The difference is between taking part in evil (destroyed embryos due to fertility treatments) versus having no part in it. There are some things that the government should have nothing to do with.
This is the government having nothing to do with it. Now decisions on what research is needed and is ethical will be taken by ethics committees and funding bodies and not by politicians who don't understand either the ethics or the science and are trying to grab votes. Its really impossible to argue for or against embryonic stem cell research as a whole - each piece of research should be judged on its own merits by the right people. Blanket bans are wrong.
You could be worse off, as the study may require that you go off the regular HIV cocktail you are taking to suppress it.
They would find it hard if not impossible to get ethical approval for that kind of study. If an effective treatment exists, controlled trials are controlled against that, and not against a placebo.
Korea is roughly 1/100th the size of the US. If we estimate a similar plan in the US based on size only, it would cost $2.46 trillion USD. The Korean government is paying 1.3 trillion of the 34.1 total (or roughly 4%). If the US government did something similar, it would be about $100 billion USD. If they were generous they might give 8% which would be about $200 billion USD. I wonder what might happen if the US gave its private telecom companies $200 billion to execute such a plan...
Putting money into an industry providing infrastructure people actually want and need while creating many many jobs across the country seems like a pretty good idea to me. Maybe that was your point.
Developing this sort of infrastructure on a school-by-school basis is incredibly stupid. There should have been a central government review of the options prior to the latest run of school building, and a proper IT spending policy should have been worked out then. Having the decision made by the headteacher and a couple of staff (only one or two of whom are likely to be remotely qualified to understand all the options) means one school ends up with a much better or worse IT system than another. That is plain wrong. It's not fair on the kids.
I diagree. At the moment it is not possible for the government to decide and enforce a policy, because the evidence is simply not there (regarding which way would be best) to do it.
We need newish schools to develop and evolve their own systems so we can see what works, and ONLY THEN roll it out nationwide.
This government is usually too quick not too slow to implement policies in healthcare and education at a national level without letting them work themselves out first. This is the real waste of money.
This is true. But, I would hope that unpacking an actual system that is authentic and plugging in the components would be quite an experience. But for all I know, 6-7th graders will be bored out of their skull. Invite their parents along to open it. I bet it'll be the big kids that really dig it.
I dunno. Would there be any point in a 2009 PC without a 2009 internet to use it with?
I'm betting NOT. Suing (or extorting, threatening to sue and selling "protection") your customers has never been an effective business model. You'd think they'd have learned that by now.
True, but the average customer might never know or figure out that it was the ISP that sold them out.
My paranoia has led me into a practice of doing my banking in a single browser session, clearing cookies, cache and history before and after, and closing/restarting the browser when finished.
My paranoia has led me into a practice of doing my banking by going to the bank.
Seconded. Even better would be XeTeX (or XeLaTeX) because the font handling is so much better.
Oh, and learn the Memoir class. It will change your life.
I agree - LaTeX is the answer to the index, crossrefs, sectioning, figures etc. The memoir class is also great, I used it for my thesis. Also learn pstricks to make beautiful figures that are consistent with your document.
But can anybody recommend a good version control system to use with LaTeX, or a way to collaborate on documents in a large(ish) group?
..It's sort of like future gas stations will make their own biodiesel or at least get it from a supplier within 25 miles in like 80% of populated US cities or something close to that...
And in the unpopulated cities they have to rely on imports because the undead don't drink coffee.
But once born, no one, not even themselves, can legally decide to end their life.
Now I'm not advocating OP's idea. Like you said, people with DS can lead happy, fulfilling lives. But on the flip side, those without it can lead miserable, empty lives. What I mean is, whether you have DS or don't have DS, does not dictate the type of life you will live.
Which is why we need to make suicide legal.
No one ever asked to be born. If someone wants to die then they should have that right, no matter their age or physical/mental condition.
And yes, I know if someone is really insistent on dying, they will complete the deed no problem. That still does not excuse all the brain-washing going on by friends/family/church/society/etc to make people believe that suicide is some sort of ultimate Bad Thing.
I don't like the idea of suicide being legal or accepted for two main reasons.
First is that people often want to kill themselves because of badly managed depression or psychosis, and these people can and often do recover.
The second is that quality of life is a function both of yourself and your environment and crucially personal and social expectations. So if somebody's quality of life is poor or they feel they are a burden and it is socially acceptable for them to kill themselves, then it may become a social imperative, at least in some cases. Suicide being acceptable will also change the threshold on what constitutes a 'reasonable' quiality of life.
Having said that, I understand there a very few people for whom suicide is probably a reasonable option. I don't know what the answer should be in those cases.
I think the nature of Down's though is that they seldom outlive their parents - life expectancy is much lower.
