Yes - in my opinion people should be more open to the idea of voluntary, positive eugenics (think Heinlein's Howard Families) but there's always the association with Hitler's treatment of 'undesirables'.
I agree about the right way to go about 'pro-life' activites. Letting people know that there are options other than abortion is a great start, I very much doubt that many women relish the prospect. Simply realising that their child can have a good home with loving foster parents may swing them in the direction of carrying the child to term.
Interestingly, I'm in a similar case to you in the older sibling stakes, although it went the other way - my mother and her partner weren't in a position to look after a child and so she put her first up for adoption. Now, 32 years later, I have an awesome older half-sister who is scarily similar to mum given that the two never met until my sister was in her late 20s. That's put me firmly in the 'adoption is better than abortion' camp, but at the same time, I can see that some people would find it easier to snuff out a tiny spark than let it grow and risk their child suffering abuse at the hands of unknown foster parents later.
Glad you liked it!;)
The cell in which the DNA is developed into a living being is not as important as the DNA itself. Human DNA in a pig embryo will still produce a human, if allowed and provided the necessary materials and environment to continue development. Thus, killing it because it appears unhealthy before verifying such beyond a doubt is equivalent to euthanasia just as much as doing so after verification would be. Well, quibbles about mitochondrial DNA aside (a pig ovum with only human nuclear DNA may still end up a manbearpig, we don't know enough about the mechanism yet) I agree. It's the 'special stuff', which we think is just the DNA, that determines what something is even as a zygote. Saying that it's not just because it needs a very special environment (the womb) to develop is like saying that a kid with a natural aptitude for maths isn't 'good at maths' because they need to be taught it. Killing a human embryo is tantamount to killing a human, but without the waste of resources implied in killing an adult human. Depending on your viewpoint, that can be a grave sin (destroying a unique and beautiful snowflake) or a trivial inconvenience (the same decaying organic matter as the rest of us).
(And here's where any semblance of a debate will likely end.) As far as I'm concerned, since Hitler supported such acts, I would firmly put my weight against them. I would never oppose something purely because a bad person supported it - I remember someone here has a sig that's something along the lines of "Nullus Logicum Fallacy: A conclusion is not necessarily false merely because an invalid argument lead to it." At this point it's a personal choice of values - for my sake I wouldn't kill an embryo unless absolutely necessary but I wouldn't picket an abortion clinic.
Their lack of intent to continue the species does not decrease mine, so what reason have I to care? Good way to look at it!:) In fact, in an odd way, when we found out that my fiancee was pregnant I had a very strong feeling that I'd 'won' at life.:)
Do you work on embedded devices? Ultra-tight CPU and power consumption requirements? 'cuz if your progress bar uses more than 0.5% of your CPU time then there's something going wrong. The only clock cycles that are more precious than a well designed, responsive user interface are the ones ticking in a programmer's head. Processing power is cheap and plentiful compared to brainpower.
Oh, and Vista takes up that much CPU because it's going through your personal folders and fapping to all your furry porn in the background. Don't use Vista.
Obligatory defense of Frankenstein's Monster here - for the most part, it was persecuted by the villagers and acted in self defense. What homocidal tendencies it did show were due to the fact that the head was a deceased murderer. I always saw the whole story as more about how crowds of humans treat anything different or unattractive...
I think it is more akin to what the mapping of the human gnome project is. Mapping human gnomes?
...first they came for the gnomes, but I did not cry out, because I was not a gnome. O.o
Note that it takes a large change to make a set of DNA inhuman. The differences between your DNA and mine are many small differences, however the differences between a monkey's DNA and ours constitute an order of magnitude (perhaps even 2 or 3) greater number of differences. You're on very shaky ground here. The real answer is to realise that a human embryo is no more or less special than any other embryo - just like the only objective reason that a human child is more valuable or worthy of protection than a puppy or a kitten is that it's our own species, and that it's smarter and more versatile.
