As long as my tissues can secrete and pump around any kind of fluid - I want to be kept alive. And fuck your stock in battery companies too.
I'd say fuck the horse you rode in on too, but I'm not into that thing. But it's OK. We'll look around, we'll find someone to fuck your horse for you. Now fuck off and go die somewhere before your quality of life gets taken away if your beer gets warm while your food goes cold.
Other than some small percentage in bullion most countries use nickel, copper, iron and chrome.
Problem with coinage is the relatively high cost of minting per monetary unit, but as they tend to be virtually indestructible by wear and tear, that's mostly OK - unless you're trying to "chase down" inflation by minting new coins. Plus, should you need to mint new ones with additional zeroes due to inflation - collecting and destroying all the old ones (which tend to remain legal tender) is expensive and complicated.
And then there are options like minting coins for the lower, most easily spent (as in "worn out" as well as in "payed with") denominations, promoting debit cards, using cheques, and even rubber-stamping the existing banknotes with additional zeroes and official stamps to make "new" denominations.
But what is much more likely to happen is that the people will start using foreign currency instead of rials, like dollars or euros. Rial will remain the "official" currency but you will only be able to buy some items in foreign currency, and the black market will bloom. Particularly since alternative money transfer systems like hawala are pretty much currency independent.
Say I hire a masseuse. I am paying him to give me a massage, i.e. to do certain things with his body, so I am definitely hiring "the use and control of his BODY".
No.
You are hiring him for his expertise in massage, to do work based on that expertise, AND you don't get to control none of his body. He touches you, per your permission, but you don't get to touch him. You know, not that kind of a massage.
Say I am setting up a broadway show. I am definately hiring "the use and control of the BODIES of the actors".
No. Again. You are instructing them what to do, within the needs of setting up the show, but they are the ones who retain the full control of what they will do and how they will do it. And you don't get to have ANY physical contact. Neither side touches the other. Nor are you allowed to make demands that would endanger their health. Nor can you expose them to psychological abuse. Not that kind of a show.
Hell, that is more or less the definition of manual labor: Getting people to perform a certain task with their body for money.
It is simply WORK, performed without the use of machines or working animals. It doesn't even imply payment. Slaves did a shitload of manual labor.
As for the "certain task... for money" part - the task is the important part. THAT is what is paid for, when talking about hiring someone to do X. Not the use of someone's body - use of their labor. Task, work, job - LABOR and/or the "fruits" of it (i.e. a finished product).
With prostitution you are not paying for labor - you are paying for access and control of someone else's body. You are paying for a privilege to do something to someone else in order to cause a sexual reaction in you. To do something to someone else.
From the video, the bra itself is just the housing for the sensors. So they could probably have it as a washable insert to the regular bras.
Regarding the data, it all gets "uploaded to the internet" where it gets analyzed, so it does not depend on one particular bra or insert.
As for plugging it in, my guess is that it is much more likely going to run on disposable "button cell" batteries, for safety and convenience reasons. Being that a Li-Ion, wrapped in cloth and recharged over and over may not be the safest thing in the world to carry strapped to ones breasts.
And I don't think that it will need much calibration for a single user. At least the original sports bra model shouldn't, as it is basically a housing for an array of heat sensors.
When one part of the array starts getting warmer by some percentage that means new blood vessels, which indicate existence of new tissue growth inside the breast, which is probably cancer. So, moving the sensor array around a few centimeters won't make much of a difference cause the distance between the sensors doesn't change and cause they are measuring the heat of a wider area from several points and not a single spot per sensor. I.e. It does not look at the heat of a single cell, but of the entire breast.
Just like hiring somebody to do your lawn deprives them of their freedom. Quickly, outlaw jobs!
You are hiring their WORK, and a very specific work at that. Prostitutes hire out the use and control of their BODIES.
Also, note that I am FOR legalization of prostitution, not outlawing it - BUT with strong regulation.
Slavery is defined in that the slave have no choice in what to do, and that they cannot quit. When accepting clients for web-page coding, or sex, you do have a choice of what to do. Even when working for somebody else, the prostitute can quit. If he/she cannot do that, then it is slavery and should be illegal.
I'm sorry but... you have a very... shall we say idealistic? A very idealistic and wrong idea of how prostitution works. Or how coding works. One of those two for sure.
Because doing things I would not like to tell my family about should be illegal.
Hmm. You seem to be confusing the right to privacy and confidentiality with illegality there.
My comment was more about analyzing those two situations. I've already explained it in another comment to this thread.
Control of your body is over-rated. If you had the choice of working 60 hours a week in shit job that you hated, or 10 hours a week banging a few guys for 10 x times as much money, who has more control over their life? I which choice I'd make for my body if I had the natural talents.
Which is why you only have one kidney, one eye, one lung, one arm and one leg - having sold off the other ones, I guess? And who needs all those teeth, am I right, ha? Ha? Double high-five! Oh... right. OK, regular high-five!