That was true a few years ago but now life expectancy of DS is around 50. Mean life expectancy in DS has also historically been skewed by the large number of people with Down syndrome dying in childhood. Since the average age of parents of DS children is about 30-35, this means nowadays that most DS children will outlive their parents, at least they will outlive the time where theire parents can care for them.
Having said that, DS often only confers a mild cognitive impairment. Also most of us without DS will be dependent on others and suffer some impairment for at least a few years before we die, and this stage of life should not be stigmatised.
I don't have to ask anyone to judge their value in that context. At its coldest, its not hard to judge absolute value -- what is the benefit a birth will bring to society versus its cost.
If you want to talk relative vs absolute, there's a pretty significant percentage of people who end up in the red on that count.
How do you measure the benefits and costs to society? In dollar value? That would be pretty much impossible, certainly in the case of benefits. How can you quanify the benefits a person brings?
If society has a certain amount of resources available to support the raising of the next generation, and the birth of the child in question will use the resources that otherwise could've been used for ten children without fundamental genetic defects, that's a pretty absolute value judgment as well.
I don't agree with this. A society is about people giving and taking. Different people give and take different amounts and this varies with their environment and the stage of their life. I know of people with DS who definately contribute more than they take. Converesly I know of a lot of people who take considerably more than they give. I wouldn't advocate killing people on that basis.
Incidentally I'd be interested to know how you get the over-populated by 2-5 figure. I'm not arguing with it, I'm just curious.
Wish I had mod points. You deserve some for being absolutely right while likely getting flamed into oblivion for it.
The GP is not right. All the things he mentions are relative, not absolute. People with DS can lead happy, fulfilling lives, and that's really the only thing that matters in this case. Before you judge the value of the lives of people with DS you should ask them whether they would have preferred not to have been born.
I dont want to be too harsh on the parent, but these are pretty false comparisons. To begin with, the "New World" settlers werent in "danger" of contracting diseases from the "New World"... the diseases were from the "old world". This is like saying that our astronauts would have to worry about gang violence on mars. No... gang violence is on earth.
That isn't entirely true. Syphilis is thought to have been a 'New World' disease that was brought back by Columbus and spread rapidly through an entirely susceptible European population.
whoa, I predict the mother of all flame fests over this one.
In general the press print stories that they think will sell, perhaps Obama was more interesting? - there was lots of back stories to print on.
In the UK the press have a lot to answer for - for example, they talked Northern Rock up into a fiasco by warning people what would happen to their funds and hence everybody tried to withdraw their money at once. I have always thought news papers should be more responsible and not just profit orientated.
I agree. The newspapers are responsible for quite a lot of public harm through maliciously reported health scares etc as well as the Northern Rock episode being partly of their making. Also the BBC are not blameless on any of these fronts.
If you are an individual you can sue a newspaper for making up stuff but they can do massive public harm by printing lies and get away with it. This needs to change.
The Post was deficient in stories that reported more than the two candidates trading jabs; readers needed articles, going back to the primaries, comparing their positions with outside experts' views.
That's not "a pretty large liberal bias".
That is the Washington Post focusing on the easiest stories to "write". The ones that don't require any research. The ones that don't require any knowledge of the issues.
aside from the fact that most programs on TV are incredibly stupid and inane these days, the TV in that waiting room is just constantly bombarding waiting patients with commercials for pharmaceutical drugs and wasting electricity. with the embarrassingly low literacy rate in the U.S., it'd actually be a public service to remove that TV and replace it with some books or magazines.
I think the real issue there is that TV adverts for pharmaceutical products should be banned.
The CO2 produced by making those things is more than you'll ever get back from using them.
Make one car journey less (eg. the one needed to go and buy the solar charger) and you'll probably achieve more green credit.
Probably right at the moment - but buying into this technology now will help drive development which hopefully will bring far greater long term benefits.
What will likely happen (circa 2100) is that we still have energy (hydro, solar, coal, oil), but it will become so scarce and so expensive that people will return to a pre-1900-style existence. They'll have a little bit of electricity to light the bulbs, and just enough coal or wood to provide fire to the TV room, and that's about it.
No more whole-house A/C or heating. Only the rich, like kings and presidents, will be able to afford those luxuries.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference is between taking part in evil (destroyed embryos due to fertility treatments) versus having no part in it. There are some things that the government should have nothing to do with.
This is the government having nothing to do with it. Now decisions on what research is needed and is ethical will be taken by ethics committees and funding bodies and not by politicians who don't understand either the ethics or the science and are trying to grab votes. Its really impossible to argue for or against embryonic stem cell research as a whole - each piece of research should be judged on its own merits by the right people. Blanket bans are wrong.
Considering that 2 satellites just collided, astronomical odds don't seem that great.
