Why are you assuming I do any mainstream entertainment?
Those were the two main examples you gave. Sorry, I thought that would be clear. You seemed to be concerned mostly with creators like Lucas and Rowling.
The world of video games seem to survive. Only a small percentage are hits (and a slightly bigger percentage make money) but it's enough to subsidize the rest. The shelf life of games is extremely short, copyright or not, and the industry has variety and seems to survive.
Right, the world of video games is quite different, especially while the technology is still changing so quickly. Unfortunately for authors, books do not have the same extremely short shelf life. That's what I was talking about that industry in particular.
Also, all the niche-authors I know (and very small niche) usually have to pay their own printing costs to get their book "published." By this, I mean authors in antique collectibles, since this is what I assume you mean by niche.
I was talking about bigger niches than the self-published type, but there's quite a large range of "authors who cannot make a living by writing" as it is. How do your self-published author friends feel about copyright that short? Would they be comfortable seeing their book, with no attribution but a nicer binding, appear on the market after they've been fighting for only 5-10 years to make some money out of it?
Otherwise, I believe publishing houses do make money, no? They cast out a net and catch fish, so to speak? I doubt they print up too much for charity (reputation). That's partly my point. They make enough money right now on the occasional wildly selling Dan Brown or whatever to fund some real literature that'll be taught in English classrooms 30 years from now. The *less* money they make, the *less* they will have to spare on these long-term, lower-interest, non-mainstream titles.
I fail to see your point. Publishing houses aren't the future. In 15-30 years, the electronic book (electronic paper is out now) will be ubiquitous anyway.
That's only relevant to how we define copyright law... in the future. Right now we're talking about laws that will be useful to us now. Trust me, people will be there to make new arguments as the situation changes.
Not that I'm convinced the issue will disappear, though -- production and distribution costs will go way down, so "book" costs will drop, but the same problems will exist, advertising will still cost money, and it'll still take years of work to *write* the thing in the first place.
Anyway, I don't see why a short copyright would be bad. Perhaps 5 years (Pirate bay) or my decade is too short. But 40-50 years is way too long.
I know, that's what you said before.
But then, I'm for the 8-12 year patent as well. Oh, and the 0 year software patent.
Patents, and especially software patents, and extra-especially very broad software patents are a very different issue from copyright.
So why does Disney get to grab from the Public Domain (Grimm's collection of Fairytales) but never get to put some back in the pot? Oh wait, they are "authors." I see.
You're still missing my point. You have to consider how *most* people are going to be affected, and to what extent. If you want to lose a swath of literary fiction so you can get the Mickey Mouse lunchbox for the same price as the Michael Mouse lunchbox, I say that's a poor trade. (I guess I'd also point out that I'm not arguing for a life+70 or whatever term, either...).
You are welcome to argue by pointing out specifically how large numbers of people would suffer under a 50-year copyright system that would be remedied by a short one, and how the people that would suffer under the short one are less important, a smaller group, suffering less, etc.
I understand that there can be a cost to longer copyright -- the trick is finding a balance.
I'm sure It's a Wonderful Life got better distribution once it was public domain. But what was the real loss to society before that? I don't think other creative work was seriously being stifled because they couldn't use clips from Wonderful Life.
Was the copyright owner simply not distributing it?
A minority of examples should not hold the majority of people hostage with overly long copyrights. I say a decade is good. Five years too short and 40-50 years way too long - works tend to become culturally irrevelent by then.
Holding them hostage... to what? Paying too much for a DVD? Avoiding building a new movie that uses clips from the old one? I don't see that as such a great gaping hole in the creative world (and parody is still protected). No, I don't want to suppress those kinds of works needlessly, but in many cases the need exists -- more on that below.
George Lucas can make his new Starwars. He just can't rake in the cash for the old ones forever. That's fine for George Lucas. Obviously he can afford it. And you are saying he's the "norm" among artists and content creators, presumably.
And Rowling would still have economic incentive (actually, even more so) to make Harry Potter books. So I don't see your point. Good lord, you're pointing to the wealthiest woman in the world, and the wealthiest author ever, as the example we should judge by? Remember how you said "a minority of examples should not hold the majority of people hostage"? Rowling is in a tiny, tiny minority among authors. She's in a set of ONE.
Also, try moving even slightly out of the mainstream pap-for-the-masses creative work. Do you think *most* bands are like the ones you see on TV? They aren't. Yes, the music industry is messed up, but more because the money goes to the wrong people, not because we need to remove most of that money entirely.
Most publishing houses, in the *current* world of very-very-long copyright, only publish literary fiction and niche-interest work to build up their reputation and hope for the occasional breakout. They sell it at a loss, even over the long term. And don't forget that when they give "big" advances to authors... well, even a half million bucks in payment for a work that took, say 6 years, is only $83K/year before taxes, with no benefits or guarantee of future income. Not chump change, but no jackpot either (and again, that's way out of the realm of "normal" writers ).
Don't just look at the ridiculous extremes when you're arguing for a system that would affect so many other people.
For starters, it's not the creator normally who has to convince the general public that the work is good -- it's the publishers, recording companies, etc., who have an advertising budget because of the long-term earnings of the work. Regardless of the problems in these industries, they do need some money to do that, and if they're losing the revenue stream for that book/album in 5 years, they'll have far less incentive to publish works that aren't directly in the mainstream.
