... actually, looking at it again, this article is way over the top. It is beyond rediculous. It is a farce. Supermarket tabloids aren't this bad. Nobody could keep a straight face while writing this. Is it supposed to be satire or what?
This is just another one of those articles written by unnoficial members of the Grumpy Old Men From Texas Club. As a theology student, and a MacOS X user, I find Dr. Paley's article quite lamentable. Not only has he utterly failed to disprove any modern myths, he has made a complete fool of himself and Fellowship University. He will never hear the end of the torrent of criticism from both his academic and ecclesiastical peers.
If any slashdotters are unfamiliar with Theology, then please don't let this man give you a poor first impression. If he were to read this article aloud in front of an assembly of people with accredited degrees, he might very well be laughed out of the auditorium.
Since there is virtually no evidence to support the claim that macro-evolution has occured in the past (and despite popular myth, there isn't), then it only makes sense that there is no evidence to support the idea that macro-evolution will occur in the future. Every paper I've ever read on the subject of evolution has been very long on speculation and very short on fact.
There was a substantial amount of useful data colleted as a result of the experiments. The experiments were never used as a tool for pro-nazi propaganda. Just the opposite, actually. Alot of neo-nazis like to deny that they ever happened.
They'd want the fetuses primarily for the stem cells (as is the topic of the whole article), and/or any other parts that might be harvested for use in an adult patient.
Oftentimes the best way to communicate a fact is to display it in a novel. In the case of Frankenstein, it was the folly of ignoring his conscience for the sake of his pride.
Historically, pure scientific research has not tended to go wild and create disasters.
How about when the Nazis performed "pure scientific research" on Jewish prisoners? Without any laws restricting them, they injected people with gasoline and other lethal substances to study the results. Try to tell me that wasn't a disaster. Historically, there have been plenty of instances where ethical considerations have been ignored for the sake of scientific research.
I'm sure stem cell researchers have nothing but good intentions. However, good ends don't always justify the means you take to reach them. Remember, Dr. Frankenstein thought his biological research would benefit the world, but instead of a medical revolution that created life... the result of his work was a monstrocity that killed people.
The American Government knows that if biological research is allowed to grow widly without controls, the results will be disasterous. This is the same reason that human cloning is being banned outright. It would open doors to the use of human life without accountability or assurance of ethical conduct.
If fetal stem cell research went unregulated, then fetuses would become a commodity to be bought or sold. Imagine waking up tomorrow in a world where a woman can get pregnant, have an abortion, and sell her unborn child on the black market for.. lets say $100,000. Then she could go have another night at the bar scene, and a few months later she'd get another $100,000. Lather, rinse, repeat. If she does this a total of 10 times, then she's just made a million dollars, and 10 children are dead.
Then suppose she's not independent, suppose she's a prostitute. A pimp with a dozen girls could make $1,200,000 per year this way.
I know this sounds wild, and will probably never happen, but if we don't impose restrictions and safeguards on biological research then something similar - or worse - could happen.
Satellite phones are a device that many of the more serious backpackers/campers drool over. Service charged by minute-per-minute use rather than by month of ownership would justify the cost to use one for calling for help in an emergency.
I know a guy who went on a multi-week rafting trip, and right when they were ~200 kilometres from anyone else a guy in their party had a kidney failure. Now, they had an Emergency Locator Beacon (fyi: an automated radio-based distress signal device) but those can take as much as two or three days to attract rescuers, especially way out there.
If they'd had satellite phone service they could have called for help immediately. They could have transmitted their GPS coordinates and told them exactly what kind of medical attention their friend needed. But instead they had to paddle for 14 hours nonstop to an airbase on their map that they weren't sure was still manned. Luckily it was, and they got their friend in just as he was going into shock.
Apple knows that at present, the Itanium (which is based on a RISC-like design scheme called VLIW, or EPIC) is stuck at 800MHz even in its prelease form -- slower even than the shipping PPC 7450 (G4) which is running at 867MHz and expected to cross the GHz barrier by year's end. The Itanium, while offering many important features lacking from previous Intel chips, has also been criticized for its poor performance - particularly when running existing x86 applications and operating systems. Apple's next-generation processor is the PPC 7500 or G5, which is also 64-bit and employs the first complete architectural revamp since the first PowerMacs shipped in the mid-90's...but the G5, unlike Itanium, can process existing 32-bit PowerPC instructions at full performance and is expected to continue to scale upward in clock rates; the initial G5s slated to ship in early or mid-2002 are currently projected to run at 1.2GHz with per-clock performance targeted for roughly 65% beyond Itanium.
