Game: This or That

[Clopin]

Onion rings because I very rarely have them and I like them quite a bit.

Concerning calamari, breaded and deep fried or soft and rubbery?

[Pompey Bum]

Deep fried and salty.

Red or white sauce on pasta?

[Clopin]

Well I think cream/cheese sauces taste better, but i'm usually pretty health conscious and a red sauce has an amazing flavour to health ratio, buuuuut okay, white sauces because I do prefer them when it comes down to it.

Steak, very rare or very well done (no picking medium rare)

[Pompey Bum]

Very rare. Very well done tastes like nothing (or worse).

Dating (etc.) someone who is 20 pounds overweight or 20 pounds underweight?

[Clopin]

What's your jumping off point? Well whatever, I pick overweight. I find scrawniness in women pretty unappealing (like i'm one to talk, oh well) and depending on the girl some extra weight is often a good thing.

Dating someone with a miserably ugly face but beautiful body or the other way around?

[Pompey Bum]

Body over face, but to be honest, if you turn the lights out and cuddle, it doesn't matter that much. You may be picky, but nature just wants to get the job done.

Happy and slightly dumb lover or brilliant but depressed? (Both are beautiful).

[Clopin]

Brilliant and depressed every day all day, though I might feel inadequate next to a really brilliant girl. If she liked me for who i am and wasn't bored with me or something it would be nice.

Same question only applied to yourself, as in would you rather be beautiful and dumb or brilliant and depressed?

[Pompey Bum]

There goes a happy idiot,
He doesn't give a damn.
I wish I were an idiot,
But then perhaps I am.

--traditional

French dressing or Russian dressing?

[Clopin]

I think I've only had both from like... Kraft bottles, so I can't say for sure, I believe the French as a people make better salads and dressings than the Russians though, so lets just say French.

Would you rather humans had fully prehensile tales or a dogs sense of smell?

[Pompey Bum]

Definitely the tails. I'd hate to have to sniff butts to figure out who my friends are.

Would you rather humans reproduced asexually, and there was no aggression, or competition, or war; or that sex remained fun and humans remained about the same?

[bounty]

Likewise my comment about empire.

But hey, who knew Iain read us?

Bounty, answer the damned question already (and leave one of your own) before this degenerates.

laughs...im late to the game but I appreciate your wondering what I think, thank you.

its for sure a tangled web, and I think the two major weavers in the web are government involvement our lives in general and in this instance in particular, and the question of what's the relationship between our consumerism and our morality.

from my perspective as to the first part, as soon as government gets involved in the market, thus begins the process of their picking winners and losers (who are not the consumers, and isn't that the whole point of international trade?), excessive lobbying, special interests, inconsistency, more government, and loss of liberty.

as to the second part, my simple libertarian maxim is educate the people and allow them to make choices. tell people the circumstances behind the creation of the product, the consequences of this choice vs that choice, and then that gives them reign to buy, or not to buy, based on economic interests, or moral ones.

on the whole, i believe protectionism hurts the poor in other parts of the world (more than the 25 cents an hour sweat shops), and allows people here in America whose time has passed to continue to exist (unions for instance).

i haven't read this, but the cato institute is a libertarian think tank and so i trust this is a pretty in depth view of the tension between the two:

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.or.../pdf/pa723.pdf

[Pompey Bum]

Thanks.

Now then:

Would you rather humans reproduced asexually, and there was no aggression, or competition, or war; or that sex remained fun and humans remained about the same?

[bounty]

Definitely the tails. I'd hate to have to sniff butts to figure out who my friends are.

Would you rather humans reproduced asexually, and there was no aggression, or competition, or war; or that sex remained fun and humans remained about the same?

my first thought was the first part sounds too much like what i remember from Huxley's a brave new world, and i wouldn't want to live there. and the other thought is, competition is (or can be) the crucible in which excellence is born, and i like that.

and now on a more serious note:

Gilligan's island or Hogan's heroes?

[Pompey Bum]

Gilligan's Island, of course, although it would have been nice if Gilligan had found a time machine by the lagoon (or maybe the Professor would have invented one), which the castaways would have used to try to get back to the marina just before their ill-fated "three hour tour"; but Gilligan would have accidentally switched the control dial (located on a coconut he was trying to eat) and sent them all back to Stalag 13, at least for one show.

Eager-to-please blond Jeannie (as in I Dream of Jeannie), or her wicked brunette twin sister (also a genie named Jeannie--and also played by Barbara Eden)?

[tonywalt]

Eager to please.

Barbara Eden or Mary Ann circa late 60's?