The Soviet records show that the general contention that Communist spies had infiltrated the federal government was true.
I guess I could say that first they came for the Communists, and I said nothing, because they were actively working as spies and traitors to bring my country under the domination of a spectacularly hateful totalitarian regime of epic proportions.
Might as well give me the "first they came for..." sermon on account of a rabid dog.
Plus, any formulation that equates Communists and Jews is pretty suspect by default. Are you trying to whitewash communism by associating it with Judaism or Jewishness? Or are you trying to blacklist Jews by associating them with the horrors perpetrated by the communist regimes?
I mean, not only is comparing an ideology with an ethnicity like comparing apples and oranges, but in this particular case one of the two is pretty thoroughly rotten, likely to the core...
Which fruit is the rotten one is left as an exercise to the reader.
On the other hand, the years since the dot-com bubble burst have seen a lot of technological and infrastructural advances. There's a lot of e-commerce ideas that were good back then, but lacked some combination of technology, infrastructure, and public awareness to succeed. Many of these ideas are coming to fruition now that the missing pieces--better technology, more bandwidth, larger customer base--have had a chance to get into the puzzle.
Maybe these MBAs are making these new "money shower" investments based specifically on their understanding of recent history: "That business plan looked good in principle back in 1999, but the infrastructure to make it really work wasn't there back then. Now that the infrastructure is in place, it's looking good in practice, too. Time to invest for real!"
I think it's appropriate for a school board to be concerned with cultural and social influences that have a negative impact on their student's ability to learn effectively. And I think it's appropriate for a school board to discuss their concerns with the community they serve. Which is exactly what they're doing.
You seem to think it's inappropriate for them to do this, on account of no school board being perfect and without error in the discharge of its duties. This seems like an unreasonable standard, and a rather bizarre method of prioritizing concerns. You seem to be saying that since a school board never gets everything right, they are not justified in trying to get anything right.
Perhaps the school board feels that it's more than just a single video game. Maybe they honestly believe that the culture of violence being marketed to their students is a major factor in the dynamic that leaves them behind in the first place. Maybe their whole purpose in raising this issue is to encourage parents to reconsider the environment in which their children are maturing and learning, and work to improve it.
And maybe their concerns are completely wrong-headed. I don't think they are, but either way, raising those concerns and seeking a dialogue with the community they serve seems to me to be the ideal way to go about addressing them.
Your arguement pretty much amounts to "if I ran the zoo, I'd do things differently". But are you on a school board? Do you know what is involved in managing a school district? Have you studied lots of data on performance of students in your district? Have you listened to feedback from teachers, administrators, and parents in your district? Between your assessment of the situation, and the school board's assessment of the situation, which one should I expect to be more knowledgeable and trustworthy on this issue?
And, finally: In principle, what is wrong with a school board saying "we believe we have identified a cultural phenomenon that significantly impacts our students' learning, and we'd like the community, the manufacturer, and the retailer to all consider what we have to say on the matter"? I mean, isn't that what we should want in a school board? An organization that's engaged with the community, and willing to think outside the box of the classroom itself?
Without knowing the specific wording of this particular school board's charter, I'm content to say that generally speaking, both your description and mine amount to the same basic idea. I also remain convinced that, in principle, both having and raising this concern is appropriate for a school board.
File it under "ensuring effective education", if you like. Part of being able to educate a student effectively is having a student who is adequately predisposed to learning effectively. There are many factors in a student's life that could impact this predisposition. It certainly seems appropriate to me for a school board to be aware of these factors, and discuss them--especially the problem areas--with the community to which their students belong.
(Also, I'm comfortable with the idea that "community children" = "students at community schools" for the purposes of my point.)
So McCarthyism didn't have a chilling effect on the spread of communism in America, then?
That's not the way Hollywood tells it.
Anyway, I think that the massive social promotion of sexual promiscuity and drug use during the sixties, had a lot more to do with the spread and popularity of these ideas, than the clean-cut wholseomeness of the Beave.
There's also the whole question of role modeling.
Perhaps the culture of the fifties didn't do a good job of role-modeling the full range of fulfilling sexual experiences available to responsible adults, but the culture of the sixties, far from presenting good role models, rather erred in the opposite direction.