After all... control of your body is overrated. I just hope you got a good price.
Not sure how you equate private matters with slavery?
I don't. I said "try thinking about". You know... construct those situations in your mind and try to honestly judge both your own impressions and those that your expect from those near to you. You already clearly illustrate that you find something reprehensible about both those acts. OK. Now analyze that further. Why is it so?
Done properly, it should illustrate the parallels and differences between what we usually perceive as "slave work", prostitution and actual slavery. Cause, if we throw away the bigoted hypocrisy of "morality of the society", and take in account that everyone works and fucks, and that the owner of the sweatshop only wants the product of the workers' labor and not the use of their bodies - working in a sweatshop starts looking less like slavery and prostitution is shown to be exactly that.
A a prostitute, who is generally a sole-proprietor, controls the terms and conditions of her body's use to a greater extent than most workers.
What you ARE saying is that the prostitutes try to impose a set of rules and regulations for their own protection - because there aren't any rules or agents protecting them. At least none on which they can rely that don't include jail time or violence. And should the customer break those rules "imposed" by prostitutes (as they are enforced only by the "thin vernier of civilization") their only recourse is violence and possibly breaking more laws.
Being acted on directly by another is not any more oppressive than being acted on by the work environment controlled by the boss, though of course there also jobs like contact sports entertainment.
Whoa!
First off, prostitutes sell off the use of their body. Workers in a "work environment controlled by the boss" sign off the use of their LABOR. Your boss does not get to use your body for his/her personal entertainment. Cause in every other job other than prostitution that constitutes sexual harassment.
And even if your job should be something very basic like stacking boxes or digging ditches, your boss STILL doesn't get to use your body - only your work. He can't ask you to give him a blowjob, be his punching bag, food taster, drug tester, to let him ride you around like a small horse - or to do ANYTHING that may cause you physical or psychological harm.
And those are not rights. Those are rules and regulations based on LAWS. Laws prohibiting slavery, laws prohibiting indentured servitude, laws for protection of workers. Entire generations of people fought long and hard and went to prisons and gallows so we could today expect SOME level of protection and civilized behavior in our work places. Except in those jobs which are illegal - solely for being "immoral".
Which is the real reason why prostitution is kept illegal - not the immorality of slavery or exploitation of the poor (and mostly women), but because it is an easy target to "crack down on" to prove one's own "high morality standards". I.e. Bigotry and hypocrisy.
As for contact sports... Well, I guess most prostitutes wouldn't mind sponsor deals and million dollar contacts that pro "athletes" get. Then again I've always advocated that the wage of the professional runners after a ball and players of other similar kids' games should not exceed that of your average porn actor.
Taboos aside, working for a sub-survival wage is rationally more shameful than being paid well
Ugh... There are volumes to say there but I don't want to further dilute this discussion. I'll just say this. It is not shameful working more or being paid less than you deserve. The burden of shame lies in the act of exploitation and on the shoulders of the exploiters.
But, since the exploiters offer no shame or remorse, the exploited ones who realize that they are being exploited, take on a part of the shame from being actors in such an act and add to that the shame from realization that they are in some way (i.e. by knowingly accepting a bad deal) degrading themselves.
The shame comes from being played a fool and from being exploited, not from being paid less. Volunteers feel no shame for being paid nothing for their services.
How is this different from anyone who earns a paycheck in a mindless manufacturing job?
One is signing off ONLY the fruits of one's LABOR in a controlled environment, protected by laws and regulations against physical and today even against psychological harm.
The other one is giving up a control of one's BODY, in a dangerous environment directly and indirectly detrimental to one's physical and psychological health, with no protection other than the one the "workers" provide themselves at their own monetary expense and often even at the expense of their own safety (i.e. by "employing" the pimps).
So how would regulating prostitution prevent economic exploitation? If someone is in desperate enough economic circumstances to be vulnerable to exploitation, they don't become any less vulnerable if you make prostitution illegal or regulated. If anything, their situation gets even worse since they presumably were taking the best option available to them, and now either resort to worse ones, put up with the criminal types who flock to illegal fields, or starve.
You don't eliminate the economic exploitation. You eliminate one particular venue for it by eliminating the market for illegal (unregulated) prostitution. Kinda the way you eliminate illegal trade of alcohol of questionable quality that might make you go blind, by providing a legal option of certified quality.
You create a legal, clean and safe alternative, and there will be no market for the illegal, unclean and dangerous kind on the street. You know... The kind where you're lucky if you only get the clap and not a knife between your kidneys in an alley somewhere.
As for prostitutes and vulnerability... Besides all the benefits of regular health checkups, safer working environment, health insurance and whatnot - they too don't have to worry about having their heads bashed in by a customer in an alley somewhere, or by their pimp. And both sides don't have to worry about their money being stolen. Cause should things get to that or worse - either side can now call the cops.
