If there were a place for me to sign up to live on Mars, I would most certainly get in line. I'll rent you my apartment while I'm gone.
Oh, there are *lots* of people in love with the romance of living on another planet. I just predict that once the excitement wears off, the reality of living on a dead rock that's a slightly different color will sink in. Sure, it'd be fun to visit for awhile -- but living there? The rest of your life? Forget about getting a lot of women on board that plan. You've seen one double moon rise, you've seen 'em all.
Again, how many people want to live in Antaractica? Why don't people want to live there?
And I haven't even addressed the health problems of living in 1/3 gravity. That alone will probably make colonies impossible.
As has already been pointed out, the summary is misleading. But you might as well get used to this idea. We will NEVER colonize the planets. As soon as the technology starts to get close, the scientists and environmentalists will stop it, so as to not contaminate a virgin environment. *Particularly* in the case of Mars, because scientists want to see if life already exists there (it doesn't, but they want to find out for sure).
I understand the romance of living on other planets, but it's inevitable that these will become permanent bans, because once it starts, it'll never end. The future of humans in space are spinning habitats.
And yes, Earth can stop it happening. Forget the idea of a Heinlein-style hero taking off and say f-you to the Earth. There is no way a colony can survive without assistance from Earth, probably for centuries before it could be self-sustaining.
I could also talk about the fact that very, very few will want to live on Mars because it's lifeless dead rock, but that's another subject.:) [hint: how many people try and live in Antarctica? And that's a hell of a lot more hospitable.]
It's very, very sad when we trust a private corporation more than we trust our local goverment.
You got that exactly backwards... it's very, very sad when people put trust in government -- ever. I'll take a private corporation that I can either do or don't do business with, over a government entity any day. You don't have any choice with the government.
I might have paid over the odds many years ago to get an easily remembered one, but now? who cares, people will find you with google anyway right?
"I need a new basketball. I know! I'll order it from that sports site I went to a few months ago, they were pretty cool. Damn, I didn't bookmark it. What was it... qwomnx.com, something stupid like that. Ah well, I'll Google for 'sports', I'm sure it'll turn up."
I've got a stack of studies sitting in front of me (doing a paper on it) showing that action video games like Unreal Tournament improve a host of spatial cognition skills, and can even help to close the usual gender gap in these skills.
Again, I don't argue that their might be a slight reflex benefit. I just argue that the benefit isn't more than they would get from physical sports and/or playing outside, and it's entirely possible that the benefits are only tied to video games, and don't help much with real-world activities (rendering them useless).
How much exercise does the cartoon give you versus a round of Wii boxing or DDR?
Certainly there are games that have a net positive benefit, like DDR. I haven't made up my mind whether Wii sports are good or bad -- I'm lean toward bad (perhaps very, very bad) because it's teaching the brain the wrong lessons. It's not responding to real 3D, it's responding to 2D images.
Some games might have a benefit (perhaps Civilization, perhaps not), but my point is that those aren't the most popular games that kids play. Platform games are mental masturbation.
Also, how many kids have so little time that they can't play video games and a sport (or just playing outside)? If that's an issue, you've overscheduled your children.
I don't schedule my kids to "play outside". Kids will find something to fill their time with. I'd say generally just sitting outside in nature and fresh air is more beneficial than trying to get to the next platform level.
Even the most abstract puzzle game exercises pattern-recognition, logic, and reflexes; many others tell relatively complex and entertaining stories.
Some do... I should say that my kids enjoy some of the activities on the Disney web site, which you might call "games" in a broad definition.
But those aren't the typical games you find on consoles. It's mostly reflex mental masturbation. I'm sure there is some reflex and pattern recognition benefit, but you can get that from any sport, plus all the added benefits (physical and social). Again, I'm not arguing that games are necessarily harmful, just like a bit of candy is not harmful, but the vast majority of them are not worth the opportunity cost. If they're playing video games, they're not doing something else that could have far more growth potential.
Heck, I can argue watching old Tom and Jerry cartoons (which I heartily approve of) is a better use of time than nearly all video games, just because of the music, the varied locations, and the history lesson of life in the 40s and 50s.