There's no way the Rockstar game depicts healthy and responsible behavior in a variety of social situations. It is, in fact, a bad role model.
I think there's plenty of room in the spectrum for someone--or some organization--to voice their concerns about bad role models and their negative impact on people (especially impressionable, immature, and inexperienced people) without necessarily arriving at a counter-productive level of restriction.
The school board has resolved (hence the "Resolution") to communicate their misgivings about the game. They've resolved to communicate their misgivings to the manufacturer, to their local retailers, and to the citizens of their community.
They are, in fact, doing exactly what you say they should do: mount a social opposition to the game. They're making their case. The community can consider their case (and Rockstar's if it chooses to make one; and the retailers' if they choose to make one), and either reject the school board's arguments or support them.
This is exactly the kind of non-government-censorship process we all want to see take place in our communities. Not only that, but it's entirely appropriate for a government agency such as a school board, charged with the welfare of the community's students, to voice its concerns to the community and attempt to influence the community to address those concerns.
ALL scientific truths go through exactly three phases.
1. They are ridiculed
2. They are violently opposed
3. They are accepted as self-evident.
You say "all" with such emphasis that I do believe you mean it seriously.
So where was the ridicule and the violent opposition for Newton's Theory of Gravity? Quantum Electrodynamics? The General Theory of Relativity?
Then there's also the fact that there are many things which are not scientific truths at all, and which are properly ridiculed and violently opposed for exactly that reason. Skirting Godwin's law, I'll just mention ubermensch theories as an example.
Just because something is ridiculed and violently opposed, it doesn't necessarily follow that it is in fact a scientific truth that should be accepted as self-evident.
Typically, something is ridiculed and violently opposed because it contradicts commonly-accepted reality. This could be either because some visionary has discovered some new fundamental principle, or it could be because some crackpot has discovered some new madness. Sometimes the ridicule and violent opposition mean you're on the right track, and sometimes it just means you're a no-talent assclown.
People who are on the right track usually overcome the ridicule and violent opposition, and earn the acceptance, by backing up their extraordinary claims with extraordinary proof. Which is exactly as it should be.
No-talent assclowns, on the other hand, usually don't ever get past the ridicule and violent opposition phases. Which, again, is exactly as it should be.
That's all irrelevant (and, to be honest, I disagree with your claim that these three events are examples of poor organization; that's a different debate, though).
I never said government was perfectly organized.
The gist of my sig is that government is an example of an organized system, and that any community that attempts to organize itself (rather than wallowing in a state of anarchy) will promptly discover that it has created a government.
Neither the government nor the organized community has to be perfectly organized, in order for this claim to be true.
I'm talking about relative organization; comparing an organized community to that organized system we refer to as government.
You're talking about absolute organization; comparing the organized system of government to some ideal organization, and cataloguing it's failures to achieve that ideal. I think that's neat. But it's not really relevant to my point.
As I thought, you're mistaking bureaucratic overhead for disorganization.
The DMV is actually pretty well-organized, considering the scope and nature of its responsibilities, and the less-than-perfect quality of human beings, which are the primary components of the DMV system.
The problem with bumper-sticker philosophy is that the idea expressed is usually too complex to be clearly communicated by a witty one-liner.
My sig is actually a dig at libertarianism, which, in a general way, holds that individuals can organize themselves in a community, without the need for "government".
My take is that the moment you start organizing a community, you end up with a system that performs essentially the same functions, in essentially the same way, as "government".
I also think that governments are actually incredible examples of organization on a large scale. Perhaps your perception of governments as disorganized comes from mistaking the bureaucratic overhead imposed on a huge, complex organization for disorganization. Or maybe it's that you perceive individual instances of human error (incompetence, corruption, etc.) and mistake them for evidence of system-wide, institutional disorganization. I honestly think that what you perceive as disorganized government is really just the annoying 10% of government that doesn't submit well to any attempt to organize it. The other 90% ends up running pretty smoothly.
Besides, my sig isn't comparing government to some ideal standard of organization, but rather (by implication) to some ideal standard of disorganization: an anarchic mob, ruled by the strongest, with no attempt made at stability.