The act of prostitution deprives prostitutes of their freedom and of the control over their bodies. No matter how "high class" things get it is still closer to slavery than to a job of an entertainer. If you find slavery to be a bit over the top, try thinking about what you'd rather admit to your friends and family - that you're working in a sweatshop or that you're getting paid to be fucked up the ass?
On the other hand... Clearly, making it illegal does nothing but keep some people on their high horses and others in the office. So, it should be made legal. BUT... heavily regulated and the regulation should be there to protect both the sex workers and their customers. Unionization, health benefits, vacation time etc. should naturally be a given.
They were trying to hide the fact that the kid may have swallowed a coin while they were babysitting her. Knowing that she has swallowed a coin doesn't really help them as they were working with that conclusion from the start. The question was is the coin in a safe place (i.e. it will come out soon on its own) or could it possibly cause a health problem for the kid.
Also, how to get it out without Cuddy finding about it.
There will still be the hard corner cases where only an experience and well practiced professional should be using this or something more expensive to figure something out (the "House" scenarios.) But there will also be a much better care at lower cost for a wide range of things.
Actually, the House scenario I mention above is a VERY simple and a very typical case. A kid swallowing a coin. Two doctors suspecting just that. They do an ultrasound - and they can't agree if what they are seeing is a coin or a pocket of gas.
It is a diagnostic method highly dependent on subjective interpretation. I.e. Trained intuition based on expert training and experience.
That over time more MD's (especially in the 3rd world) will gain experience (the hard way by simply using them.)
Without actual expert guidance and additional diagnostic methods such as X-ray only experience they will gain is in writing death certificates - cause they'll be doing a lot of faulty and unnecessary operations based on worse than guesswork. Why worse? Because it will be guesswork backed by authority of technology. As a bonus, use of such devices will drain what little there's left of the communal medical resources - as bad diagnostic will have them chasing imaginary diseases and injuries.
Even with degraded accuracy, having _some_ imaging capability is almost certainly better than having none.
Having "some" ultrasound diagnostic capability of questionably quality is WORSE than having none.
First, you have to realize that the problem with ultrasound diagnostic is not in the lack of equipment. Its in the lack of experts. And you really need EXPERTS, not technicians. Why?
Well, its the second thing - without years of expertise it is just a guessing game. And experts become experts after years of training and experience of ultrasound imaging and diagnostic - on a very specific part of the body. It's one of those "more art than science" things. They are looking at shadows and reflections from inside of a living, moving 3D object - trying to make out a detail which would indicate some possible medical condition for that particular region of the human body.
Give a low capability device to someone with an "ultrasound course" and all you'll get is more faulty diagnoses, more "inconclusive" results and more work for the ultrasound specialists due to such ultrasounds. You might as well equip each doctor with a portable machine that goes "PING!".
It is not the issue of one specific law or custom.
It is an issue of the rule of law (instead of subjective rule of men) and democracy (instead of dictatorship or despotism). Both of those ideas, once introduced, must lead to the conclusion that the works of art belong to the entirety of the human race. If for no other reason, then because both the artists and the owners are mortal and institutions and corporations are not capable of experiencing art no more than a hamburger is.
With those natural and social rules in place art MUST eventually belong to the people. As you can't really chop the Mona Lisa into ~7 billion pieces, nor would those ~7 billion pieces after being given to the ~7 billion humans make them experience The Mona Lisa - we, the humans, have created institutions to care for such unique works of art, so that we all can have a chance to take part in the "Mona Lisa experience". Eventually.
Those institutions exist solely BECAUSE the people have given them a mandate to care about such art. And because they are being given such a mandate, they get to have ANY public funding. Should they lose ALL public funding they still don't get to take the art home as private property - because it belongs to the public.
Any money they make on top of the public funding is just them being more economical and frugal with people's resources - but that is not their job. Their job is making sure that the art is taken care of so that it remains available to its owners - the people.
Obviously that depends on what those rules actually say.
Which brings us back to the point. Religions are different. One of them is extremely disturbing and violent and frankly, we should do something about it, now rather than later.
Well, since this topic seems to keep returning to one particular religion, I'd instruct you to take a look at its origin, which is very much included in its scripture and rules - namely those other two Abrahamic religions and all the violence condoned, praised and glorified in their scriptures. And before you go all "those religions are not violent", look up my earlier post with the link to the Wikipedia list on religious violence.
If you can still claim, after going through the lists of religious acts of violence, that it is only ONE religion that is "extremely disturbing and violent" instead of violence being a trend with people who take their religions either to seriously or as a convenient excuse - then I've got a bridge or two to sell you.
As for the "we should do something about it"... You do realize that THAT is the very same logic that those who believed in a winnable nuclear war were following? Their religion (or the lack of it) is evil - we must bomb them to oblivion.
And that's just the "batshit crayzee" part, without all the racism included in that "ONE evil religion" bit.
