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Those CEOs, executives, and their "pay-per-use" politicians are terrified of there ever being a self-aware, critically thinking labour force. Those are the seeds of democratic participation and social, non-violent revolution, i.e. true democracy, which would undermine their power. The so called "education reformers" are simply asking for more of the same: More of what Paulo Freire called the banking model of education:

"This solution is not (nor can it be) found in the banking concept. On the contrary, banking education maintains and even stimulates the contradiction through the following attitudes and practices, which mirror oppressive society as a whole:

        the teacher teaches and the students are taught;

        the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;

        the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;

        the teacher talks and the students listen -- meekly;

        the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;

        the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;

        the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher;

        the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;

        the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;

        the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects.

It is not surprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings. The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them."

Source: http://www2.webster.edu/~corbe...

Right, b/c nothing immoral has ever been done in the name of science. Of course, YOU didn't commit these acts and they should in no way impinge on any pursuit of science you personally approve of. But any religious person trying to distance themselves from the atrocious acts of other religious persons is obviously just a hypocrite.

There are no zombies?

Constructing the Haitian Zombie: An Anthropological Study Beyond Madness

Persons identified as zombies are to be found among the inhabitants of Haiti, an impoverished and politically unstable Caribbean country with unique cultural characteristics. Using the lens of the anthropologist, an investigation into Haitian zombiism reveals not only a basis for the bizarre phenomenon of zombiism itself, but also the underlying characteristics of Haitian society that have fostered and it. While zombiism may be fundamentally understood in terms of mental illness, particular theories related to madness are useful in further illuminating the subject, including Sigmund Freud’s signature theses on melancholia, Frantz Fanon’s views on the psychological effects of colonialism, and Emily Martin’s ideas about the performance of mental disorders. The resulting analysis will demonstrate that Haitian zombiism constitutes a cultural construct of madness that thoroughly fits within its post-colonial population, where a bereft people have transformed zombiism into a reality.

PASSAGE OF DARKNESS: THE ETHNOBIOLOGY OF THE HAITIAN ZOMBIE

Are there really zombies in Haiti? Wade Davis devotes two long sections to this question. He first looks at the popular views and then explores cases where there have been some attempts to carefully and more scientifically determine the status of suspected cases. His key candidate for zombiehood is Clairvius Narcisse. In spring, 1962 Narcisse "died" at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles, Haiti. His death was verified by the hospital staff. 18 years later Narcisse turned up alive and well, and claimed to be an escaped zombie.

No, I did not read through those articles. I just remember watching an interview with some scientist that researched out the sposid myth. So I knew therw was legitimate research into it.

They did show that zombies which bite you and turn you into other zombies couldn't exist, for the same reason that the vampires couldn't. Although didn't the Romero trilogy end up with the entire world being zombies except for one human outpost? Anyway, the existence of zombie poison has been widely documented for decades. It's not merely a plausible explanation, it's the explanation.

Quite Singerian, actually. (I assume you're familiar with his works.)

I wasn't; I am now, to some degree. Found some things (such as this) and read them. He's a lot more wordy than I am (which would be to the horror of many /. readers, I am certain, were there any left paying attention besides us two) but we seem to agree. Thanks for the pointer; it is quite refreshing to converse with an informed party. Since you are clearly familiar with him, I'll make some references to what I've read this evening in my reply.

However, there are three major principles that cast doubt on your reasoning.
The first is an economic principle of return on investment.

First of all, animals generally put a lot of effort into raising their own, so we aren't required to. In the cases where orphans are created or special care is required, yes, morally we are upstream if we help. But generally speaking it is not parenting I am advocating, it is simply the end to being an outright enemy. I do not argue that we should put equal effort into such support, simply that in many cases, putting some effort in will benefit all — such as designing roads where it is impossible to run into a deer or a porcupine, just for starters. The ROI of such efforts can be viewed as human-centric, while still providing significant improvements for the lot of non-humans.

The second principle arises from future potential.