I'd grade creatures into a matrix of four classes depending on whether they're viable (can produce viable offspring) and/or capable of sentience. So a chimera embryo would be nonviable, a healthy human embryo would be a viable sentient, and a damaged human embryo with genetic defects that prevent breeding would be nonviable sentient.
I always figured this is why you can see low-refresh-rate screens (especially CRT TVs) flicker strongly out of the corner of your eye whereas when you look directly at them they don't.
True, but I'd presume they would combine it with some sort of eye tracking system that would allow them to scroll the image as the eye moved, giving a much larger virtual screen. In fact, with such a system they could get away with a surprisingly small pixel array on the actual lens.
I remember reading something very cool about using eye tracking for security - the computer tracks the user's gaze, and any portion of the screen that the user is not looking at is filled with random garbage text. The user's gaze jumps around enough to make it very difficult to reconstruct what they were reading, especially for a casual observer.
Now what would happen if you took someone who had been blind, but given an operation that restored his sight? It would be uplifting to see such a person compete in a sport they had been previously incapable of competing in. Now what if that same operation involved bionic implants, no matter how simple or complicated, that gave him visual acuity that the very best "naturals" couldn't honestly beat? Well, about a month ago my mum had an eye operation to replace a cateract with a prosthetic lens (I wouldn't call it 'bionic' because it's unpowered, but still...) which to my understanding is about as close to optically perfect as you can get in a camera made of jelly. She's now got excellent vision in that eye, better than she had before she got the cateract. Should something like that be banned?
I fail to see how winning due to superior genetics is 'fair' whereas winning due to superior preparation is not. He's still competing bipedally and his legs aren't any longer than they would have been naturally. I'd say as we move more into the posthuman era (to add a dash of cyberpunk to this post;) we'll need competition classes for human athletics in much the same way we have them for motorsports. "Hurrah! Little Johny won a silver in the 'Bipedal, glucose powered, under 2 meters tall' 1000m event!"
She's a billionaire who has profited from it. It's not like she is in the gutter eating scraps of food. Let me rephrase the GP's post:
Seriously, who does this woman think she is? All she did was all the hard work in creating something. Who is she to profit more than you say she should from it?
Kidding aside, can we really reprocess it to that low a level of radioactivity at a cost that won't encourage some, or many, to bypass the regulations? Yes, but not yet. The question is like that of alternative fuels vs. coal - at current coal and uranium costs, it's cheaper to stick with our current, dirty technology than use better methods that come with higher up-front costs.
The Integral Fast Reactor design is capable of running on most fissile material, and as a result the fuel can be reprocessed and reused repeatedly. Eventually, when the fuel is too spent to be worth reprocessing:
The two forms of waste produced, a noble metal form and a ceramic form, contain no plutonium or other actinides. The radioactivity of the waste decays to levels similar to the original ore in about 200 years.
*sigh* If enough ignorant people misuse a phrase then that misuse becomes 'common usage'. It doesn't make it correct, whatever thefreedictionary.com says. I didn't get my knowledge of grammar from Wikipedia, it was simply the most expedient site to link.
As the distance to the microprocessor increases the power needed increases as the square of the distance. That depends more than you seem to think on the way the beam is focussed. The inverse-square law only holds for point sources of radiation - if the output could be collimated then then range would in theory be limited only by line of sight and atmospheric interference.
Regardless, I can see an increase in stolen hot rods and muscle cars if this does go through. Ain't no amount of microwaves gonna disable a carby or a set of points!:)
I know the Australian air force doesn't admit pilots with less-than-perfect vision, for those reasons. Nothing quite so encouraging, when you're in your final year of highschool and waiting to enlist, as being told "don't worry, you could still be ground crew".
If I remember rightly, their plane DID fall apart midair. You have to cut a pilot a bit of slack for crashing when one of the wings falls off his plane.
You bastard! I was open-minded and willing to learn until I read your stupid post, now I only think people who agree with me are smart. Fuck you!...damnitall, I have to improve my slashdot post parsing to include malicious code removal.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree about the right way to go about 'pro-life' activites. Letting people know that there are options other than abortion is a great start, I very much doubt that many women relish the prospect. Simply realising that their child can have a good home with loving foster parents may swing them in the direction of carrying the child to term.