On the other hand... As someone who had 3 different ultrasound diagnoses, to the same heart condition, by 2 specialists - which in the end turned out to be of viral origin (they were literally chasing shadows); and who later had a dubious privilege of fixing and editing hundreds of ultrasound photos for an ultrasound textbook, with each step done according to the instructions of an instructor/teacher with some 40 years in the ultrasound diagnostic - price of the equipment is not the biggest obstacle in getting the ultrasound "to the masses".
It's training and experience. And you need literally years of both to start making your ultrasound guesses educated. Cause without both extensive training with an experienced ultrasound technician AND years of experience in doing ultrasounds of that particular section of human body - that whole "subjective interpretation of an objective method" thing amounts to just guessing.
There's an episode of House where this is nicely demonstrated by House and Wilson trying to figure out if Cuddy's daughter has swallowed a coin. On ultrasound it might be a dime, or it may just be an air bubble.
...but getting public funding means they can't act about any of it as if its private property. They are just the caretakers of the public domain - not its owners or managers.
It is not their duty to make a profit but to assure the proper level of care for the works so that they may remain available to the public, now and in the future. That is why they get to have a part of the public money. Instead of say... public schools.
How much does it cost to ask the Louvre in Paris to close their gallery and reposition the Mona Lisa for you to get a nice shot, then ask the Vatican if they'd close the Sistine Chapel while you take photos, the big galleries in the USA to retrieve their most priceless paintings from the secure vaults and set them up so you can "take pix"?
Don't most of those places get funding from the government? I.e. From taxes.
If you're a pacifist, you can't really vanquish evil, so you shouldn't be a threat to the rest of us, even if you might think that we are evil.
There are apparently 6 million Jainists in India. Your "rest of us" may not be quite the same as the "rest of us" to those living in India - who may be born into Jainist culture, and who as such may be induced into acting according to its beliefs. Which, like I said above, protect the "world" by hurting the people who practice them.
As for vanquishing evil, they sure as hell seem to be very busy trying to vanquish it in themselves, under a presupposition that there IS evil there to vanquish. Which is not really that much different from, say, everyone being a sinner by default in Christianity - an evil built-in into every human being, sentencing one to eternal suffering (hell, samsara... same thing) which you can only get rid off by following this handy-dandy set of rules available from your local church or temple.
And taking the "they are only hurting themselves - let them" approach is in fact rather selfish, and questions arguing religion at all as long as you can cover your own ass from its influence. It's kinda like saying of someone "He's an alcoholic - but he's a joyful drunk and he never beats his wife".
Oh, by the way, where is my appeal to authority?
Sorry, you may not have done it intentionally, but that "Sam Harris evidently disagrees with you." bit and then linking to him talking, instead of say to a Wikipedia article about Jainism, smells a lot of ipse dixit.
Also, his talk there is a bit jarring at places - and I'm not talking about his obvious bias towards Islam. He talks about religious extremism and fundamentalism not being a problem - if the religion itself is not "bad". Which is nonsense.
Religions are bad because they are deluding, exploiting and hurting people by presenting them a false image of the entirety of EVERYTHING, which is akin to teaching children that they can fly off rooftops if they say the right magic words. They give people a faulty, easily shatterable foundation on which they're instructed to build their entire lives and their views of the world - leaving them morally and emotionally crippled or forced to accept cognitive dissonances at every turn when the whole thing falls down. And they all have both their "good" rules (Thou shalt not kill etc.) as well as the "bad" ones.
But I am more worried about him using not one, not two but THREE different logical fallacies when comparing Bin Laden to Jim Jones and David Koresh.
First it's inconsistent comparison, comparing actual cult leaders who ascribed very specific religious and magical roles to themselves (FFS Koresh believed himself to be Jesus) - with a guy who is "simply" a terrorist. Then, he sneaks in argument from ignorance - cause "you really have to be an acrobat to figure out how he is distorting the faith". And then he tops that off with affirmative conclusion from a negative premise - because all he says about Bin Laden is that he is NOT like a cult leader. All that in under two minutes.
All that shit REALLY makes me question his logical processes and how susceptible to cognitive dissonance he actually is. Or even his motivation. You don't need to lie and use faulty logic when talking about religious issues from an atheist standpoint. Or make up "gradations of evil".
You simply point at things and explain how they are factually, logically, historically or in any other way faulty compared to the real world. Religion does not stand to logical scrutiny - by design.
Slashdot Mirror
They ARE unusual.
Unfortunately that was done by upping the BMI with jelly donuts. ;)
That would explain why he looks like a R.O.U.S.
You can have my tablet and chalk when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
You might need pliers for that. Arthritis is a bitch.
As long as my tissues can secrete and pump around any kind of fluid - I want to be kept alive.
And fuck your stock in battery companies too.
I'd say fuck the horse you rode in on too, but I'm not into that thing.
But it's OK. We'll look around, we'll find someone to fuck your horse for you.