I observe that in the US, which is a comparatively rich country with the demonstrated ability to not take the easiest path, babies with reduced resources are treated as equal in Singer's sense: "equality of consideration." I have already said that we are centuries from any such resolution, even with the idea in mind that some rich societies, like the USA, could afford to make large strides in this direction even now. It is not a matter of cost, at least here, as much it is a matter of that invisible, imaginary line drawn by what Singer (accurately, I think) terms "specisism."

In your second point, you seem to have taken an interesting (and highly unpopular, both philosophically and socially) view that retarded, terminal and not immediately useful infants are actually not entitled to equal consideration. I observe that this line is crossed when a country becomes richer; China has a most unequal distribution of wealth, and serves as an example of baby-worth being arbitrarily (I think) aligned with gross political goals, whereas the USA has a highher baseline and extremely widespread middle class, and here such an attitude is considered savage, or worse.

This dovetails nicely with my idea that time (which I presume correlates with wealth for any continuously existing society) will be required for equality of consideration to become the norm. This both gives society a chance to develop deeper resources, become more sophisticated as to what we actually are (animals), and to develop a deeper and more widespread understanding of where the various animals stand in terms of cognition, an area we are woefully short of detailed information in today.

Regarding your point in re continuation of (our) species, I would simply reply that as presumably high functioning individuals, we incur a responsibility to see to it that other species, through the individuals of those species, also have a reasonable chance to do the same. As with a family, the high functioning individual with the greatest wealth is most qualified to be the benevolent one who has the most effect on future potential. I simply choose to ignore the species line in that view.

The third principle is based on intrinsic aesthetics.

I simply don't accept this. My aesthetics are such that my compassion for a wounded animal reaches th

While I agree that buying goods "Made in the USA" is important and I too try to do it whenever possible, you still have to be careful. There are sweatshops "in" the USA where workers are subjected to horrible conditions in the Marianas Islands - a US territory.

The are allegations of everything from threatening deportation to forced abortions, all in the good ole' US of A.

Research the companies you buy from before you blindly trust a "Made in the USA" label.

Do a search on Clairvius Narcisse. Still not conclusive proof for the zombie drug, but the facts are: the man was supposed to be dead and buried when he turned up 18 years later. It took him months to recover from near-catatonia and he claimed to ahve sold as a zombie slave. He was afraid to go home for some time after that because he believed his brother was involved in what happened to him. After his brother died, he finally re-united with the family who thought he's been dead for 20 years.

The story of Clairvius Narcisse
Wikipedia entry
Passage of Darkness

Perfect subject to research for Halloween, huh?

If the reason we're holding back scientific progress is actually "ethics"-- people complaining about genetics and such keep using that word, I am not sure they know what it means

Hmm... complaining about medical eithcs. So are you a supporter of Josef Mengele by any chance? Or any of his ilk?

The main reason most people seem to be against this is, at what point is the chimera no longer an animal? At what point does it qualify as human or sentient? Doing this blurs the line and that is what they are afraid of.

Not true. Major Major Major Major got promoted far more quickly than 10 years; no copy of Catch-22 handy to verify the exact number of years. Offtopic, but hey.

I'll note that you dodged and completely refused to compare it to other Carribean countries under the American sphere of influence without an embargo, such as Haiti, or to address it's average lifespan, or anything of the sort

Sigh. It's been a long evening, so I'm not hitting every point, but... how does "sphere of influence" relate to Haiti? If the US were to spend any more time peacekeeping, we'd never hear the end of the complaints about how our actual military troops were "occupying" the place. As it is, the US is the single largest source of financial, material, medical, and related aid to that place. It's being kept in Chaos because: 1) there are too many people and too few, too poorly managed resources 2) disease and both petty and no-so-petty corruption run rampant, 3) the local culture is in a tailspin of ignorance and poverty exactly as the French left it when they pulled out of their former slave colony. You want to read up on the complexity of the situation? This is a good start. But I sense that you're thinking that since we don't simply dump trainloads of cash into the country to somehow fix it, that thus we must be a cause of the problem - which is nonsense. Of course, when I mentioned Cuba, I did so because it is a classic example of socialism run amok, and it's a place that Chavez expressly praises (and of course, he and Castro have enjoyed their photo ops and mutual admiration club), so it was appropriate to focus there, as opposed to equally bleak situations in Africa. You didn't hear me mention Africa because that's not what we're talking about.

