If the Department of Education is so great, why has there never been a Constitutional amendment passed that authorizes it?
There are lots of things that people think the government should do. Great, pass an amendment to authorize the government to do those things. And if not enough people agree with you and the amendment fails, then the system works and we don't end up with a massive bureaucracy ruining our and our children's lives.
Their TOS also prohibits "hate" speech, yet there are countless videos on YouTube posted by white supremacists and jihadists calling for the destruction of Israel. So why aren't those pulled? The implication seems to be that YouTube likes it when neo-nazis and al-Qaeda sympathizers plot the next Holocaust, but not when people try to show how bad things are in other countries.
IMHO life ain't simple. I disagree. Life is basically a boolean, it either exists or it doesn't. What you're referring to with the miscarriages is whether the life is viable or not. Just like we debate the merits of taking people off life support, we should debate the merits of whether an embryo is viable enough that extreme measures to save the life are justified. That's a debate that makes sense and leaves room for lots of gray areas.
But when people try to skirt that issue by saying an embryo isn't even alive, I find that ludicrous. Of course it's alive, the cells are reproducing on their own by consuming energy provided from an external source, and at the moment of conception the zygote is genetically a human being.
We've strayed pretty far from the original discussion, so if you want to continue you should probably email me. But at least we proved that a discussion about abortion between two people with diametrically opposed points of view doesn't have to become a flamewar.
I'm not making that point... I'm trying to expand the moral quandary. It certainly read like you were making that point.
So if you know that a fertilized egg has failed to implant, and it's in your power to save it, is inaction wrong there, too? This is a much clearer argument, and I think I better understand what you're getting at now.
Even though I do believe that life begins at conception, in the scenario you describe I would say "No, it's not wrong not to take action in this case". Of course, we're assuming that someone knows a fertilized egg failed to implant in the first place, which I doubt very much is possible with modern technology. But if the egg fails to implant, how do you correct that? It's not like we have incubation chambers for human embryos. So there's nothing that could be done, anyway. There is no moral quandary when there is no choice in a matter.
If it's not, then that fertilized egg isn't as human a life as the person in the first instance. It has then taken "person" and put it into shades of gray, where the early development is concerned, as opposed to being a simple black or white issue. I disagree, because it's more a reflection of the limits of technology than it is a moral choice. If the technology were available to both detect a failed implantation in time to extract the egg and place it into an incubator, then you would have the capacity to choose what to do in this scenario. But because that technology does not exist, you have no choice. When you have no choice on something, how can there be a moral question? It would be like if you were on the ground below a plane that suffered a structural failure, and you saw someone falling to the earth from 35,000 feet. Morally, you should attempt to that person's life. But without a way to reach them in time, you simply can't do that. In that case, standing by and watching another person die is not immoral, because you have no power to influence events.
they haven't seen any of their friends or relatives get addicted to hard drugs and waste away. I'm a libertarian who's brother died of an OD. My father is a libertarian who's son died of an OD. So that's two right there.
As someone else pointed out, he made his choices and suffered the consequences of those choices. Just because a choice is harmful or can hurt those around you, doesn't mean it should be outlawed. What's next, outlawing reading Slashdot because wasting time here might get you fired, which could lead to your wife leaving you and having your home be foreclosed upon?
Beyond that, I heard that by one estimate, something like 25% of acts of fertilization fail to properly implant, in essence are spontaneously aborted. We never knew the number was anything near that high without modern medical monitoring of the type that's only done during studies. So if a fertilized egg has full human rights, is it then medical negligence when that spontaneous abortion is allowed to happen? Compare that to RU486, which is essentially the same action, only artificially induced. You seem to be confusing something which happens either naturally or indirectly by an action/lack of action, versus something that is specifically caused by the actions of a person. Lots of people die of heart attacks every day due to high cholesterol, that doesn't mean you get a free pass to kill anyone you want by injecting them with cholesterol straight into their heart.
Do yourself a favor, and treat your next interaction with your doctor like a call with tech support Wow, you've never actually had to call tech support before, have you? Never mind the fact that the reps on the other end rarely know as much about their product/service as they should, what about the plethora of examples of unethical tech support at places like Geek Squad, where they act like even-more-dishonest-than-usual auto mechanics and charge you double to fix your "motherboard" after getting the latest virus?