And, finally, just because our government doesn't appear to be particularly well organized (a misperception on our part, I'm sure), that doesn't mean that a well-organized community would be functionally different from a well-organized government.
Without cubes, we never would have been given Dilbert, Office Space or User Friendly. Cubes aint all that bad!
The creators of these works are essentially profiting from helping us to relieve the stress and pain caused by bad work environments and policies.
Imagine what rewarding and fulfilling work they could do, if society had no need for them to expend their creative energies helping us to relieve the stress of working in cubicles.
Imagine what more we could all do, if we didn't have to relieve that stress in the first place!
Dilbert, Office Space, and User Friendly all make the best of a bad situation. I'd rather their creators never had a bad situation to make the best of, in the first place.
Bush does support stem cell work on a Federal level, and is in fact the first President to ever do so.
It's just that he supports adult stem cell research at the federal level, not fetal stem cell research--and even then, he still supports some fetal stem cell research, utilizing material gathered before the decision that breeding our own kind for parts was unethical.
Please make sure to differentiate between adult stem cell research and fetal stem cell research in your discussion. The former receives federal funding and enthusiastic support from the current administration. The latter does not.
Unless what you put into your own body causes you to lose self-control, and results in a powerful and crippling addiction that makes you a burden on your community instead of a contributor to your community, and drives you to antisocial acts such as burglary, theft, and assault, in order to put more of whatever it is into your body.
At that point, what you put into your body becomes everybody's business, and everybody is probably going to make it really difficult for you to keep doing it.
Which is all as it should be.
If we could trust people to not be asshats, we wouldn't have to regulate automobiles.
If we could trust people not to be asshats, we wouldn't have to regulate the funding of political campaigns.
If we could trust people not to be asshats, we wouldn't have to regulate hunting, or firearms.
If we could trust people not to be asshats, we wouldn't need the IAEA, or term limits, or Child Protective Services, or Social Security.
And if we could trust people not to abuse powerful and addictive drugs that destroy self control and compel their users to become burdens on society, we wouldn't have to regulate the precursors to those drugs.
Tell you what: you convince the tweakers give up their antisocial tendencies, and I'll happily support your lobby to deregulate pseudoephedrine.
I have not said that the pathe we're on is close to optimal. I have said that the transition to a more-optimal path will involve a period of turmoil, during which a lot of non-optimal events will inevitably occur.
I wouldn't say this is optimal, but it is typical.
Crawling isn't wrong in an infant, nor do we complain on account of how long it takes an infant to crawl a mile. Perhaps you'd sound like less of an ass if you bothered to explain both how the current pace qualifies as a "crawl" and how a crawl is an inappropriate pace for NASA's current situation.
So you're saying that the guys who full steamed ahead into the World Trade Center were doing God's work because those towers were built for the glory of man?
No. You are horribly mistaken. I can only assume you arrived at this conclusion through some grotesque misunderstanding on your part.
The Creator of the Entire UNIVERSE gets all hot under the collar because some human in the Middle East 2,000 years ago looks like him. Does the word "parochial" mean anything to you?
The whole Christian story of the relationship between God and man is "parochial", in the sense that it takes place in one tiny corner of the vast universe that God created. But central to this story is the idea that the God's purpose in creating the universe was to create a habitat for man, so that He and man could interact and enjoy that relationship for which He created man in the first place. Herod was smitten not for looking like a god, but for intentionally disrupting people's relationship with God by arrogating to himself the glory due to God.
Man is central to the Christian God's creation, and He is understandably quite interested in, and responsive to, the ideas and actions of men. Both the stories, of Babel and Herod, illustrate this principle. And as they take place many years and miles apart, and are only two instances of God's activities in many different times and places, I'm having a hard time seeing Him as "parochial".
Sure, if all He ever did was bother with Herod's blasphemy, that'd be parochial. But that's not the God the Bible describes.
He concerns himself with Egyptian Pharaos, towers and powers in Asia, infidels in Nineveh, etc. He commands his apostles to get over their hangups with a Judeo-centric faith, and to preach his scriptures to all peoples in all times and places.