I played video games a LOT when I was a teenager, but it's stories like this that make me extremely happy that my eight year old boy loves going outside, building stuff with wood, taking things apart, reading books, and generally hates video games from the times he's gone over to his friends' houses.
It's only later in life that I realized that video games are basically mental sugary sweets. They're empty entertainment that exist solely to cause your mental wheels to spin. I don't subscribe to them being actively harmful, but the lost opportunity cost for growth is significant.
I personally think this DS needs to "accidentally" get thrown in the bathtub, and then replace it with reading, crafts, piano lessons, etc.
It ain't happening by Apple. Considering Apple made a deal with YouTube to convert all their videos to Quicktime, Apple is dead-set against allowing any industry standard CODECs on the iPhone. A bit torrent client would be totally useless on the iPhone -- nothing that I encounter is ever in Quicktime.
Now, if and when hackers get some reasonable CODECs on the iPhone, then we'll be talkin'. Though, those same hackers will get bit torrent running on the iPhone as well, so I don't think we'll need to wait for Apple anyway.
So, yes, parental involvement is important, but when it comes to schools, it's important to work *with* the teachers to get things done.
On the other hand, sometimes teachers really are morons. My son's first grade teacher was a yeller, which he doesn't respond well to and generally gets very defiant. The teacher also was a "Well, I have 'x' kids, I can't do anything special just for *yours*" -- type."
I actually despise the principal, who is a total a-hole. In our meetings with him, he was an expert at turning everything around as "the parents are always at fault." He was incredibly aggressive about it, and just totally unreasonable. I actually don't want to get into all the stories because it just gets me riled up. We have a very good teacher friend who was just appalled at his behavior.
On the other hand, my son's second grade teacher is wonderful, and his attitude has turned around 100%. She has worked with us and he's doing well. We had the same experience with the Kindergarten teacher as well. But that first grade teacher was downright abusive. I could tell you a lot of stories about this bitch and the a-hole principal.
Then they would use their "expertise" (e.g. as a school librarian) to tell my wife how she should be doing her job.
With all respect to your wife, if there's one thing I've learned in life, it's *NEVER* trust self-proclaimed experts to be the last word on anything. I judge based on results. There's an old saying, "if the student doesn't succeed, the teacher has failed." That's not completely fair, but there's a lot more truth in that than is given credit in today's "don't take responsibility at any cost" society.
In this sense, that first-grade teacher did me a favor. No longer do I assume that I need to "fix" my son if there's a problem. It could very well be a bad teacher.
The general idea was that child prodigies are not necessarily ``smarter'' than their peers. Instead, they are so passionate about a particular task that they practice significantly more than their peers.
Let's not go crazy and bring back the flat-out-wrong notion that everyone is the same, the only differences are environmental. Tiger Woods shot a 48 over nine holes at the age of three. You simply can't explain a gift like that with "he worked hard". Same with someone like Einstein. There are plenty of run-of-the-mill smart people who are passionate about math or physics -- but they don't overhaul the whole subject like Einstein did.
Some people are just smarter than others. But the notion of using hard work to maximize potential is applicable to everyone. There are plenty of geniuses that never develop their gift, and there are plenty of people of average intelligence or talent who rise above others through hard work.
The legends of humanity are the intrinsic geniuses who also work their ass off, like Einstein or Tiger Woods.
No disrespect to Google, and I'm glad they're making the investment, but they (and a lot of the commenters here) seem to think all it requires is waving their Magic Googlewand(beta) and we'll have energy cheaper than coal(!! Coal is pretty freaking cheap).
If it were easy, it'd have been done already. For Google to claim that they think it can be done in "years, not decades" sounds like a good bit of hubris. If they don't have something already on the horizon, then we're stepping in the range of arrogant stupidity.
All the credit to Google for stepping up to the plate and trying to get something done, but the way the whole thing is worded, there's this undercurrent of assumption that nobody has tried to make these things work before. All inventors think about cheap energy! It's like Google slapped their head one day and said, "Good God! Why didn't anyone think of creating alternate energy cheaper than coal before?? We're geniuses!!"
I hope something comes of it, but I'm not holding my breath.
Looking down on people with large libraries says the same thing about you as does looking down on people with any other pastime; be it baseball, baseball cards or collecting train tickets: you're a pompous ass who needs external validations for why you're a worthy individual.
