Incest in the Modern World

Wow....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6424937.stm

I'd like to draw special attention to the below statement.....

"Under Germany's criminal code, which dates back to 1871, it is a crime for close relatives to have sex and it's punishable by up to three years in prison. This law is out of date and it breaches the couple's civil rights," Dr Wilhelm said.

"Why are disabled parents allowed to have children, or people with hereditary diseases or women over 40? No-one says that is a crime."

What an interesting artical...What do you all think? Should incest be legalised? Does this man raise a point in that we are laying the law on a society which has outgrown the yolk from which it was originally constructed...there are in fact a few people on this contact list who would already have been institutionalised and/or put to death in the past on the grounds of morality or religious right!

One or two of the reasonings behind not allowing incest, although I will add now this is not just incest we are talking about, it is inbreeding too. Incest is the social term for 2 people deemed to be too closely related to have intercourse, inbreeding is the procreation of people of varying genetic closeness! Anyway the 2 reasoings would be;

It is morally wrong, this would be the result of religion rather than society. It is not just European religion but other religions that share the same belief, however before the organisation and formation of religions such as Christianity or Islam interbreeding doesn't seem to be too much of an issue. The next issue is genetics. Specifically homozygous pairing in locus. 2 identical alleles or DNA sequences at 1 position. I can't go into more detail than that at the moment, but you can read about it here;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zygosity

So the reasonings I have chosen are - Genetics and Morality.

So what are the arguments against these things?

"Leavitt (1990) has argued that inbreeding in small populations can have long-term positive effects: "small inbreeding populations, while initially increasing their chances for harmful homozygotic recessive pairings on a locus, will quickly eliminate such genes from their breeding pools, thus reducing their genetic loads"

So here we have an argument that eventually, owing to inbreeding these harmful homozygotic pairings will eventually be removed, this is great of a larger scale, but not specifically for this case, as these people are the first generation to inbreed they are increasing the chances of this homozygotic pairing happening. So we can say that these 2 people inbreeding is infact placing their offspring at risk. Good, but the argument that Dr. Wilhelm produces is that if it is a simple case of genetics, then why are people with hereditary diseases allowed to procreate? As they are placing their own offspring at the same, if not similar level of risk. An interesting point.
If the argument is to be based on morality then I will draw back to where I stated that there are people on this list who would have been placed in jail and/or killed owing to their beliefs and/or practices so should we really judge these people morally based on a law that is founded not from modern themes but on historical edict?

I mean, I don't own a longbow...

Driving Test Passed

In an event sure to see a rise in fatalities via road traffic accident's. The fools at the DSA have decided to issue me a driving licence allowing me to legally take to the roads of Britain. Looks like Matt will finally be able to exact sweet revenge on me for the few years of Nazgul noises mere inches from his skull!

I passed with only 4 minors for anyone interested in knowing the results.

Chris

Castle Rising...Castle

Date: 4th February 2007

Matthew and I decided that another adventure was in order. This time the victim of out frontal assault; Castle Rising in Norfolk.

We set off at about half 9 in the morning, the air crisp and clean revitalising the body and sharpening the mind. Our first port of call is Tesco in Royston to obtain what have become known as 'supplies'. Despite what the name suggests there is nothing essential about this items for ones survival they are in fact for one use only. To send your body into a spiral of sugar induced frenzy and turns you into a mental dervish, the outcome of which is both baffling and in my humble opinion entertaining. We get aforementioned supplies, but are finding it hard to find the car in the car park through the tears of laughter which are already streaming down our faces and narrowing our vision sending us into a water coated world of ecstasy.

The journey continues in much the same way, environment induced jokes, songs and strange strange noises ensue to create a carrousel indistinguishable language, movement and sound which quickly reduces even the most earnest to baffled hysteria

We find a road sign to Castle Rising...Well, actually we find a sign that points to Castle Rising Castle, which of course sends us both into another fit of laughter about the 'stupidness' of the sign and the people who made it (not thinking from within our orgy of activity that the town is called Castle Rising)...We turn a few corners, nearly miss the turning...we're being followed up a small lane by another car and the following happens;

"There is a man behind us"

"Yep"

"SPEED, WE NEED SPEED"

"Mat, the car park is theeeeeeeeere"

LOLOLOLOL

That was Matt speeding up and swinging the car into a lane for the car park, swinging it hard...lol., but we are there, we park up and move towards the castle.

Then we spot it. The bridge, the fire builds up inside both of us...we feel the call.

The call to charge the bridge and take the castle! Matt speeds off, like a soldier from ancient past.

Nothing can stop a charge wrought like this. He reaches penetrating speed, but he stops, almost sliding to a standstill...What thing or power of earth could have stopped his progress into the castle!? 5 simple words;

"NO ENTRY WITHOUT A TICKET"

The charge of the unstoppable force that is Matthew, to which armies have fled and Gods have bowed (metaphorically ofc), stopped by the power of THE TICKET!!! We turn and go towards the ticket office where after some banter about people ignoring the sign and running into the castle with the nice gentleman behind the counter emerge again with tickets bought and free access before us! Fools!!!

We storm the bridge, again and again, making it suffer for our previous insult!

Then we settle a little and take a look at the castle in it's glory! An amazing sight. The sun beaming onto one side, the grounds around it calm and tranquil. The view from the Motte is awesome, the trees and houses close by, the fields rolling off into the distance, it really is beautiful. The inside of the castle is as one would expect, the smell of ancient stone fills the air, you can feel the power and the history pulsing from every stone. We move through the castle slowly, appreciating every nook and cranny, every hole and every wall.

Introducing Paj

Hello,

My name is Christopher Pike, though in the virtual world I like to call myself Paj. Paj is a Swedish word meaning Pie and the reasons this name was 'chosen' are as follows;

• My brother dated a girl from Sweden
• He likes Pie and is, shall we say of the large inclination.
• I started to play an online game, World of Warcraft, with his university friends and was known as Dave's lil bro.

I decided that Paj would be a good name. It is funny, it is short and easy to remember.

As for the real me. I am 23 years old from a town called Letchworth Garden City. I work in Newmarket for a company called Computerlinks and my job role is Navision Implementation Consultant.

The main reason this has been started is because I wish to share some things with you all, especially the 'adventures' that me and a friend of mine go on. Generally our adventures involve us finding somewhere within the South East of England, driving there and then having a good time. Sometimes through conversation, but generally through Stupodity, which is a newly formed word meaning basically, a classier kind of stupid...stupidity without 'stupidness'. :)

Anyway. I leave for now, but soon there will be blogs plenty for you to feast your eyes upon.

Regards

Paj. ;-)