Speaking of Nineveh, the story of Jonah is a textbook example of how the Christian God is not parochial at all: the sailors on the storm-tossed ship are angry with Jonah, because he has brought down on them the Wrath of the Hebrew God. The crew complains that while other gods are very much regional in nature, and do not act outside of their limited geographic domains, the power of the Hebrew god was in effect in all times and places--thus His ability to visit them with storms, far outside the land of the Hebrews.
You can dismiss the story of Jonah as a myth if you like, but the fact is, it is a myth about a God unique in the mythology of the region: a non-parochial God.
The moral of the Babel story is not that God doesn't want man in space.
The moral of the Babel story is that God doesn't want man to set himself up in God's place. The tower would have been totally acceptable, had it been built to the glory of God, rather than to deny the glory of God and aggrandize the glory of man.
Another relevant passage would be one of the rare instances of New Testament smiting, where God strikes down King Herod after the masses exclaim that the king looks like a god, and Herod does not disabuse them of this notion but rather basks in their undue adoration.
God's rule is not "live only mean, small, and uninmaginative lives", but rather, "do all things unto the glory of God".
Like most people, God doesn't appreciate being disrespected, but he does appreciate people enjoying and exploring his creations.
Transitional periods cause turmoil. It's unavoidable, and complaining that we should somehow achieve the goals of the transition, without going through the transitional period and its turmoil, just makes you sound like an ass.
The Bible clearly states that there is life "elsewhere": Angels. (Not to mention people like Enoch and the Christ, whose physical incarnations were transported to some non-terrestrial abode, according to the Bible.)
As with all things--especially complex and sophisticated things--asshats will misunderstand, misrepresent, and misapply. But that just proves that they're asshats, not that the subject of their asshattery is itself a bad idea.
And as you have just demonstrated, being an asshat about Christianity is something believers and non-believers alike can do quite well.
The memo isn't scheduled to be sent for several more years yet.
Also, us having not found the Moon Monolith at the scheduled time, it's likely that the memo will never be sent, and that the senders are actually fictional characters incapable of sending anything.
Europa is most definitely not off-limits at this time.
Some species of hyenas commonly spend the first few days after their birth trying to kill each other, and have to be repeatedly and forcibly separated by their mother.
You also are assuming that our intellect is evolutionarily desireable in some way, or that the "moral sense" we have developed is somehow a better guide than animal instinct, or that our "morals" are even an accurate description of anything true about the world in which we exist.
Until you have resolved those questions, you can't really begin to lecture anybody on what is and isn't morally appropriate behavior.
Besides, given that our human nature arises entirely from natural phenomena--random mutation, natural selection, etc.--how could our treatment of animals be any more unnatural, or any more immoral, than, say, the influenza virus's treatment of us?
How can you possibly make a moral distinction between the Holocaust and the Black Plague? Both events were caused by organisms arising from natural causes. How can one be wrong and the other right?
Unless you're trying to say that humans are somehow "special" and "different from the other animals" in some way. But tread carefully here: we're not interested in ignorant and unscientific asshattery about creationism and intelligent design.
It'd also be nice to forbid people to enter the theater after the movie starts.
And if we could establish a minimum age limit, in order to keep annoying rugrats out of the theater, that would rock, too.
Mostly, though, people who come to see a movie try to take care of their potty business before the movie starts, so that they don't have to annoy even themselves when their bladder interrupts their movie enjoyment.
On the other hand, people who go to the movies while on call have already made their peace with the possibility that they might suffer an annoying interruption. All I'm really interesting in forbidding is the part where they assume that because they don't mind being interrupted, I shouldn't mind either.
See the difference? Most people who go to movies plan on watching the entire movie, so they manage their colons and bladders accordingly. In saving themselves this annoyance, they save the rest of us that same annoyance. But oncall asshats are not planning on watching the entire movie, and thus they do the exact opposite of managing their annoyances, and end up annoying the rest of us in the process.
So no, I don't begrudge the occasional unfortunate individual their unavoidable toilet run.
I do begrudge the oncall asshat their wilful disregard of common courtesy.
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I guess I could say that first they came for the Communists, and I said nothing, because they were actively working as spies and traitors to bring my country under the domination of a spectacularly hateful totalitarian regime of epic proportions.