Sheesh, a little oversensitive? I actually freely admit that at one time I had a bit of ego about my library (I had a couple thousand books), but then I actually lost about half of them in a flood. After that, I enjoyed not needing as much wall space and it broke the habit of keeping around every minor book I've ever had. I'm actually overdue for a purge, actually.
Sure, some people collect books like they collect stamps. But I think a lot of people really do keep them for ego. Everyone? Of course, duh. But a lot do.
In all those pictures, I don't see any buildup of dust in front of the rocks, though there is plenty on the sides of the paths. Usually, when I push something through the dirt/mud/snow/whatever, I end up with a good buildup in front, too. I wonder where that has gone.
I had to think about this for a second... I think the answer is that if a rock was digging into the mud, you wouldn't have this effect, because of having to shove the mass of the mud. If you look at the pictures, the fronts of a lot of them tend to be sticking up, implying they're "surfing" over the mud.
You know, I think I have a theory on why people get so upset about the idea of digital book readers. It's not the DRM, it's not the batteries, it's not whether you can loan your book...
The biggest problem is ego.
People who read a lot of books LIKE having huge bookshelves to impress people on how many books they have. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I DO read more than thou, hence, I am more intelligent. Bow down and kiss my ring!"
How many of these people keep around books they know they will NEVER read again? Why not donate them to the library, and clear up space on the ol' bookshelf? Because they like having the scorecard on the wall. Having an e-book spoils all the fun.
I think this is actually a generational thing. I'm noticing that younger people have no problem downloading scanned books, reading them, and moving on. I think the ego stroke of the big library will eventually be extinct, like we're seeing with big walls of record collections.
So why is it that we can't seem to get anything done with that level of efficiency again?
What makes you think it was done efficiently? It was done basically by throwing an enormous amount of money at the problem. All respect to the engineers who made it happen, but it was NOT done inexpensively or efficiently.
I'm actually going to root for China in the hope that it will get we Americans to start looking back into space.
Some people keep looking for a space race to happen again, but it never will. Who cares if the Chinese go to the moon again? Already been there, done that. The future of space is private space travel, not government largess.
Every day it's either some government agency or some giant corp that is tightening the screws on US citizens. When will there be a tipping point where Joe Apathetic says "enough!" and takes to the streets?
I'll tell you the answer, but you won't like it.
The reason people are apathetic about these things is because it doesn't affect normal citizens to any great extent. There will ALWAYS be government abuses -- that's just the nature of power. The question is whether there are widespread enough abuses to make people notice (i.e., it happens to someone they know), and there just aren't.
When government power really does get out of hand, then it'll be reigned in (see: the 1950s communist witch hunts). People don't care because there's nothing to care about yet.
But like I've also said, there are neat toys that have been doing all of this for years.
You keep repeating this ("doing *all* of this", your words), but I simply don't see the phone with the scalable full browser, multitouch, etc. I'm glad you're happy with your phone and think it's sufficient, but borrow someone's iPhone for a few days, and you'll see that it's different from what you think. There's no way I could use something like what you have -- it's too crude.
So you would object to using your organs for transplantation after your death, as that's not dignified?
I'm not sure I get what this has to do with anything. Some random organ is not an entity capable of growing to identity and self-awareness. When someone dies, society prefers that the body be disposed with dignity. What qualifies as dignity is generally left up to the person who died. They may choose to give up their organs, or they may choose to be put in the ground, or they may choose to be cremated, etc. I don't dispose of my fingernail clippings with dignity, because they're not representative of my life. A dead body is.
I suppose it's possible that you've met the one rape counselor out of thousands that has actually said this, but...
Oh, I forgot to answer this... no, a rape counselor wouldn't use those words, but there is a direct implication by advocating abortion. What is one of the first objections when talking abortion? Rape. There's a societal implication that "no mother would want that horrible thing growing in her body." Nobody uses those words, but that's the clear idea.
If I was raped and got pregnant, there is no way I could be so cruel as to kill the innocent child for the rapist's act. That ought to be the default ethics on this.
These are just some remarks, I hope they make you think again.
Most of your remarks boil down to, "We should be able to kill this child because of [this convenience]". I could make a lot of those arguments about the child after its born.