What's more, a million to one chance is pretty certain to happen at least nine times out of ten.
You could be worse off, as the study may require that you go off the regular HIV cocktail you are taking to suppress it.
They would find it hard if not impossible to get ethical approval for that kind of study. If an effective treatment exists, controlled trials are controlled against that, and not against a placebo.
Korea is roughly 1/100th the size of the US. If we estimate a similar plan in the US based on size only, it would cost $2.46 trillion USD. The Korean government is paying 1.3 trillion of the 34.1 total (or roughly 4%). If the US government did something similar, it would be about $100 billion USD. If they were generous they might give 8% which would be about $200 billion USD. I wonder what might happen if the US gave its private telecom companies $200 billion to execute such a plan...
Putting money into an industry providing infrastructure people actually want and need while creating many many jobs across the country seems like a pretty good idea to me. Maybe that was your point.
That's 800W per home. That's very little. A fridge, a microwave, and you're quickly over it.
What is, actually, the average power draw of a home in Scotland?
I was thinking that 9000 homes sounds like it should cover the whole of the Highlands.
Seriously, Did you mean uberviolent or maybe instead of making up a word, extremely violent.
Strictly speaking ueber is correct, though it's still a stupid word.
Ah ... if only British voters had such passion for party politics.
Never listened to a Five Live radio phone-in?
Developing this sort of infrastructure on a school-by-school basis is incredibly stupid. There should have been a central government review of the options prior to the latest run of school building, and a proper IT spending policy should have been worked out then. Having the decision made by the headteacher and a couple of staff (only one or two of whom are likely to be remotely qualified to understand all the options) means one school ends up with a much better or worse IT system than another. That is plain wrong. It's not fair on the kids.
I diagree. At the moment it is not possible for the government to decide and enforce a policy, because the evidence is simply not there (regarding which way would be best) to do it.
We need newish schools to develop and evolve their own systems so we can see what works, and ONLY THEN roll it out nationwide.
This government is usually too quick not too slow to implement policies in healthcare and education at a national level without letting them work themselves out first. This is the real waste of money.
This is true. But, I would hope that unpacking an actual system that is authentic and plugging in the components would be quite an experience. But for all I know, 6-7th graders will be bored out of their skull. Invite their parents along to open it. I bet it'll be the big kids that really dig it.
I dunno. Would there be any point in a 2009 PC without a 2009 internet to use it with?
rural folks in india have been doing that since forever.
http://www.vatanappally.com/images/yp_cow.jpg
Rural folks in India must have got the idea by watching Meatloaf in the 1980 musical 'Roadie'.
I'm betting NOT. Suing (or extorting, threatening to sue and selling "protection") your customers has never been an effective business model. You'd think they'd have learned that by now.
True, but the average customer might never know or figure out that it was the ISP that sold them out.
My paranoia has led me into a practice of doing my banking in a single browser session, clearing cookies, cache and history before and after, and closing/restarting the browser when finished.
My paranoia has led me into a practice of doing my banking by going to the bank.
Seconded. Even better would be XeTeX (or XeLaTeX) because the font handling is so much better. Oh, and learn the Memoir class. It will change your life.
I agree - LaTeX is the answer to the index, crossrefs, sectioning, figures etc. The memoir class is also great, I used it for my thesis. Also learn pstricks to make beautiful figures that are consistent with your document.
But can anybody recommend a good version control system to use with LaTeX, or a way to collaborate on documents in a large(ish) group?
..It's sort of like future gas stations will make their own biodiesel or at least get it from a supplier within 25 miles in like 80% of populated US cities or something close to that...
And in the unpopulated cities they have to rely on imports because the undead don't drink coffee.
But once born, no one, not even themselves, can legally decide to end their life. Now I'm not advocating OP's idea. Like you said, people with DS can lead happy, fulfilling lives. But on the flip side, those without it can lead miserable, empty lives. What I mean is, whether you have DS or don't have DS, does not dictate the type of life you will live. Which is why we need to make suicide legal. No one ever asked to be born. If someone wants to die then they should have that right, no matter their age or physical/mental condition. And yes, I know if someone is really insistent on dying, they will complete the deed no problem. That still does not excuse all the brain-washing going on by friends/family/church/society/etc to make people believe that suicide is some sort of ultimate Bad Thing.
I don't like the idea of suicide being legal or accepted for two main reasons.
First is that people often want to kill themselves because of badly managed depression or psychosis, and these people can and often do recover.
The second is that quality of life is a function both of yourself and your environment and crucially personal and social expectations. So if somebody's quality of life is poor or they feel they are a burden and it is socially acceptable for them to kill themselves, then it may become a social imperative, at least in some cases. Suicide being acceptable will also change the threshold on what constitutes a 'reasonable' quiality of life.