Might as well give me the "first they came for..." sermon on account of a rabid dog.
Plus, any formulation that equates Communists and Jews is pretty suspect by default. Are you trying to whitewash communism by associating it with Judaism or Jewishness? Or are you trying to blacklist Jews by associating them with the horrors perpetrated by the communist regimes?
I mean, not only is comparing an ideology with an ethnicity like comparing apples and oranges, but in this particular case one of the two is pretty thoroughly rotten, likely to the core...
Which fruit is the rotten one is left as an exercise to the reader.
On the other hand, the years since the dot-com bubble burst have seen a lot of technological and infrastructural advances. There's a lot of e-commerce ideas that were good back then, but lacked some combination of technology, infrastructure, and public awareness to succeed. Many of these ideas are coming to fruition now that the missing pieces--better technology, more bandwidth, larger customer base--have had a chance to get into the puzzle.
Maybe these MBAs are making these new "money shower" investments based specifically on their understanding of recent history: "That business plan looked good in principle back in 1999, but the infrastructure to make it really work wasn't there back then. Now that the infrastructure is in place, it's looking good in practice, too. Time to invest for real!"
I'm not sure what you're getting at, here.
I think it's appropriate for a school board to be concerned with cultural and social influences that have a negative impact on their student's ability to learn effectively. And I think it's appropriate for a school board to discuss their concerns with the community they serve. Which is exactly what they're doing.
You seem to think it's inappropriate for them to do this, on account of no school board being perfect and without error in the discharge of its duties. This seems like an unreasonable standard, and a rather bizarre method of prioritizing concerns. You seem to be saying that since a school board never gets everything right, they are not justified in trying to get anything right.
Perhaps the school board feels that it's more than just a single video game. Maybe they honestly believe that the culture of violence being marketed to their students is a major factor in the dynamic that leaves them behind in the first place. Maybe their whole purpose in raising this issue is to encourage parents to reconsider the environment in which their children are maturing and learning, and work to improve it.
And maybe their concerns are completely wrong-headed. I don't think they are, but either way, raising those concerns and seeking a dialogue with the community they serve seems to me to be the ideal way to go about addressing them.
Your arguement pretty much amounts to "if I ran the zoo, I'd do things differently". But are you on a school board? Do you know what is involved in managing a school district? Have you studied lots of data on performance of students in your district? Have you listened to feedback from teachers, administrators, and parents in your district? Between your assessment of the situation, and the school board's assessment of the situation, which one should I expect to be more knowledgeable and trustworthy on this issue?
And, finally: In principle, what is wrong with a school board saying "we believe we have identified a cultural phenomenon that significantly impacts our students' learning, and we'd like the community, the manufacturer, and the retailer to all consider what we have to say on the matter"? I mean, isn't that what we should want in a school board? An organization that's engaged with the community, and willing to think outside the box of the classroom itself?
Without knowing the specific wording of this particular school board's charter, I'm content to say that generally speaking, both your description and mine amount to the same basic idea. I also remain convinced that, in principle, both having and raising this concern is appropriate for a school board.
File it under "ensuring effective education", if you like. Part of being able to educate a student effectively is having a student who is adequately predisposed to learning effectively. There are many factors in a student's life that could impact this predisposition. It certainly seems appropriate to me for a school board to be aware of these factors, and discuss them--especially the problem areas--with the community to which their students belong.
(Also, I'm comfortable with the idea that "community children" = "students at community schools" for the purposes of my point.)
So McCarthyism didn't have a chilling effect on the spread of communism in America, then?
That's not the way Hollywood tells it.
Anyway, I think that the massive social promotion of sexual promiscuity and drug use during the sixties, had a lot more to do with the spread and popularity of these ideas, than the clean-cut wholseomeness of the Beave.
There's also the whole question of role modeling.
Perhaps the culture of the fifties didn't do a good job of role-modeling the full range of fulfilling sexual experiences available to responsible adults, but the culture of the sixties, far from presenting good role models, rather erred in the opposite direction.
There's no way the Rockstar game depicts healthy and responsible behavior in a variety of social situations. It is, in fact, a bad role model.