I know, because most people are emotionally attached to their newborns. I have two kids, I've seen it for myself. If you read the development literature, the brain is not full developed at birth, because the head won't fit throught the birth canal. It takes about three months for the personality to "switch on".
If this was truly the case, then medical science should be directed towards trying to prevent any and all miscarriages.
You think that medical science isn't directed toward that? And do you really think that miscarriages aren't tramatic for the mother? Most parents *do* feel that their child has died -- because it has.
What's viable about an aborted fetus removed from the mother's womb in the first trimester or even much earlier?
It's viable prior to the abortion.
I see very little difference between sperm cells and a mass of a couple hundred undifferentiated cells.
By that logic, I could make exactly the same argument about a newborn, which is not sentient. It's just a mass of cells with no personality or individuality -- only potential.
And how many of those has the average teenager doomed to oblivion?
"Doom to oblivion", how dramatic. Sheesh. The teenager's social life getting interrupted for nine months until she can put the baby up for adoption doesn't hold much interest to me compared to ending a human life. If she's capable of having sex, she's capable of handling the consequences of sex.
An individual human life either has value, or it does not. If it does, then any point after a new set of genetics is formed and has a viable chance to grow into an intelligent being is an arbitrary line.
I like to put it this way (and people always go insane and their brain's turn off when I say this, so I won't bother to debate it further): The fetus jointly owns the mother's body with the mother until it's born. There is a natural right to the host mother's body, because that's how people are created. And just to answer the question, yes, if the mother's life is in danger (which is incredibly rare, but anyway), then the baby has "broken the contract" so to speak, and the mother's life has to take priority.
And just to answer the inevitable other question, no, the baby shouldn't die for the sins of the father in cases of rape. It's not the baby's fault. I sympathize with the mother, but killing the baby doesn't make the situation better, it makes it worse. A lot of the emotional damage is actually done by abortion advocates telling rape victims that the baby is a horrible inhuman thing that should be killed.
Slashdot Mirror
If there were a place for me to sign up to live on Mars, I would most certainly get in line. I'll rent you my apartment while I'm gone.
Oh, there are *lots* of people in love with the romance of living on another planet. I just predict that once the excitement wears off, the reality of living on a dead rock that's a slightly different color will sink in. Sure, it'd be fun to visit for awhile -- but living there? The rest of your life? Forget about getting a lot of women on board that plan. You've seen one double moon rise, you've seen 'em all.
Again, how many people want to live in Antaractica? Why don't people want to live there?
And I haven't even addressed the health problems of living in 1/3 gravity. That alone will probably make colonies impossible.
Have you learned nothing from past absolute statements?
Sheesh, way to not read my post at all. Where did I say it was technologically impossible?
As has already been pointed out, the summary is misleading. But you might as well get used to this idea. We will NEVER colonize the planets. As soon as the technology starts to get close, the scientists and environmentalists will stop it, so as to not contaminate a virgin environment. *Particularly* in the case of Mars, because scientists want to see if life already exists there (it doesn't, but they want to find out for sure).
I understand the romance of living on other planets, but it's inevitable that these will become permanent bans, because once it starts, it'll never end. The future of humans in space are spinning habitats.
And yes, Earth can stop it happening. Forget the idea of a Heinlein-style hero taking off and say f-you to the Earth. There is no way a colony can survive without assistance from Earth, probably for centuries before it could be self-sustaining.
I could also talk about the fact that very, very few will want to live on Mars because it's lifeless dead rock, but that's another subject. :) [hint: how many people try and live in Antarctica? And that's a hell of a lot more hospitable.]
It's very, very sad when we trust a private corporation more than we trust our local goverment.
You got that exactly backwards... it's very, very sad when people put trust in government -- ever. I'll take a private corporation that I can either do or don't do business with, over a government entity any day. You don't have any choice with the government.
I might have paid over the odds many years ago to get an easily remembered one, but now? who cares, people will find you with google anyway right?
"I need a new basketball. I know! I'll order it from that sports site I went to a few months ago, they were pretty cool. Damn, I didn't bookmark it. What was it... qwomnx.com, something stupid like that. Ah well, I'll Google for 'sports', I'm sure it'll turn up."