Having said that, I understand there a very few people for whom suicide is probably a reasonable option. I don't know what the answer should be in those cases.
It's uncommon but they can reproduce.
I think the nature of Down's though is that they seldom outlive their parents - life expectancy is much lower.
That was true a few years ago but now life expectancy of DS is around 50. Mean life expectancy in DS has also historically been skewed by the large number of people with Down syndrome dying in childhood. Since the average age of parents of DS children is about 30-35, this means nowadays that most DS children will outlive their parents, at least they will outlive the time where theire parents can care for them.
Having said that, DS often only confers a mild cognitive impairment. Also most of us without DS will be dependent on others and suffer some impairment for at least a few years before we die, and this stage of life should not be stigmatised.
I don't have to ask anyone to judge their value in that context. At its coldest, its not hard to judge absolute value -- what is the benefit a birth will bring to society versus its cost.
If you want to talk relative vs absolute, there's a pretty significant percentage of people who end up in the red on that count.
How do you measure the benefits and costs to society? In dollar value? That would be pretty much impossible, certainly in the case of benefits. How can you quanify the benefits a person brings?
If society has a certain amount of resources available to support the raising of the next generation, and the birth of the child in question will use the resources that otherwise could've been used for ten children without fundamental genetic defects, that's a pretty absolute value judgment as well.
I don't agree with this. A society is about people giving and taking. Different people give and take different amounts and this varies with their environment and the stage of their life. I know of people with DS who definately contribute more than they take. Converesly I know of a lot of people who take considerably more than they give. I wouldn't advocate killing people on that basis.
Incidentally I'd be interested to know how you get the over-populated by 2-5 figure. I'm not arguing with it, I'm just curious.
Wish I had mod points. You deserve some for being absolutely right while likely getting flamed into oblivion for it.
The GP is not right. All the things he mentions are relative, not absolute. People with DS can lead happy, fulfilling lives, and that's really the only thing that matters in this case. Before you judge the value of the lives of people with DS you should ask them whether they would have preferred not to have been born.
I dont want to be too harsh on the parent, but these are pretty false comparisons. To begin with, the "New World" settlers werent in "danger" of contracting diseases from the "New World"... the diseases were from the "old world". This is like saying that our astronauts would have to worry about gang violence on mars. No... gang violence is on earth.
That isn't entirely true. Syphilis is thought to have been a 'New World' disease that was brought back by Columbus and spread rapidly through an entirely susceptible European population.
whoa, I predict the mother of all flame fests over this one. In general the press print stories that they think will sell, perhaps Obama was more interesting? - there was lots of back stories to print on. In the UK the press have a lot to answer for - for example, they talked Northern Rock up into a fiasco by warning people what would happen to their funds and hence everybody tried to withdraw their money at once. I have always thought news papers should be more responsible and not just profit orientated.
I agree. The newspapers are responsible for quite a lot of public harm through maliciously reported health scares etc as well as the Northern Rock episode being partly of their making. Also the BBC are not blameless on any of these fronts.
If you are an individual you can sue a newspaper for making up stuff but they can do massive public harm by printing lies and get away with it. This needs to change.
That's not "a pretty large liberal bias".
That is the Washington Post focusing on the easiest stories to "write". The ones that don't require any research. The ones that don't require any knowledge of the issues.
Add to that - the ones people wanted to read
You do realize you will be blind, right?
Unless you poke some holes in your cloak, and then people will just see eyes floating in the air.
Actually, that seems like a fantastic idea. Sign me up!
Okay so that's one invisibility cloak for...Mr Anonymous Coward.
aside from the fact that most programs on TV are incredibly stupid and inane these days, the TV in that waiting room is just constantly bombarding waiting patients with commercials for pharmaceutical drugs and wasting electricity. with the embarrassingly low literacy rate in the U.S., it'd actually be a public service to remove that TV and replace it with some books or magazines.
I think the real issue there is that TV adverts for pharmaceutical products should be banned.
The CO2 produced by making those things is more than you'll ever get back from using them.
Make one car journey less (eg. the one needed to go and buy the solar charger) and you'll probably achieve more green credit.
Probably right at the moment - but buying into this technology now will help drive development which hopefully will bring far greater long term benefits.
What will likely happen (circa 2100) is that we still have energy (hydro, solar, coal, oil), but it will become so scarce and so expensive that people will return to a pre-1900-style existence. They'll have a little bit of electricity to light the bulbs, and just enough coal or wood to provide fire to the TV room, and that's about it.
No more whole-house A/C or heating. Only the rich, like kings and presidents, will be able to afford those luxuries.
Unless somebody gets a fusion reactor to work