"We can be heroes" but I can't be bothered...

Hello folks!
Had a very interesting tutorial today for Communications and Media Research. We were doing an in class exercise on Discourse Analysis.
One text was from a Communications Journal where a Discourse Analysis had been done on the series 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer', which was very interesting!

The other papers were based on works by Judith Levine as someone promoting sex education and opposing views that abstinence should be the only form of contraception.

The main ideologies which popped up were of course related to sexuality and morals. This sparked an interesting debate as well as cast an eerie atmosphere over my tute group of 20 people. A fair few people stayed quiet and I commented to my friend that it should be easy to tell who has had sex! Of course the liberal among us stayed quiet as not to have our teacher think less of them, but a fair few of the religious folk had plenty to say.

Of course I do have standards, and I don't think I'd be to have sex before marriage. But this is a serious grey area for me. It leaves me feeling angry a lot of the time. Some take sex as just a bodily reaction which needs to be satisfied (which it pretty much is), which makes it meaningless in a grander scale. Now I don't want to sound like a self-righteous Bill O'Reilly hoe, enforcing my beliefs on everyone etc. but I can totally see the opposing viewpoint for this. Maybe I'm a hopeless (heavily emphasised) romantic but arghh! Where is society heading, without morals and many a child? The facts are there, 80% of teen pregnancies occur in homes that are low income in scale (I'll source this when I find my paper). The world is overpopulated as it is and society's problems are just getting bigger. When people go through problems, they say "hok, I'm going to stop and think about this". This is the problem with the planet, we've put ourselves in a position where we are no longer able to stop, and thus, we will not be able to solve any problems. I don't care if you've had pre-marital teen sex! Do we need to live in a sex-obsessed society?! It's holding humanity back from achieving our full potential. Hopefully we'll learn before we drown in a sea of people (which is already happening in many third world countries).

Given that, if there's one thing I cannot stand, it's the religious right. I do not mind when folks are religious. But isn't religion there to teach people to be caring and tolerant? It seems that the over-religious seem to bash on every single minority available. What is up with that?

I don't like how religion conflicts with science/technology. In light of Christopher Reeves' passing last week, it's good to highlight the battle over stem-cell research. All they are requesting is the use of infant stem cells. For the uninitiated, these are cells which contain the base cell sequence to create any healthy cell contained in that body and these are contained in the blood cells in and around the umbilical cord at birth. Of course, the umbilical cord is cut at birth and the blood and remaining cord is discarded. If the stuff is being discarded, why the hell is there a fuss over it? Nobody is getting hurt and it can only produce good. I want to see the religious right having to suffer through a loved one undergoing serious illness or injury and requiring stem cells in order to recover. Humans are meant to be the only being which can feel empathy, so why the hell do we never use it? We have to actually BE in a position to know what it's like, and most of the time that's just unrealistic.
That being said, I don't agree with cloning. Sure, it could be used to clone organs and such to help humans, but you can rest assured that the rich and unethical would be cloning whole people to replace themselves or to use as organ/limb harvesters.

Hehe had a good thought today based on an old saying.
"Jesus-Christ!!"
"Hey! Don't take the lord's name in vain"
"Of course it was in vain, I called out and he didn't show up".

I've ranted enough for today so I hope everyone has a nice day!