Now fuck off and go die somewhere before your quality of life gets taken away if your beer gets warm while your food goes cold.
They handwave that part a bit at the official site, but that's exactly it.
Sabatier reaction to get methane.
Steam reforming that methane into Syngas, then either making diesel out of it through the Fischer-Tropsch process or to gasoline through the Mobil process.
Coinage is possible if you have gold.
Other than some small percentage in bullion most countries use nickel, copper, iron and chrome.
Problem with coinage is the relatively high cost of minting per monetary unit, but as they tend to be virtually indestructible by wear and tear, that's mostly OK - unless you're trying to "chase down" inflation by minting new coins.
Plus, should you need to mint new ones with additional zeroes due to inflation - collecting and destroying all the old ones (which tend to remain legal tender) is expensive and complicated.
If they can't print money, I frankly don't know what they'll do. I believe this would be unprecidented.
Like getting your money printed by other "friendly nations".
Or harnessing the local talent.
And then there are options like minting coins for the lower, most easily spent (as in "worn out" as well as in "payed with") denominations, promoting debit cards, using cheques, and even rubber-stamping the existing banknotes with additional zeroes and official stamps to make "new" denominations.
But what is much more likely to happen is that the people will start using foreign currency instead of rials, like dollars or euros.
Rial will remain the "official" currency but you will only be able to buy some items in foreign currency, and the black market will bloom.
Particularly since alternative money transfer systems like hawala are pretty much currency independent.
Say I hire a masseuse. I am paying him to give me a massage, i.e. to do certain things with his body, so I am definitely hiring "the use and control of his BODY".
No.
You are hiring him for his expertise in massage, to do work based on that expertise, AND you don't get to control none of his body.
He touches you, per your permission, but you don't get to touch him. You know, not that kind of a massage.
Say I am setting up a broadway show. I am definately hiring "the use and control of the BODIES of the actors".
No.
Again.
You are instructing them what to do, within the needs of setting up the show, but they are the ones who retain the full control of what they will do and how they will do it.
And you don't get to have ANY physical contact. Neither side touches the other.
Nor are you allowed to make demands that would endanger their health.
Nor can you expose them to psychological abuse.
Not that kind of a show.
Hell, that is more or less the definition of manual labor: Getting people to perform a certain task with their body for money.
No. It is not. No more or less about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_labour
It is simply WORK, performed without the use of machines or working animals.
It doesn't even imply payment. Slaves did a shitload of manual labor.
As for the "certain task... for money" part - the task is the important part.
THAT is what is paid for, when talking about hiring someone to do X. Not the use of someone's body - use of their labor.
Task, work, job - LABOR and/or the "fruits" of it (i.e. a finished product).
With prostitution you are not paying for labor - you are paying for access and control of someone else's body.
You are paying for a privilege to do something to someone else in order to cause a sexual reaction in you.
To do something to someone else.
From the video, the bra itself is just the housing for the sensors.
So they could probably have it as a washable insert to the regular bras.
Regarding the data, it all gets "uploaded to the internet" where it gets analyzed, so it does not depend on one particular bra or insert.
As for plugging it in, my guess is that it is much more likely going to run on disposable "button cell" batteries, for safety and convenience reasons.
Being that a Li-Ion, wrapped in cloth and recharged over and over may not be the safest thing in the world to carry strapped to ones breasts.
And I don't think that it will need much calibration for a single user.
At least the original sports bra model shouldn't, as it is basically a housing for an array of heat sensors.
When one part of the array starts getting warmer by some percentage that means new blood vessels, which indicate existence of new tissue growth inside the breast, which is probably cancer.
So, moving the sensor array around a few centimeters won't make much of a difference cause the distance between the sensors doesn't change and cause they are measuring the heat of a wider area from several points and not a single spot per sensor.
I.e. It does not look at the heat of a single cell, but of the entire breast.
Just like hiring somebody to do your lawn deprives them of their freedom. Quickly, outlaw jobs!
You are hiring their WORK, and a very specific work at that.
Prostitutes hire out the use and control of their BODIES.
Also, note that I am FOR legalization of prostitution, not outlawing it - BUT with strong regulation.
Slavery is defined in that the slave have no choice in what to do, and that they cannot quit. When accepting clients for web-page coding, or sex, you do have a choice of what to do. Even when working for somebody else, the prostitute can quit. If he/she cannot do that, then it is slavery and should be illegal.
I'm sorry but... you have a very... shall we say idealistic?
A very idealistic and wrong idea of how prostitution works. Or how coding works. One of those two for sure.
Because doing things I would not like to tell my family about should be illegal.
Hmm. You seem to be confusing the right to privacy and confidentiality with illegality there.
My comment was more about analyzing those two situations. I've already explained it in another comment to this thread.
Control of your body is over-rated. If you had the choice of working 60 hours a week in shit job that you hated, or 10 hours a week banging a few guys for 10 x times as much money, who has more control over their life? I which choice I'd make for my body if I had the natural talents.