Come to think of it, maybe you should treat visits to the doctor just like visits to tech support: get a second opinion and make him explain everything in plain English.
But people are actually rarely willing to be violent to a stranger for a trivial reason. Obviously you don't live in Texas. "Them's fightin' words" is engraved on our state capitol.
In her case, she had an amazing recovery. Yet she, herself, says, "If I'm ever like that again, turn me off." Interesting. Stories like your wife's inspire me to tell my wife "If I'm ever in a coma, you better go bankrupt keeping the lights on and me breathing." Because there's always a chance you'll come back and can continue your life. Better that than no longer existing. But hey, different strokes for different folks.
And yes, that entire story was just so I could "drop" that I have a wife in a slashdot post. As was my reply.
You can always talk to a hardware leasing company. Check out TimePayment Corp, I met one of their salesmen at a conference recently and he said they do a lot of work setting up lease agreements for high end hardware.
That's easy, just run it through Babelfish two or three times using random languages in each step of the translation, until "decoding" it back into English (or whatever the original language was).
Of course, then you'd end up with Belgium invading Israel on a regular basis, but hey, that's the price you pay for winning the War on Plagiarism!
I would hope that a civilization that is able to travel faster than light, that is possibly thousands to millions of years ahead of us, has grown beyond the need to eat other living things. Life on this planet has existed for something like four billion years. In all that time, animals have consumed one another for sustenance. There's no reason to think that will change in the next several thousand, or even million, years.
In the case you described, wouldn't the monkey still have trouble differentiating between blue and green? Seeing as how the monkey would select green over blue after having chosen red over blue and all, this seems like an important point. If the animal can't tell between green and blue, it's not making a decision, it's just random which M&M it eats.
And the walls are not "reinforced" - they're plain ordinary office walls. Unless you want to count a new coat of paint as "reinforcement". I dunno, what kind of paint was it?
the government re-captures her, and will haul her back to prison to rehabilitate What makes you think prison has anything to do with rehabilitation? It's punishment for a crime, not a boot camp for troubled teens. I don't care how nice a person everyone around thinks she is, she murdered her husband and has to pay the price for that.
Um, because victims can survive pretty much every other crime than murder? Once someone is dead, they're gone, and both society and the state have a vested interest in keeping people alive as long as possible. So punishments for murder are more severe than for other crimes on the theory that those punishments will have a deterrence effect.
Now, whether that works or not is a completely different debate, but that's not what you asked.
I was going to post a response linking to the Wikipedia page for the Toba event as an alternative reason for the observed lack of technological progress, but then I realized that isn't necessary. Even if most of humanity was wiped out in an instant and had to start again from Africa 75,000 years ago, that would still be enough time for people to advance further than they have to this point. But only if you ignore the existence of "modern" stone age cultures around the world. The fact that even three hundred years the majority of the population of the Western hemisphere didn't have the wheel or know how to work with steel is all the prove you need that humans don't always advance as quickly as our society has.
I don't know what the reasons for the discrepancy between the speed of advance between difference cultures are, though I suspect it has to do with environmental pressures (if you don't need steel to support your family, you won't get around to discovering it). But they exist, and they demonstrate that humans could have existed for millennia without advancing beyond simple stone tools. Because some did.
I thought this MMO was going to be based on Warhammer Fantasy, not 40k? If so, they probably rolled a miscast and their lead developer was knocked back into the ranks of the other developers, taking a S10 hit with no saving throw (Ward saves allowed).
Slashdot Mirror
I hope you disposed of your computer properly and humanely. Once they've tasted blood, there's no controlling them.
If the Department of Education is so great, why has there never been a Constitutional amendment passed that authorizes it?
There are lots of things that people think the government should do. Great, pass an amendment to authorize the government to do those things. And if not enough people agree with you and the amendment fails, then the system works and we don't end up with a massive bureaucracy ruining our and our children's lives.
Their TOS also prohibits "hate" speech, yet there are countless videos on YouTube posted by white supremacists and jihadists calling for the destruction of Israel. So why aren't those pulled? The implication seems to be that YouTube likes it when neo-nazis and al-Qaeda sympathizers plot the next Holocaust, but not when people try to show how bad things are in other countries.