You then go on to quote lots of stuff about Chavez endorsing socialism (something that I already mentioned that he supports, and something a good portion of Europe supports as well), but quoted not a thing about him claiming that old concepts of socialism is broken and that he's going to do some sort of New Socialism. Again, another dodge.

Oh, please. Take five minutes and do a little reading. Try here, for example, where you can read comments from one of his often-quoted speeches where he says, "So, if capitalism (won't work), what will? I have no doubt: socialism. Now, which socialism of many? We should be thinking even about types that haven't existed. We have to invent 21st century socialism..." and so on. He speaks frequently in these terms: socialism as the solution, but only if he gets to make it finally work in his own way.

On your other subjects: don't put words in my mouth. I have not put pro/anti-Americanism into some formula with democracy/capitalism/communism or any other ism. I'm simply observing (please refer to the original post, sheesh!) that talking about the "state of Linux" in glowing terms, and refering to Venezuela as an example of a place with no need for legacy IT support suggests really missing the point about where that country's money comes from.

Sort of like when we condemned the French for doing business with Iraq when we were the world's largest purchaser of Iraqi oil.

Yeah, until Saddam, heavily in debt and running out of economic options (given his spending on Kurd-killing, Iran-attacking, and palace building) decided to invade Kuwait... and subsequently renegged on every agreement he uttered (including the terms of his oil sales through the UN... though I'm sure you can follow the trail on that one, including the huge objections from the French, now for very obvious reasons). But do we sell things to China? Sure! Not nearly as much as we buy from China with cash (a trade defecit in the billions of dollars annually - part of how China can afford to pump money into Venezuelan real estate and oil). I generally don't care who sells what where, but I find it truly telling that Chavez will preach socialism eve

You seem to have swallowed the ideas of socialism whole.

Consider reading Hayek's The Road to Serfdom . Don't skip the prefaces or introduction.

It is worth considering that governments murdered billions during the 20th century when considering any grant of power to government. See democide.

In case you don't see how this relates, consider how the German National Socialists would have likely approached AIDS treatment. Also recall that they did do groundbreaking medical research.

-Peter

Get your undergrad in CS, then go for a Masters in Computer Science/Distributed Systems.

Yep. The origional Fluffy Bunny rant. You can still find mirrors of the origional defaced page (complete with cute graphics and the above rant). The rant itself shows up in Slashdot archives and Google Groups often enough.

The University at which I teach has many campuses on US Military bases.

I know of hundreds of officers and enlisted men who have improved their career prospects through further graduate level education.

As a CISSP I heard from one of the instructors that they do a lot of military and spook work with the NSA.

The University at which I teach has many campuses on US Military bases.

I know of hundreds of officers and enlisted men who have improved their career prospects through further graduate level education.

As a CISSP I heard from one of the instructors that they do a lot of military and spook work with the NSA.

Note that teaching a course fully online is very different from using the Web to supplement a course being taught in person. I have found that the Web tools available make it easier to extend the scope of the course beyond the classroom, and to facilitate further dialogue and discussion.

In my feminism class at the University of Southern California, the first paragraph of the syllabus talked about the tension between Difference vs. Equality feminism and how it affected the entire field.

On one hand you have the "Gloria Steinum" type feminism that fought against the stereotyping of women as only homemakers and secretaries. This type of feminism cringes at any notion of women and men being different.

On the other hand you have people like Harvard psychology professor Carol Gilligan, whose work "A Different Voice" showed the bias in scientific research when you *didn't* take the difference in men and women into account. Check out http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/gilligan.html for a brief bio of Carol Gilligan.

These two threads of feminism are mutually exclusive and each one considers the other to be sexist in some way. But they are both valid feminist theories.

Brian Ellenberger