Slashdot Mirror
Surgeons Weld Wounds Shut With Surgical Laser
Ruach writes "The promise of medical lasers goes beyond clean incisions and eye surgery: Many believe that lasers should be used not just to create wounds but to mend them too. Abraham Katzir, a physicist at Tel Aviv University, has a system that may just do the trick and is proving successful in its first human trials."
The US gets to stop an country getting annihilated, that shares similar values and willing to get its hands dirty (at the expense of political backlash). And no, the gains are not canceled out as the people that hate Israel are not the sort of people that ever would not hate the United States.
I've got a great story after talking with a girl who fled Iran after her family was persecuted for not being Islamic (belonged to some weird minor regional religion). Though it's an anecdote, I've come to believe the Muslims hate people for not belonging to their religion. And even if it was only 5% (Although, I'm inclined to believe it's much much higher) it's completely incompatible with our society. Imagine if 5% of Christians started stoning atheists..
we have no right so tell them what to do
The hell we do. Philosophers have been arguing the point for ages, but at the end of the day I do believe there are such things as absolute morals. I do not believe such morals should arise from such arbitrary things as the haphazard religious writings that float around this planet, but rather should be based on common sense and deliberate thought.
A society which thinks it's perfectly OK to rape anyone in sight and then eats them blatantly violates everything that was ever said about human rights pretty much anywhere in this world. There is probably not a government on the planet right now that would get behind that notion, even though opinions on homosexuality, the death penalty, adultery, and women's rights are still highly debated amongst nations.
Hence, I cannot disagree more with you. Such a society *should* be changed. This by no means I condone what the United States are doing in Iraq at this moment, because I suspect that the US' brand of "help" has cost well over half a million Iraqi's their lives for a conflict in which the US helped put the ousted regime in charge in the first place.
conflict is an essential part of evolution
If you study natural selection long enough, you would realize that Survival and Reproduction are essential to evolution. Obviously, if you win all conflicts by means of violence, you will evolve to the point where your race will be violent, physically strong and psychologically aggressive.
In today's society, however, mere physical survival has become commonplace and evolution of humans will likely have more to do with our minds than with our raw capacity for killing the other bloke. Hence I would argue that the prerequisites for further human evolution have evolved beyond conflict or rather the violent resolution thereof.
Those who think otherwise will normally fight for their way
In a parliamentary democracy which is governed by consensus such as The Netherlands and to a large extent the European Union, we tend to guarantee each individual's rights to his thoughts and his free speech. Within the boundaries of a body of law that does exclude killing and raping anyone in sight, of course.
If there are particular items on which you disagree, you are free to do so. You are furthermore free to start a political party (yes, you *can* have more than two of those), and you are free to try and get a seat in parliament, your municipality or your city council or even the government to see if you can swing popular opinion to the degree where your view becomes policy.
I feel that many of the laws we have in The Netherlands are perfectly reasonable, and I feel that as a citizen I ultimately have the power to debate/change the ones that don't. Whether I choose to do so or not is a question of commitment versus the degree to which the less reasonable laws affect me. You could say it's a matter of Return on Investment.
If other parties that live in The Netherlands would start fighting over those bits, I would argue they are being either very primitive about things or they have fringe views which they know will never see the light of day in legislation anyway. Instead of doing the decent thing and simply moving to a society that adheres to their views, these uncivilized individuals would then resort to violence to get their way at the expense of the will of the majority of citizens.
In other words: You're full of shit. It is completely beyond me, from a scientific, logical, political and moral perspective, how your post could have been modded +4 insightful.
I chucked at this.
I thought he was off-base too, but I didn't throw up.
And yes, I agree that Christians and Jews can be lumped in the same boat.
Sure, bring the whole Chrew along with you.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.