But when people try to skirt that issue by saying an embryo isn't even alive, I find that ludicrous. Of course it's alive, the cells are reproducing on their own by consuming energy provided from an external source, and at the moment of conception the zygote is genetically a human being.
We've strayed pretty far from the original discussion, so if you want to continue you should probably email me. But at least we proved that a discussion about abortion between two people with diametrically opposed points of view doesn't have to become a flamewar.
Even though I do believe that life begins at conception, in the scenario you describe I would say "No, it's not wrong not to take action in this case". Of course, we're assuming that someone knows a fertilized egg failed to implant in the first place, which I doubt very much is possible with modern technology. But if the egg fails to implant, how do you correct that? It's not like we have incubation chambers for human embryos. So there's nothing that could be done, anyway. There is no moral quandary when there is no choice in a matter. If it's not, then that fertilized egg isn't as human a life as the person in the first instance. It has then taken "person" and put it into shades of gray, where the early development is concerned, as opposed to being a simple black or white issue. I disagree, because it's more a reflection of the limits of technology than it is a moral choice. If the technology were available to both detect a failed implantation in time to extract the egg and place it into an incubator, then you would have the capacity to choose what to do in this scenario. But because that technology does not exist, you have no choice. When you have no choice on something, how can there be a moral question? It would be like if you were on the ground below a plane that suffered a structural failure, and you saw someone falling to the earth from 35,000 feet. Morally, you should attempt to that person's life. But without a way to reach them in time, you simply can't do that. In that case, standing by and watching another person die is not immoral, because you have no power to influence events.
As someone else pointed out, he made his choices and suffered the consequences of those choices. Just because a choice is harmful or can hurt those around you, doesn't mean it should be outlawed. What's next, outlawing reading Slashdot because wasting time here might get you fired, which could lead to your wife leaving you and having your home be foreclosed upon?
Come to think of it, maybe you should treat visits to the doctor just like visits to tech support: get a second opinion and make him explain everything in plain English.
Snickers bars (any candy bar, really).
Fritos.
Oh, wait, you said one. My bad.
You can always talk to a hardware leasing company. Check out TimePayment Corp, I met one of their salesmen at a conference recently and he said they do a lot of work setting up lease agreements for high end hardware.
That's easy, just run it through Babelfish two or three times using random languages in each step of the translation, until "decoding" it back into English (or whatever the original language was).
Of course, then you'd end up with Belgium invading Israel on a regular basis, but hey, that's the price you pay for winning the War on Plagiarism!
In the case you described, wouldn't the monkey still have trouble differentiating between blue and green? Seeing as how the monkey would select green over blue after having chosen red over blue and all, this seems like an important point. If the animal can't tell between green and blue, it's not making a decision, it's just random which M&M it eats.
Not to mention the InfoMart in Dallas has some hella cheap hosting plans.
Um, because victims can survive pretty much every other crime than murder? Once someone is dead, they're gone, and both society and the state have a vested interest in keeping people alive as long as possible. So punishments for murder are more severe than for other crimes on the theory that those punishments will have a deterrence effect.
Now, whether that works or not is a completely different debate, but that's not what you asked.
You should check out the Middlebury Institute. You might find their ideas intriguing enough to subscribe to their newsletter.
Pffle. Doesn't sound like such an impressive culture to me.
I was going to post a response linking to the Wikipedia page for the Toba event as an alternative reason for the observed lack of technological progress, but then I realized that isn't necessary. Even if most of humanity was wiped out in an instant and had to start again from Africa 75,000 years ago, that would still be enough time for people to advance further than they have to this point. But only if you ignore the existence of "modern" stone age cultures around the world. The fact that even three hundred years the majority of the population of the Western hemisphere didn't have the wheel or know how to work with steel is all the prove you need that humans don't always advance as quickly as our society has.
I don't know what the reasons for the discrepancy between the speed of advance between difference cultures are, though I suspect it has to do with environmental pressures (if you don't need steel to support your family, you won't get around to discovering it). But they exist, and they demonstrate that humans could have existed for millennia without advancing beyond simple stone tools. Because some did.
I thought this MMO was going to be based on Warhammer Fantasy, not 40k? If so, they probably rolled a miscast and their lead developer was knocked back into the ranks of the other developers, taking a S10 hit with no saving throw (Ward saves allowed).
Not hiring a 15 year old isn't age discrimination, it's following the law.