I think there's plenty of room in the spectrum for someone--or some organization--to voice their concerns about bad role models and their negative impact on people (especially impressionable, immature, and inexperienced people) without necessarily arriving at a counter-productive level of restriction.
RTFA.
This isn't a legal challenge to the game at all.
It is, in fact a social challenge.
The school board has resolved (hence the "Resolution") to communicate their misgivings about the game. They've resolved to communicate their misgivings to the manufacturer, to their local retailers, and to the citizens of their community.
They are, in fact, doing exactly what you say they should do: mount a social opposition to the game. They're making their case. The community can consider their case (and Rockstar's if it chooses to make one; and the retailers' if they choose to make one), and either reject the school board's arguments or support them.
This is exactly the kind of non-government-censorship process we all want to see take place in our communities. Not only that, but it's entirely appropriate for a government agency such as a school board, charged with the welfare of the community's students, to voice its concerns to the community and attempt to influence the community to address those concerns.
You say "all" with such emphasis that I do believe you mean it seriously.
So where was the ridicule and the violent opposition for Newton's Theory of Gravity? Quantum Electrodynamics? The General Theory of Relativity?
Then there's also the fact that there are many things which are not scientific truths at all, and which are properly ridiculed and violently opposed for exactly that reason. Skirting Godwin's law, I'll just mention ubermensch theories as an example.
Just because something is ridiculed and violently opposed, it doesn't necessarily follow that it is in fact a scientific truth that should be accepted as self-evident.
Typically, something is ridiculed and violently opposed because it contradicts commonly-accepted reality. This could be either because some visionary has discovered some new fundamental principle, or it could be because some crackpot has discovered some new madness. Sometimes the ridicule and violent opposition mean you're on the right track, and sometimes it just means you're a no-talent assclown.
People who are on the right track usually overcome the ridicule and violent opposition, and earn the acceptance, by backing up their extraordinary claims with extraordinary proof. Which is exactly as it should be.
No-talent assclowns, on the other hand, usually don't ever get past the ridicule and violent opposition phases. Which, again, is exactly as it should be.
Will everything be straight under .eu, or will there be some notion of categorisation, such as .com.eu, .edu.eu, .gov.eu, etc
More to the point: How is this an "online rights" issue?
That's all irrelevant (and, to be honest, I disagree with your claim that these three events are examples of poor organization; that's a different debate, though).
I never said government was perfectly organized.
The gist of my sig is that government is an example of an organized system, and that any community that attempts to organize itself (rather than wallowing in a state of anarchy) will promptly discover that it has created a government.
Neither the government nor the organized community has to be perfectly organized, in order for this claim to be true.
I'm talking about relative organization; comparing an organized community to that organized system we refer to as government.
You're talking about absolute organization; comparing the organized system of government to some ideal organization, and cataloguing it's failures to achieve that ideal. I think that's neat. But it's not really relevant to my point.
As I thought, you're mistaking bureaucratic overhead for disorganization.
The DMV is actually pretty well-organized, considering the scope and nature of its responsibilities, and the less-than-perfect quality of human beings, which are the primary components of the DMV system.
The problem with bumper-sticker philosophy is that the idea expressed is usually too complex to be clearly communicated by a witty one-liner.
My sig is actually a dig at libertarianism, which, in a general way, holds that individuals can organize themselves in a community, without the need for "government".
My take is that the moment you start organizing a community, you end up with a system that performs essentially the same functions, in essentially the same way, as "government".
I also think that governments are actually incredible examples of organization on a large scale. Perhaps your perception of governments as disorganized comes from mistaking the bureaucratic overhead imposed on a huge, complex organization for disorganization. Or maybe it's that you perceive individual instances of human error (incompetence, corruption, etc.) and mistake them for evidence of system-wide, institutional disorganization. I honestly think that what you perceive as disorganized government is really just the annoying 10% of government that doesn't submit well to any attempt to organize it. The other 90% ends up running pretty smoothly.
Besides, my sig isn't comparing government to some ideal standard of organization, but rather (by implication) to some ideal standard of disorganization: an anarchic mob, ruled by the strongest, with no attempt made at stability.
And, finally, just because our government doesn't appear to be particularly well organized (a misperception on our part, I'm sure), that doesn't mean that a well-organized community would be functionally different from a well-organized government.