I've got a stack of studies sitting in front of me (doing a paper on it) showing that action video games like Unreal Tournament improve a host of spatial cognition skills, and can even help to close the usual gender gap in these skills.
Again, I don't argue that their might be a slight reflex benefit. I just argue that the benefit isn't more than they would get from physical sports and/or playing outside, and it's entirely possible that the benefits are only tied to video games, and don't help much with real-world activities (rendering them useless).
How much exercise does the cartoon give you versus a round of Wii boxing or DDR?
Certainly there are games that have a net positive benefit, like DDR. I haven't made up my mind whether Wii sports are good or bad -- I'm lean toward bad (perhaps very, very bad) because it's teaching the brain the wrong lessons. It's not responding to real 3D, it's responding to 2D images.
Some games might have a benefit (perhaps Civilization, perhaps not), but my point is that those aren't the most popular games that kids play. Platform games are mental masturbation.
Also, how many kids have so little time that they can't play video games and a sport (or just playing outside)? If that's an issue, you've overscheduled your children.
I don't schedule my kids to "play outside". Kids will find something to fill their time with. I'd say generally just sitting outside in nature and fresh air is more beneficial than trying to get to the next platform level.
Even the most abstract puzzle game exercises pattern-recognition, logic, and reflexes; many others tell relatively complex and entertaining stories.
Some do... I should say that my kids enjoy some of the activities on the Disney web site, which you might call "games" in a broad definition.
But those aren't the typical games you find on consoles. It's mostly reflex mental masturbation. I'm sure there is some reflex and pattern recognition benefit, but you can get that from any sport, plus all the added benefits (physical and social). Again, I'm not arguing that games are necessarily harmful, just like a bit of candy is not harmful, but the vast majority of them are not worth the opportunity cost. If they're playing video games, they're not doing something else that could have far more growth potential.
Heck, I can argue watching old Tom and Jerry cartoons (which I heartily approve of) is a better use of time than nearly all video games, just because of the music, the varied locations, and the history lesson of life in the 40s and 50s.
I played video games a LOT when I was a teenager, but it's stories like this that make me extremely happy that my eight year old boy loves going outside, building stuff with wood, taking things apart, reading books, and generally hates video games from the times he's gone over to his friends' houses.
It's only later in life that I realized that video games are basically mental sugary sweets. They're empty entertainment that exist solely to cause your mental wheels to spin. I don't subscribe to them being actively harmful, but the lost opportunity cost for growth is significant.
I personally think this DS needs to "accidentally" get thrown in the bathtub, and then replace it with reading, crafts, piano lessons, etc.
It ain't happening by Apple. Considering Apple made a deal with YouTube to convert all their videos to Quicktime, Apple is dead-set against allowing any industry standard CODECs on the iPhone. A bit torrent client would be totally useless on the iPhone -- nothing that I encounter is ever in Quicktime.
Now, if and when hackers get some reasonable CODECs on the iPhone, then we'll be talkin'. Though, those same hackers will get bit torrent running on the iPhone as well, so I don't think we'll need to wait for Apple anyway.
So, yes, parental involvement is important, but when it comes to schools, it's important to work *with* the teachers to get things done.
On the other hand, sometimes teachers really are morons. My son's first grade teacher was a yeller, which he doesn't respond well to and generally gets very defiant. The teacher also was a "Well, I have 'x' kids, I can't do anything special just for *yours*" -- type." I actually despise the principal, who is a total a-hole. In our meetings with him, he was an expert at turning everything around as "the parents are always at fault." He was incredibly aggressive about it, and just totally unreasonable. I actually don't want to get into all the stories because it just gets me riled up. We have a very good teacher friend who was just appalled at his behavior.
On the other hand, my son's second grade teacher is wonderful, and his attitude has turned around 100%. She has worked with us and he's doing well. We had the same experience with the Kindergarten teacher as well. But that first grade teacher was downright abusive. I could tell you a lot of stories about this bitch and the a-hole principal.
Then they would use their "expertise" (e.g. as a school librarian) to tell my wife how she should be doing her job.
With all respect to your wife, if there's one thing I've learned in life, it's *NEVER* trust self-proclaimed experts to be the last word on anything. I judge based on results. There's an old saying, "if the student doesn't succeed, the teacher has failed." That's not completely fair, but there's a lot more truth in that than is given credit in today's "don't take responsibility at any cost" society.