Also of note, IBM has stated that current plans for the G5's SIMD/AltiVec engine specify a 256-bit system, rather than a 128-bit one in the G4. This will be one kickass CPU.
There's a rumor floating aroudn the Mac web about a clause in Apple's contract with Motorola that would allow Apple to buy all of Motorola's PowerPC assets for $500million.
They are likely to do this, since Apple has been doing much of the G4's development in-house already.
If Apple decided to actually go ahead and buy out the PowerPC from Motorola and do all future G4 and G5 in house, what would be the odds that Amiga could continue to buy them? And if they could, would they ever be able to make a PPC machine that is faster/cheaper than Apple's?
I don't think they'll be successful in the x86 market for the same reason Apple won't release a port of MacOSX for x86. Microsoft would pull strings and kill it very quickly.
So Amiga is caught between two worlds, spinning in limbo, unable to find a place to rest, much like BeOS. I think they'd better team up with Sun or SGI if they ever want to be in the graphical workstation market.
Honestly, this new Amiga software company is starting to sound a helluva lot like NeXT... great software, no market share.
It's no diferent here in Canada. I was being bullied quite a bit in junior high, but it was pre-columbine so the retaliatory things I said and did weren't concerning to the administration. In fact, despite my constant complaints to the principal about how I was being treated, nothing was ever done. People started picking fights with me in the hallways, and the administration turned a blind eye. Rumor has it that the principal even deleted their permanent records at the beginning of each school year to give them a "fresh start." I ended up having to change schools, twice, to get away from the whole bullying thing. I was homeschooled for half a year, but in all honesty that really sucks. I was bored out of my mind, and I never did any work. So I changed schools again (this is time #3) to an experimental alternative school put on by a rather ingenious physics teacher who my mom knew. The alternative teaching method really works well, since I went from being a student who gets C's and B's to an A student with honours. The only downside is that there isn't much of a social aspect to the school (no yearbook, sports teams, etc) so I've rounded up a bunch of people I've met there and started a troop of Venturer Scouts. It's a shame I only have one year left before I move away for college... we have lots of fun.
Re:God, Nature, Cloning?
on
TigerCloning
·
· Score: 1
The quote says nothing to the effect that cloning is forbidden.
Why do you assume I was trying to say that cloning was forbidden? People have been speculating as to what God must think of all this, so I told them.
>btw: "our image"? I thought God was singular
God is a trinity. Father/Son/Spirit.
God, Nature, Cloning?
on
TigerCloning
·
· Score: 1
Just to cut through the FUD regarding humanity's place in nature (nature is that which is created by God. So neither a beaver's dam nor a hydro-power dam are natural, but the man and the beaver are), God made it quite clear very early on about people's relationship with animals:
[Then God said, "Let us make people in our image, to be like ourselves. They will be masters over all life - the fish in the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the livestock, wild animals, and small animals."] - Genesis 1:26
Slashdot Mirror
... actually, looking at it again, this article is way over the top. It is beyond rediculous. It is a farce. Supermarket tabloids aren't this bad. Nobody could keep a straight face while writing this. Is it supposed to be satire or what?
This is just another one of those articles written by unnoficial members of the Grumpy Old Men From Texas Club. As a theology student, and a MacOS X user, I find Dr. Paley's article quite lamentable. Not only has he utterly failed to disprove any modern myths, he has made a complete fool of himself and Fellowship University. He will never hear the end of the torrent of criticism from both his academic and ecclesiastical peers.
If any slashdotters are unfamiliar with Theology, then please don't let this man give you a poor first impression. If he were to read this article aloud in front of an assembly of people with accredited degrees, he might very well be laughed out of the auditorium.
Since there is virtually no evidence to support the claim that macro-evolution has occured in the past (and despite popular myth, there isn't), then it only makes sense that there is no evidence to support the idea that macro-evolution will occur in the future. Every paper I've ever read on the subject of evolution has been very long on speculation and very short on fact.
There was a substantial amount of useful data colleted as a result of the experiments. The experiments were never used as a tool for pro-nazi propaganda. Just the opposite, actually. Alot of neo-nazis like to deny that they ever happened.
They'd want the fetuses primarily for the stem cells (as is the topic of the whole article), and/or any other parts that might be harvested for use in an adult patient.
Oftentimes the best way to communicate a fact is to display it in a novel. In the case of Frankenstein, it was the folly of ignoring his conscience for the sake of his pride.