Without cubes, we never would have been given Dilbert, Office Space or User Friendly. Cubes aint all that bad!
The creators of these works are essentially profiting from helping us to relieve the stress and pain caused by bad work environments and policies.
Imagine what rewarding and fulfilling work they could do, if society had no need for them to expend their creative energies helping us to relieve the stress of working in cubicles.
Imagine what more we could all do, if we didn't have to relieve that stress in the first place!
Dilbert, Office Space, and User Friendly all make the best of a bad situation. I'd rather their creators never had a bad situation to make the best of, in the first place.
Bush does support stem cell work on a Federal level, and is in fact the first President to ever do so.
It's just that he supports adult stem cell research at the federal level, not fetal stem cell research--and even then, he still supports some fetal stem cell research, utilizing material gathered before the decision that breeding our own kind for parts was unethical.
Please make sure to differentiate between adult stem cell research and fetal stem cell research in your discussion. The former receives federal funding and enthusiastic support from the current administration. The latter does not.
Unless what you put into your own body causes you to lose self-control, and results in a powerful and crippling addiction that makes you a burden on your community instead of a contributor to your community, and drives you to antisocial acts such as burglary, theft, and assault, in order to put more of whatever it is into your body.
At that point, what you put into your body becomes everybody's business, and everybody is probably going to make it really difficult for you to keep doing it.
Which is all as it should be.
If we could trust people to not be asshats, we wouldn't have to regulate automobiles.
If we could trust people not to be asshats, we wouldn't have to regulate the funding of political campaigns.
If we could trust people not to be asshats, we wouldn't have to regulate hunting, or firearms.
If we could trust people not to be asshats, we wouldn't need the IAEA, or term limits, or Child Protective Services, or Social Security.
And if we could trust people not to abuse powerful and addictive drugs that destroy self control and compel their users to become burdens on society, we wouldn't have to regulate the precursors to those drugs.
Tell you what: you convince the tweakers give up their antisocial tendencies, and I'll happily support your lobby to deregulate pseudoephedrine.
Your perceptions are mistaken.
I have not said that the pathe we're on is close to optimal. I have said that the transition to a more-optimal path will involve a period of turmoil, during which a lot of non-optimal events will inevitably occur.
I wouldn't say this is optimal, but it is typical.
How would you propose to fix it?
Crawling isn't wrong in an infant, nor do we complain on account of how long it takes an infant to crawl a mile. Perhaps you'd sound like less of an ass if you bothered to explain both how the current pace qualifies as a "crawl" and how a crawl is an inappropriate pace for NASA's current situation.
So you're saying that the guys who full steamed ahead into the World Trade Center were doing God's work because those towers were built for the glory of man?
No. You are horribly mistaken. I can only assume you arrived at this conclusion through some grotesque misunderstanding on your part.
The Creator of the Entire UNIVERSE gets all hot under the collar because some human in the Middle East 2,000 years ago looks like him. Does the word "parochial" mean anything to you?
The whole Christian story of the relationship between God and man is "parochial", in the sense that it takes place in one tiny corner of the vast universe that God created. But central to this story is the idea that the God's purpose in creating the universe was to create a habitat for man, so that He and man could interact and enjoy that relationship for which He created man in the first place. Herod was smitten not for looking like a god, but for intentionally disrupting people's relationship with God by arrogating to himself the glory due to God.
Man is central to the Christian God's creation, and He is understandably quite interested in, and responsive to, the ideas and actions of men. Both the stories, of Babel and Herod, illustrate this principle. And as they take place many years and miles apart, and are only two instances of God's activities in many different times and places, I'm having a hard time seeing Him as "parochial".
Sure, if all He ever did was bother with Herod's blasphemy, that'd be parochial. But that's not the God the Bible describes.
He concerns himself with Egyptian Pharaos, towers and powers in Asia, infidels in Nineveh, etc. He commands his apostles to get over their hangups with a Judeo-centric faith, and to preach his scriptures to all peoples in all times and places.