Which is why you only have one kidney, one eye, one lung, one arm and one leg - having sold off the other ones, I guess?
And who needs all those teeth, am I right, ha? Ha? Double high-five! Oh... right.
OK, regular high-five!
After all... control of your body is overrated. I just hope you got a good price.
Not sure how you equate private matters with slavery?
I don't.
I said "try thinking about".
You know... construct those situations in your mind and try to honestly judge both your own impressions and those that your expect from those near to you.
You already clearly illustrate that you find something reprehensible about both those acts.
OK. Now analyze that further. Why is it so?
Done properly, it should illustrate the parallels and differences between what we usually perceive as "slave work", prostitution and actual slavery.
Cause, if we throw away the bigoted hypocrisy of "morality of the society", and take in account that everyone works and fucks, and that the owner of the sweatshop only wants the product of the workers' labor and not the use of their bodies - working in a sweatshop starts looking less like slavery and prostitution is shown to be exactly that.
A a prostitute, who is generally a sole-proprietor, controls the terms and conditions of her body's use to a greater extent than most workers.
What you ARE saying is that the prostitutes try to impose a set of rules and regulations for their own protection - because there aren't any rules or agents protecting them.
At least none on which they can rely that don't include jail time or violence.
And should the customer break those rules "imposed" by prostitutes (as they are enforced only by the "thin vernier of civilization") their only recourse is violence and possibly breaking more laws.
Being acted on directly by another is not any more oppressive than being acted on by the work environment controlled by the boss, though of course there also jobs like contact sports entertainment.
Whoa!
First off, prostitutes sell off the use of their body.
Workers in a "work environment controlled by the boss" sign off the use of their LABOR.
Your boss does not get to use your body for his/her personal entertainment.
Cause in every other job other than prostitution that constitutes sexual harassment.
And even if your job should be something very basic like stacking boxes or digging ditches, your boss STILL doesn't get to use your body - only your work.
He can't ask you to give him a blowjob, be his punching bag, food taster, drug tester, to let him ride you around like a small horse - or to do ANYTHING that may cause you physical or psychological harm.
And those are not rights.
Those are rules and regulations based on LAWS.
Laws prohibiting slavery, laws prohibiting indentured servitude, laws for protection of workers.
Entire generations of people fought long and hard and went to prisons and gallows so we could today expect SOME level of protection and civilized behavior in our work places.
Except in those jobs which are illegal - solely for being "immoral".
Which is the real reason why prostitution is kept illegal - not the immorality of slavery or exploitation of the poor (and mostly women), but because it is an easy target to "crack down on" to prove one's own "high morality standards".
I.e. Bigotry and hypocrisy.
As for contact sports...
Well, I guess most prostitutes wouldn't mind sponsor deals and million dollar contacts that pro "athletes" get.
Then again I've always advocated that the wage of the professional runners after a ball and players of other similar kids' games should not exceed that of your average porn actor.
Taboos aside, working for a sub-survival wage is rationally more shameful than being paid well
Ugh... There are volumes to say there but I don't want to further dilute this discussion.
I'll just say this.
It is not shameful working more or being paid less than you deserve. The burden of shame lies in the act of exploitation and on the shoulders of the exploiters.
But, since the exploiters offer no shame or remorse, the exploited ones who realize that they are being exploited, take on a part of the shame from being actors in such an act and add to that the shame from realization that they are in some way (i.e. by knowingly accepting a bad deal) degrading themselves.
The shame comes from being played a fool and from being exploited, not from being paid less.
Volunteers feel no shame for being paid nothing for their services.
How is this different from anyone who earns a paycheck in a mindless manufacturing job?
One is signing off ONLY the fruits of one's LABOR in a controlled environment, protected by laws and regulations against physical and today even against psychological harm.
The other one is giving up a control of one's BODY, in a dangerous environment directly and indirectly detrimental to one's physical and psychological health, with no protection other than the one the "workers" provide themselves at their own monetary expense and often even at the expense of their own safety (i.e. by "employing" the pimps).
So how would regulating prostitution prevent economic exploitation? If someone is in desperate enough economic circumstances to be vulnerable to exploitation, they don't become any less vulnerable if you make prostitution illegal or regulated. If anything, their situation gets even worse since they presumably were taking the best option available to them, and now either resort to worse ones, put up with the criminal types who flock to illegal fields, or starve.
You don't eliminate the economic exploitation.
You eliminate one particular venue for it by eliminating the market for illegal (unregulated) prostitution.
Kinda the way you eliminate illegal trade of alcohol of questionable quality that might make you go blind, by providing a legal option of certified quality.
You create a legal, clean and safe alternative, and there will be no market for the illegal, unclean and dangerous kind on the street.
You know... The kind where you're lucky if you only get the clap and not a knife between your kidneys in an alley somewhere.
As for prostitutes and vulnerability...