In this sense, that first-grade teacher did me a favor. No longer do I assume that I need to "fix" my son if there's a problem. It could very well be a bad teacher.
The general idea was that child prodigies are not necessarily ``smarter'' than their peers. Instead, they are so passionate about a particular task that they practice significantly more than their peers.
Let's not go crazy and bring back the flat-out-wrong notion that everyone is the same, the only differences are environmental. Tiger Woods shot a 48 over nine holes at the age of three. You simply can't explain a gift like that with "he worked hard". Same with someone like Einstein. There are plenty of run-of-the-mill smart people who are passionate about math or physics -- but they don't overhaul the whole subject like Einstein did.
Some people are just smarter than others. But the notion of using hard work to maximize potential is applicable to everyone. There are plenty of geniuses that never develop their gift, and there are plenty of people of average intelligence or talent who rise above others through hard work.
The legends of humanity are the intrinsic geniuses who also work their ass off, like Einstein or Tiger Woods.
No disrespect to Google, and I'm glad they're making the investment, but they (and a lot of the commenters here) seem to think all it requires is waving their Magic Googlewand(beta) and we'll have energy cheaper than coal(!! Coal is pretty freaking cheap).
If it were easy, it'd have been done already. For Google to claim that they think it can be done in "years, not decades" sounds like a good bit of hubris. If they don't have something already on the horizon, then we're stepping in the range of arrogant stupidity.
All the credit to Google for stepping up to the plate and trying to get something done, but the way the whole thing is worded, there's this undercurrent of assumption that nobody has tried to make these things work before. All inventors think about cheap energy! It's like Google slapped their head one day and said, "Good God! Why didn't anyone think of creating alternate energy cheaper than coal before?? We're geniuses!!"
I hope something comes of it, but I'm not holding my breath.
Looking down on people with large libraries says the same thing about you as does looking down on people with any other pastime; be it baseball, baseball cards or collecting train tickets: you're a pompous ass who needs external validations for why you're a worthy individual.
Sheesh, a little oversensitive? I actually freely admit that at one time I had a bit of ego about my library (I had a couple thousand books), but then I actually lost about half of them in a flood. After that, I enjoyed not needing as much wall space and it broke the habit of keeping around every minor book I've ever had. I'm actually overdue for a purge, actually.
Sure, some people collect books like they collect stamps. But I think a lot of people really do keep them for ego. Everyone? Of course, duh. But a lot do.
In all those pictures, I don't see any buildup of dust in front of the rocks, though there is plenty on the sides of the paths. Usually, when I push something through the dirt/mud/snow/whatever, I end up with a good buildup in front, too. I wonder where that has gone.
I had to think about this for a second... I think the answer is that if a rock was digging into the mud, you wouldn't have this effect, because of having to shove the mass of the mud. If you look at the pictures, the fronts of a lot of them tend to be sticking up, implying they're "surfing" over the mud.
You know, I think I have a theory on why people get so upset about the idea of digital book readers. It's not the DRM, it's not the batteries, it's not whether you can loan your book...
The biggest problem is ego.
People who read a lot of books LIKE having huge bookshelves to impress people on how many books they have. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I DO read more than thou, hence, I am more intelligent. Bow down and kiss my ring!"
How many of these people keep around books they know they will NEVER read again? Why not donate them to the library, and clear up space on the ol' bookshelf? Because they like having the scorecard on the wall. Having an e-book spoils all the fun.
I think this is actually a generational thing. I'm noticing that younger people have no problem downloading scanned books, reading them, and moving on. I think the ego stroke of the big library will eventually be extinct, like we're seeing with big walls of record collections.
So why is it that we can't seem to get anything done with that level of efficiency again?
What makes you think it was done efficiently? It was done basically by throwing an enormous amount of money at the problem. All respect to the engineers who made it happen, but it was NOT done inexpensively or efficiently.
I'm actually going to root for China in the hope that it will get we Americans to start looking back into space.
Some people keep looking for a space race to happen again, but it never will. Who cares if the Chinese go to the moon again? Already been there, done that. The future of space is private space travel, not government largess.
