of empathy – worth it?[/ul]**An unqualified “no” on both points from this punter, at any rate. :rolleyes:
That’s what this thread is all about, Timmy.
“Dirty Tina” is the inventive mixture of Crack and Crystal Meth.
Yummy.
I care.
When I went back to the thread to scan through it, I was saddened by the complete disregard of the lives of others exhibited by some of the posters.
What’s that Lassie? Timmy got lost?
bobkitty: I don’t get any sex either, so let’s watch the whole chimerical cause and effect notion! 
From that thread, in response to me calling him ignorant, pluralgravity said
Fuck. You. The only way you’d get me sitting on your lap is to muffle the sound of you talking out of your arse, you fucking weasel.
I didn’t understand that comment… what is supposed to be wrong with you, Francesca? Was there some cryptic reference to another thread that I wasn’t aware of or what?
I can see why the OP in that thread is touchy. Putting aside whatever the poster’s motivation was, the issue is rather sensitive. It is hard for people to divorce the morality issue from the causality issue. When somebody says that most cases of AIDS are contracted due to behaviours that could have been easily abstained from, somebody immediately reacts as if those behaviours had been morally attacked.
That may be the case with that thread’s OP, but it is not necessarily the case with others making that argument. To assert that one’s actions caused one to contract a disease is not equivalent to saying that it’s that person’s fault he/she has the disease, because fault carries a moral connotation.
If the scarcity of resources available for medical research forces this sort of decision upon the world, people need to leave their moral worldviews out of it. People should not make moral valuations of behaviours that are causes of contracting AIDS. Likewise, those on the other side of the debate should avoid committing the genetic fallacy by saying “I know why these people are making this argument, they’re dirty homophobic bastards, so their argument is wrong.”
Of course anyone ought to desire a vaccine that would save lives. The issue is whether we desire our limited resources to be directed at development of a vaccine for one disease or another disease. If I only have the resources to save life “A” or life “B”, am I lacking empathy when I choose one or the other? I don’t think so. That issue, like any worthy issue, can be debated without moral overtones on either side.
As for the substantive issue, I abstain. I personally oppose the idea of artificially “allocating” resources, as I am an advocate of the free market even in the field of medicine, so I neither support nor oppose directed research in one field or another. If there are private investors willing to fund the research and scientists willing to do the research then it’s none of my business whether they research an AIDS vaccine, a cure for breast cancer, or how to make spiffy aluminum helmets for tree squirrels.
duh eris…she had the gall to criticise him! that means she’s too gross to have sex with!
don’t you get anything?
sheesh.
:smack:
Congratulations, pluralgravity. You are the subject of my first flame.
ahem
Go fuck yourself, you vomit-encrusted, puss-drinking, face-slappingly juvenile, maggot-munching, three-toed, ear-wax sniffing, cow-sweat drinking, toad-abusing, rat-wanking, Sesame Street-hating, exercise bike-sniffing, advertising executive-admiring, bizarrely troubling excuse for a human being.
I wonder if you’ve entertained your wife, children, grandchildren and other descendants with your enlightened views on the deserved fate of gays, junkies, Africans and women-married-to-faithless-irresponsible-fuckwits.
By the way, leave my girlfriend alone.
I thank you all for your attention. Except you, pluralgravity. You can fuck off.
[quote]
By the way, leave my girlfriend alone.**
For clarification purposes, that’d be me. We’re a charming couple.