Interestingly, I'm in a similar case to you in the older sibling stakes, although it went the other way - my mother and her partner weren't in a position to look after a child and so she put her first up for adoption. Now, 32 years later, I have an awesome older half-sister who is scarily similar to mum given that the two never met until my sister was in her late 20s. That's put me firmly in the 'adoption is better than abortion' camp, but at the same time, I can see that some people would find it easier to snuff out a tiny spark than let it grow and risk their child suffering abuse at the hands of unknown foster parents later.
Do you work on embedded devices? Ultra-tight CPU and power consumption requirements? 'cuz if your progress bar uses more than 0.5% of your CPU time then there's something going wrong. The only clock cycles that are more precious than a well designed, responsive user interface are the ones ticking in a programmer's head. Processing power is cheap and plentiful compared to brainpower.
Oh, and Vista takes up that much CPU because it's going through your personal folders and fapping to all your furry porn in the background. Don't use Vista.
Obligatory defense of Frankenstein's Monster here - for the most part, it was persecuted by the villagers and acted in self defense. What homocidal tendencies it did show were due to the fact that the head was a deceased murderer. I always saw the whole story as more about how crowds of humans treat anything different or unattractive...
...first they came for the gnomes, but I did not cry out, because I was not a gnome. O.o
I always figured this is why you can see low-refresh-rate screens (especially CRT TVs) flicker strongly out of the corner of your eye whereas when you look directly at them they don't.
True, but I'd presume they would combine it with some sort of eye tracking system that would allow them to scroll the image as the eye moved, giving a much larger virtual screen. In fact, with such a system they could get away with a surprisingly small pixel array on the actual lens. I remember reading something very cool about using eye tracking for security - the computer tracks the user's gaze, and any portion of the screen that the user is not looking at is filled with random garbage text. The user's gaze jumps around enough to make it very difficult to reconstruct what they were reading, especially for a casual observer.
I fail to see how winning due to superior genetics is 'fair' whereas winning due to superior preparation is not. He's still competing bipedally and his legs aren't any longer than they would have been naturally. I'd say as we move more into the posthuman era (to add a dash of cyberpunk to this post
oh.. erm...
One hundred, beeelion dollars!!
Fail!!
:P
Like most present, you have never brought both subject and comment together...
The Integral Fast Reactor design is capable of running on most fissile material, and as a result the fuel can be reprocessed and reused repeatedly. Eventually, when the fuel is too spent to be worth reprocessing: The two forms of waste produced, a noble metal form and a ceramic form, contain no plutonium or other actinides. The radioactivity of the waste decays to levels similar to the original ore in about 200 years.
Hmm... this is the best argument I've heard yet in favour of "begs the question; foo bar?" Good point. :)
*sigh* If enough ignorant people misuse a phrase then that misuse becomes 'common usage'. It doesn't make it correct, whatever thefreedictionary.com says. I didn't get my knowledge of grammar from Wikipedia, it was simply the most expedient site to link.
Regardless, I can see an increase in stolen hot rods and muscle cars if this does go through. Ain't no amount of microwaves gonna disable a carby or a set of points!
Depends whether you want the paint to melt or not. :P
Well darn, you're right.
I know the Australian air force doesn't admit pilots with less-than-perfect vision, for those reasons. Nothing quite so encouraging, when you're in your final year of highschool and waiting to enlist, as being told "don't worry, you could still be ground crew".
If I remember rightly, their plane DID fall apart midair. You have to cut a pilot a bit of slack for crashing when one of the wings falls off his plane.
OI! Filter! Leave those memes ALONE!
You bastard! I was open-minded and willing to learn until I read your stupid post, now I only think people who agree with me are smart. Fuck you! ...damnitall, I have to improve my slashdot post parsing to include malicious code removal.