Every day it's either some government agency or some giant corp that is tightening the screws on US citizens. When will there be a tipping point where Joe Apathetic says "enough!" and takes to the streets?
I'll tell you the answer, but you won't like it.
The reason people are apathetic about these things is because it doesn't affect normal citizens to any great extent. There will ALWAYS be government abuses -- that's just the nature of power. The question is whether there are widespread enough abuses to make people notice (i.e., it happens to someone they know), and there just aren't.
When government power really does get out of hand, then it'll be reigned in (see: the 1950s communist witch hunts). People don't care because there's nothing to care about yet.
But like I've also said, there are neat toys that have been doing all of this for years.
You keep repeating this ("doing *all* of this", your words), but I simply don't see the phone with the scalable full browser, multitouch, etc. I'm glad you're happy with your phone and think it's sufficient, but borrow someone's iPhone for a few days, and you'll see that it's different from what you think. There's no way I could use something like what you have -- it's too crude.
So you would object to using your organs for transplantation after your death, as that's not dignified?
I'm not sure I get what this has to do with anything. Some random organ is not an entity capable of growing to identity and self-awareness. When someone dies, society prefers that the body be disposed with dignity. What qualifies as dignity is generally left up to the person who died. They may choose to give up their organs, or they may choose to be put in the ground, or they may choose to be cremated, etc. I don't dispose of my fingernail clippings with dignity, because they're not representative of my life. A dead body is.
May I ask "Mr. atheist", what makes *your* cell superior to the cells present on animals and plants?
Self-awareness -- the most unique thing in the universe.
I suppose it's possible that you've met the one rape counselor out of thousands that has actually said this, but...
Oh, I forgot to answer this... no, a rape counselor wouldn't use those words, but there is a direct implication by advocating abortion. What is one of the first objections when talking abortion? Rape. There's a societal implication that "no mother would want that horrible thing growing in her body." Nobody uses those words, but that's the clear idea.
If I was raped and got pregnant, there is no way I could be so cruel as to kill the innocent child for the rapist's act. That ought to be the default ethics on this.
These are just some remarks, I hope they make you think again.
Most of your remarks boil down to, "We should be able to kill this child because of [this convenience]". I could make a lot of those arguments about the child after its born.
Wow. Most people wouldn't agree with this.
I know, because most people are emotionally attached to their newborns. I have two kids, I've seen it for myself. If you read the development literature, the brain is not full developed at birth, because the head won't fit throught the birth canal. It takes about three months for the personality to "switch on".
If this was truly the case, then medical science should be directed towards trying to prevent any and all miscarriages.
You think that medical science isn't directed toward that? And do you really think that miscarriages aren't tramatic for the mother? Most parents *do* feel that their child has died -- because it has.
What's viable about an aborted fetus removed from the mother's womb in the first trimester or even much earlier?
It's viable prior to the abortion.
I see very little difference between sperm cells and a mass of a couple hundred undifferentiated cells.
By that logic, I could make exactly the same argument about a newborn, which is not sentient. It's just a mass of cells with no personality or individuality -- only potential.
And how many of those has the average teenager doomed to oblivion?
"Doom to oblivion", how dramatic. Sheesh. The teenager's social life getting interrupted for nine months until she can put the baby up for adoption doesn't hold much interest to me compared to ending a human life. If she's capable of having sex, she's capable of handling the consequences of sex.
An individual human life either has value, or it does not. If it does, then any point after a new set of genetics is formed and has a viable chance to grow into an intelligent being is an arbitrary line.
I like to put it this way (and people always go insane and their brain's turn off when I say this, so I won't bother to debate it further): The fetus jointly owns the mother's body with the mother until it's born. There is a natural right to the host mother's body, because that's how people are created. And just to answer the question, yes, if the mother's life is in danger (which is incredibly rare, but anyway), then the baby has "broken the contract" so to speak, and the mother's life has to take priority.
And just to answer the inevitable other question, no, the baby shouldn't die for the sins of the father in cases of rape. It's not the baby's fault. I sympathize with the mother, but killing the baby doesn't make the situation better, it makes it worse. A lot of the emotional damage is actually done by abortion advocates telling rape victims that the baby is a horrible inhuman thing that should be killed.