Besides all the benefits of regular health checkups, safer working environment, health insurance and whatnot - they too don't have to worry about having their heads bashed in by a customer in an alley somewhere, or by their pimp.
And both sides don't have to worry about their money being stolen.
Cause should things get to that or worse - either side can now call the cops.
The act of prostitution deprives prostitutes of their freedom and of the control over their bodies.
No matter how "high class" things get it is still closer to slavery than to a job of an entertainer.
If you find slavery to be a bit over the top, try thinking about what you'd rather admit to your friends and family - that you're working in a sweatshop or that you're getting paid to be fucked up the ass?
On the other hand...
Clearly, making it illegal does nothing but keep some people on their high horses and others in the office.
So, it should be made legal. BUT... heavily regulated and the regulation should be there to protect both the sex workers and their customers.
Unionization, health benefits, vacation time etc. should naturally be a given.
They were trying to hide the fact that the kid may have swallowed a coin while they were babysitting her.
Knowing that she has swallowed a coin doesn't really help them as they were working with that conclusion from the start.
The question was is the coin in a safe place (i.e. it will come out soon on its own) or could it possibly cause a health problem for the kid.
Also, how to get it out without Cuddy finding about it.
There will still be the hard corner cases where only an experience and well practiced professional should be using this or something more expensive to figure something out (the "House" scenarios.) But there will also be a much better care at lower cost for a wide range of things.
Actually, the House scenario I mention above is a VERY simple and a very typical case.
A kid swallowing a coin. Two doctors suspecting just that.
They do an ultrasound - and they can't agree if what they are seeing is a coin or a pocket of gas.
It is a diagnostic method highly dependent on subjective interpretation. I.e. Trained intuition based on expert training and experience.
That over time more MD's (especially in the 3rd world) will gain experience (the hard way by simply using them.)
Without actual expert guidance and additional diagnostic methods such as X-ray only experience they will gain is in writing death certificates - cause they'll be doing a lot of faulty and unnecessary operations based on worse than guesswork.
Why worse? Because it will be guesswork backed by authority of technology.
As a bonus, use of such devices will drain what little there's left of the communal medical resources - as bad diagnostic will have them chasing imaginary diseases and injuries.
Even with degraded accuracy, having _some_ imaging capability is almost certainly better than having none.
Having "some" ultrasound diagnostic capability of questionably quality is WORSE than having none.
First, you have to realize that the problem with ultrasound diagnostic is not in the lack of equipment.
Its in the lack of experts. And you really need EXPERTS, not technicians. Why?
Well, its the second thing - without years of expertise it is just a guessing game.
And experts become experts after years of training and experience of ultrasound imaging and diagnostic - on a very specific part of the body.
It's one of those "more art than science" things.
They are looking at shadows and reflections from inside of a living, moving 3D object - trying to make out a detail which would indicate some possible medical condition for that particular region of the human body.
Give a low capability device to someone with an "ultrasound course" and all you'll get is more faulty diagnoses, more "inconclusive" results and more work for the ultrasound specialists due to such ultrasounds.
You might as well equip each doctor with a portable machine that goes "PING!".
I'd been waiting for the appointment since January.
Hope the results were favorable.
It is not the issue of one specific law or custom.
It is an issue of the rule of law (instead of subjective rule of men) and democracy (instead of dictatorship or despotism).
Both of those ideas, once introduced, must lead to the conclusion that the works of art belong to the entirety of the human race.
If for no other reason, then because both the artists and the owners are mortal and institutions and corporations are not capable of experiencing art no more than a hamburger is.
With those natural and social rules in place art MUST eventually belong to the people.
As you can't really chop the Mona Lisa into ~7 billion pieces, nor would those ~7 billion pieces after being given to the ~7 billion humans make them experience The Mona Lisa - we, the humans, have created institutions to care for such unique works of art, so that we all can have a chance to take part in the "Mona Lisa experience".
Eventually.
Those institutions exist solely BECAUSE the people have given them a mandate to care about such art.
And because they are being given such a mandate, they get to have ANY public funding.
Should they lose ALL public funding they still don't get to take the art home as private property - because it belongs to the public.
Any money they make on top of the public funding is just them being more economical and frugal with people's resources - but that is not their job.
Their job is making sure that the art is taken care of so that it remains available to its owners - the people.
Obviously that depends on what those rules actually say.
Which brings us back to the point. Religions are different. One of them is extremely disturbing and violent and frankly, we should do something about it, now rather than later.
Well, since this topic seems to keep returning to one particular religion, I'd instruct you to take a look at its origin, which is very much included in its scripture and rules - namely those other two Abrahamic religions and all the violence condoned, praised and glorified in their scriptures.
And before you go all "those religions are not violent", look up my earlier post with the link to the Wikipedia list on religious violence.
If you can still claim, after going through the lists of religious acts of violence, that it is only ONE religion that is "extremely disturbing and violent" instead of violence being a trend with people who take their religions either to seriously or as a convenient excuse - then I've got a bridge or two to sell you.