Speaking of Nineveh, the story of Jonah is a textbook example of how the Christian God is not parochial at all: the sailors on the storm-tossed ship are angry with Jonah, because he has brought down on them the Wrath of the Hebrew God. The crew complains that while other gods are very much regional in nature, and do not act outside of their limited geographic domains, the power of the Hebrew god was in effect in all times and places--thus His ability to visit them with storms, far outside the land of the Hebrews.
You can dismiss the story of Jonah as a myth if you like, but the fact is, it is a myth about a God unique in the mythology of the region: a non-parochial God.
The moral of the Babel story is not that God doesn't want man in space.
The moral of the Babel story is that God doesn't want man to set himself up in God's place. The tower would have been totally acceptable, had it been built to the glory of God, rather than to deny the glory of God and aggrandize the glory of man.
Another relevant passage would be one of the rare instances of New Testament smiting, where God strikes down King Herod after the masses exclaim that the king looks like a god, and Herod does not disabuse them of this notion but rather basks in their undue adoration.
God's rule is not "live only mean, small, and uninmaginative lives", but rather, "do all things unto the glory of God".
Like most people, God doesn't appreciate being disrespected, but he does appreciate people enjoying and exploring his creations.
Transitional periods cause turmoil. It's unavoidable, and complaining that we should somehow achieve the goals of the transition, without going through the transitional period and its turmoil, just makes you sound like an ass.
The Bible clearly states that there is life "elsewhere": Angels. (Not to mention people like Enoch and the Christ, whose physical incarnations were transported to some non-terrestrial abode, according to the Bible.)
As with all things--especially complex and sophisticated things--asshats will misunderstand, misrepresent, and misapply. But that just proves that they're asshats, not that the subject of their asshattery is itself a bad idea.
And as you have just demonstrated, being an asshat about Christianity is something believers and non-believers alike can do quite well.
Re-read your scriptures.
The memo isn't scheduled to be sent for several more years yet.
Also, us having not found the Moon Monolith at the scheduled time, it's likely that the memo will never be sent, and that the senders are actually fictional characters incapable of sending anything.
Europa is most definitely not off-limits at this time.
I'm just waiting for the day science wants to tackle the minds of something more important then fish.
I think Sigmund Freud owes you a face-stab.
PETA won't go near this one, mark my words, on account of sharks not being cute.
Some species of hyenas commonly spend the first few days after their birth trying to kill each other, and have to be repeatedly and forcibly separated by their mother.
You also are assuming that our intellect is evolutionarily desireable in some way, or that the "moral sense" we have developed is somehow a better guide than animal instinct, or that our "morals" are even an accurate description of anything true about the world in which we exist.
Until you have resolved those questions, you can't really begin to lecture anybody on what is and isn't morally appropriate behavior.
Besides, given that our human nature arises entirely from natural phenomena--random mutation, natural selection, etc.--how could our treatment of animals be any more unnatural, or any more immoral, than, say, the influenza virus's treatment of us?
How can you possibly make a moral distinction between the Holocaust and the Black Plague? Both events were caused by organisms arising from natural causes. How can one be wrong and the other right?
Unless you're trying to say that humans are somehow "special" and "different from the other animals" in some way. But tread carefully here: we're not interested in ignorant and unscientific asshattery about creationism and intelligent design.
Yeah, maybe we should.
It'd also be nice to forbid people to enter the theater after the movie starts.
And if we could establish a minimum age limit, in order to keep annoying rugrats out of the theater, that would rock, too.
Mostly, though, people who come to see a movie try to take care of their potty business before the movie starts, so that they don't have to annoy even themselves when their bladder interrupts their movie enjoyment.
On the other hand, people who go to the movies while on call have already made their peace with the possibility that they might suffer an annoying interruption. All I'm really interesting in forbidding is the part where they assume that because they don't mind being interrupted, I shouldn't mind either.
See the difference? Most people who go to movies plan on watching the entire movie, so they manage their colons and bladders accordingly. In saving themselves this annoyance, they save the rest of us that same annoyance. But oncall asshats are not planning on watching the entire movie, and thus they do the exact opposite of managing their annoyances, and end up annoying the rest of us in the process.
So no, I don't begrudge the occasional unfortunate individual their unavoidable toilet run.
I do begrudge the oncall asshat their wilful disregard of common courtesy.
HTH. HAND.