How about when the Nazis performed "pure scientific research" on Jewish prisoners? Without any laws restricting them, they injected people with gasoline and other lethal substances to study the results. Try to tell me that wasn't a disaster. Historically, there have been plenty of instances where ethical considerations have been ignored for the sake of scientific research.
The American Government knows that if biological research is allowed to grow widly without controls, the results will be disasterous. This is the same reason that human cloning is being banned outright. It would open doors to the use of human life without accountability or assurance of ethical conduct.
If fetal stem cell research went unregulated, then fetuses would become a commodity to be bought or sold. Imagine waking up tomorrow in a world where a woman can get pregnant, have an abortion, and sell her unborn child on the black market for.. lets say $100,000. Then she could go have another night at the bar scene, and a few months later she'd get another $100,000. Lather, rinse, repeat. If she does this a total of 10 times, then she's just made a million dollars, and 10 children are dead.
Then suppose she's not independent, suppose she's a prostitute. A pimp with a dozen girls could make $1,200,000 per year this way.
I know this sounds wild, and will probably never happen, but if we don't impose restrictions and safeguards on biological research then something similar - or worse - could happen.
I know a guy who went on a multi-week rafting trip, and right when they were ~200 kilometres from anyone else a guy in their party had a kidney failure. Now, they had an Emergency Locator Beacon (fyi: an automated radio-based distress signal device) but those can take as much as two or three days to attract rescuers, especially way out there.
If they'd had satellite phone service they could have called for help immediately. They could have transmitted their GPS coordinates and told them exactly what kind of medical attention their friend needed. But instead they had to paddle for 14 hours nonstop to an airbase on their map that they weren't sure was still manned. Luckily it was, and they got their friend in just as he was going into shock.
Satellite phones would be invaluable in the bush.
Also of note, IBM has stated that current plans for the G5's SIMD/AltiVec engine specify a 256-bit system, rather than a 128-bit one in the G4. This will be one kickass CPU.
There's a rumor floating aroudn the Mac web about a clause in Apple's contract with Motorola that would allow Apple to buy all of Motorola's PowerPC assets for $500million. They are likely to do this, since Apple has been doing much of the G4's development in-house already. If Apple decided to actually go ahead and buy out the PowerPC from Motorola and do all future G4 and G5 in house, what would be the odds that Amiga could continue to buy them? And if they could, would they ever be able to make a PPC machine that is faster/cheaper than Apple's? I don't think they'll be successful in the x86 market for the same reason Apple won't release a port of MacOSX for x86. Microsoft would pull strings and kill it very quickly. So Amiga is caught between two worlds, spinning in limbo, unable to find a place to rest, much like BeOS. I think they'd better team up with Sun or SGI if they ever want to be in the graphical workstation market. Honestly, this new Amiga software company is starting to sound a helluva lot like NeXT... great software, no market share.
It's no diferent here in Canada. I was being bullied quite a bit in junior high, but it was pre-columbine so the retaliatory things I said and did weren't concerning to the administration. In fact, despite my constant complaints to the principal about how I was being treated, nothing was ever done. People started picking fights with me in the hallways, and the administration turned a blind eye. Rumor has it that the principal even deleted their permanent records at the beginning of each school year to give them a "fresh start." I ended up having to change schools, twice, to get away from the whole bullying thing. I was homeschooled for half a year, but in all honesty that really sucks. I was bored out of my mind, and I never did any work. So I changed schools again (this is time #3) to an experimental alternative school put on by a rather ingenious physics teacher who my mom knew. The alternative teaching method really works well, since I went from being a student who gets C's and B's to an A student with honours. The only downside is that there isn't much of a social aspect to the school (no yearbook, sports teams, etc) so I've rounded up a bunch of people I've met there and started a troop of Venturer Scouts. It's a shame I only have one year left before I move away for college... we have lots of fun.
The quote says nothing to the effect that cloning is forbidden.
Why do you assume I was trying to say that cloning was forbidden? People have been speculating as to what God must think of all this, so I told them.
>btw: "our image"? I thought God was singular
God is a trinity. Father/Son/Spirit.
Just to cut through the FUD regarding humanity's place in nature (nature is that which is created by God. So neither a beaver's dam nor a hydro-power dam are natural, but the man and the beaver are), God made it quite clear very early on about people's relationship with animals:
[Then God said, "Let us make people in our image, to be like ourselves. They will be masters over all life - the fish in the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the livestock, wild animals, and small animals."] - Genesis 1:26
-Orb
"One day, even science will be obsolete"