As for the "we should do something about it"...
You do realize that THAT is the very same logic that those who believed in a winnable nuclear war were following?
Their religion (or the lack of it) is evil - we must bomb them to oblivion.
And that's just the "batshit crayzee" part, without all the racism included in that "ONE evil religion" bit.
And that's the "buy now" price for the "Interson SeeMore USB Portable Ultrasound Abdominal Probe".
On the other hand...
As someone who had 3 different ultrasound diagnoses, to the same heart condition, by 2 specialists - which in the end turned out to be of viral origin (they were literally chasing shadows); and who later had a dubious privilege of fixing and editing hundreds of ultrasound photos for an ultrasound textbook, with each step done according to the instructions of an instructor/teacher with some 40 years in the ultrasound diagnostic - price of the equipment is not the biggest obstacle in getting the ultrasound "to the masses".
It's training and experience.
And you need literally years of both to start making your ultrasound guesses educated.
Cause without both extensive training with an experienced ultrasound technician AND years of experience in doing ultrasounds of that particular section of human body - that whole "subjective interpretation of an objective method" thing amounts to just guessing.
There's an episode of House where this is nicely demonstrated by House and Wilson trying to figure out if Cuddy's daughter has swallowed a coin.
On ultrasound it might be a dime, or it may just be an air bubble.
...but getting public funding means they can't act about any of it as if its private property.
They are just the caretakers of the public domain - not its owners or managers.
It is not their duty to make a profit but to assure the proper level of care for the works so that they may remain available to the public, now and in the future.
That is why they get to have a part of the public money. Instead of say... public schools.
How much does it cost to ask the Louvre in Paris to close their gallery and reposition the Mona Lisa for you to get a nice shot, then ask the Vatican if they'd close the Sistine Chapel while you take photos, the big galleries in the USA to retrieve their most priceless paintings from the secure vaults and set them up so you can "take pix"?
Don't most of those places get funding from the government? I.e. From taxes.
If you're a pacifist, you can't really vanquish evil, so you shouldn't be a threat to the rest of us, even if you might think that we are evil.
There are apparently 6 million Jainists in India.
Your "rest of us" may not be quite the same as the "rest of us" to those living in India - who may be born into Jainist culture, and who as such may be induced into acting according to its beliefs.
Which, like I said above, protect the "world" by hurting the people who practice them.
As for vanquishing evil, they sure as hell seem to be very busy trying to vanquish it in themselves, under a presupposition that there IS evil there to vanquish.
Which is not really that much different from, say, everyone being a sinner by default in Christianity - an evil built-in into every human being, sentencing one to eternal suffering (hell, samsara... same thing) which you can only get rid off by following this handy-dandy set of rules available from your local church or temple.
And taking the "they are only hurting themselves - let them" approach is in fact rather selfish, and questions arguing religion at all as long as you can cover your own ass from its influence.
It's kinda like saying of someone "He's an alcoholic - but he's a joyful drunk and he never beats his wife".
Oh, by the way, where is my appeal to authority?
Sorry, you may not have done it intentionally, but that "Sam Harris evidently disagrees with you." bit and then linking to him talking, instead of say to a Wikipedia article about Jainism, smells a lot of ipse dixit.
Also, his talk there is a bit jarring at places - and I'm not talking about his obvious bias towards Islam.
He talks about religious extremism and fundamentalism not being a problem - if the religion itself is not "bad".
Which is nonsense.
Religions are bad because they are deluding, exploiting and hurting people by presenting them a false image of the entirety of EVERYTHING, which is akin to teaching children that they can fly off rooftops if they say the right magic words.
They give people a faulty, easily shatterable foundation on which they're instructed to build their entire lives and their views of the world - leaving them morally and emotionally crippled or forced to accept cognitive dissonances at every turn when the whole thing falls down.
And they all have both their "good" rules (Thou shalt not kill etc.) as well as the "bad" ones.
But I am more worried about him using not one, not two but THREE different logical fallacies when comparing Bin Laden to Jim Jones and David Koresh.
First it's inconsistent comparison, comparing actual cult leaders who ascribed very specific religious and magical roles to themselves (FFS Koresh believed himself to be Jesus) - with a guy who is "simply" a terrorist.
Then, he sneaks in argument from ignorance - cause "you really have to be an acrobat to figure out how he is distorting the faith".
And then he tops that off with affirmative conclusion from a negative premise - because all he says about Bin Laden is that he is NOT like a cult leader.
All that in under two minutes.
All that shit REALLY makes me question his logical processes and how susceptible to cognitive dissonance he actually is. Or even his motivation.
You don't need to lie and use faulty logic when talking about religious issues from an atheist standpoint.
Or make up "gradations of evil".
You simply point at things and explain how they are factually, logically, historically or in any other way faulty compared to the real world.
Religion does not stand to logical scrutiny - by design.