My wife is a writer, so let's talk about that. She recently completed a novel which took her almost 8 years to write and revise. I know of plenty of instances of people who took 10 years or more of their lives to create a work. If you remove that revenue stream for both the writer *and* the publisher after 5 years, not only would she be unable to get any kind of decent advance from a publisher (because their long-term expected revenue would be so much lower), but if she was hawking her book from a website, there's no way she'd sell enough to possibly support her. ESPECIALLY because people would know -- if you hear about a great new book, just wait a few years, and you'll be able to get it for a buck and a quarter instead of $25.
Remember, an author doesn't get squat during the years they're just writing, so even a nice advance and some royalties, say 200K, after 8 years of work means she has earned 25K/year with no benefits, before tax (which, yeah, will be rough for that one year).
And what would the world gain by her losing that copyright (and not being able to afford to write the novel in the first place)? Well, cheap paperbacks for work that IS published. But you'd have to choose between Chicken Soup for the DaVinci Code Lover's Soul and the latest Danielle Steele book with a Fabio lookalike on the cover.
Hopefully it's starting to be clear why copyright was started in the first place. Yes, corporate interests have been pushing the extension period out, not because of the creator but to futher their own bottom line. It blows my mind that Mickey Mouse is still protected.
But this isn't some kind of black/white question. Overly short copyright terms would harm society just as much, if not more, than overly long ones. If you're balancing "the music that exists will be cheap" vs. "the music I like will exist", I imagine you'd choose the latter.
This is incorrect on two counts -- first, the Pirate Party isn't arguing for abolishing copyright (just limiting it to something like 5 years), second (as mentioned in other posts below) the GPL is *based* on copyright law.
GPL uses copyright protection specifically to stop commercial interests from, say, enhancing the Linux kernel and selling the result as a closed source product. Without copyright protections, the commercial company COULD do this with impunity.
Personally, I agree that current copyright law is ridiculous, but 5 years seems way too short. I would argue for something like 40 or 50 years. There are plenty of examples of creative work that was a dud on initial release, but became a cult favorite a decade later... or creative work that was the product of decades of work, from a creator who would not be able to "just do more" to keep an income stream once copyright ended. We want to support these kinds of "master works" or "life's work" projects, not say, "sorry, but your 5 years is up -- if the word is still spreading, hey; sucks to be you".
100% correct -- all this tool is doing is evening out the balance so that spam becomes more like a normal commercial interaction.
If the spammers were willing to manually type out each spam message and type my address in by hand, THEN it would be balanced when, receiving the spam, I need to manually navigate to the advertised site, find a "remove me" page, and manually type in my address.
Of course they aren't going to do that -- this is the computer age. Computers exist to rapidly accomplish these kind of tedious tasks: hence the obviousness of also automating the complaint/opt-out procedure for the steadily growing amounts of email I don't want. No DDoS, no "attack", no "fighting fire with fire" or "spamming the spammers" -- just carrying out a normal, totally-legal business relationship on the scale the spammers have chosen.
The point is NOT to build a DDoS machine (and that's not what BF was). That would be illegal, and I understand that everyone is pissed off about spam and so on, but if we want a solution that will really make a difference it MUST be totally above board so that major corporations, media, etc. can back it once it gains some momentum.
Blue Frog just facilitated the complaint process for an individual. One complaint per spam, sent FROM the individual that got the spam. We aren't building a DDoS army. If people aren't getting spam, their client won't be doing a damned thing. If they ARE getting spam, they don't need a central directing authority telling them where to complain (hint: it's in the email they just marked "spam"). They just need a helpful script telling their client how to complain, exactly. That's where the P2P network comes in.
Sorry for being severe about this, but every time someone makes a comment like "we'll DDoS them!" -- and of course there's much worse out there -- the coverage any eventual tool is going to get goes negative one notch, and our chances of coming up with a real solution that the general public will use (and understand to be legal and moral) go down.
I have an uncle who's a SCUBA instructor. When I turned 13 (and same deal with my brother a few years earlier) I went and visited him for a few weeks during the summer; he got me certified and we went diving. It was awesome.
It wasn't *required*, and we wouldn't have asked, but hey, cool.
A few years ago that very same uncle wanted a website for the battery & emergency lighting company he has with another of my uncles. Guess who built it, and hosts the site and company email for them at less than cost? They understand that my normal clients always come first, and it might even take me a few weeks to get around to making updates. I'm comfortable saying "I'm going to be pretty busy this month, so...", and they don't treat me like they're entitled full-paying clients.
That's how it's supposed to work.
There's no reason to refuse any and all family requests for support because you're afraid of getting sucked in... and the "escape" if you start spending too much time is *not* necessarily being rude. Just learn how to say "I can't", politely and respectfully. Know your limits and don't even blink when someone asks you to cross them; switch it around so it's not even a choice for you. Learn how to say up front, "I'd love to stop by on Sunday and spend an hour talking computers after lunch... but it's possible you'd need more than that, and you might need to hire someone or take a class". If you offered to help with something that turns out to be bigger than you thought, SAY SO. "Wow, this looks like a bigger job than I thought -- lemme just close this up; you should take it in to a repair shop." Some relatives will already "get it"; some might not (or will ignore the signals because they're getting a little greedy). If *you* understand your priorities this won't be a problem. Just smile and say "well, I'm glad to help out, but I can't spend my whole weekend doing work stuff". Or "I've got a lot of projects going on right now -- try me again early summer when things will have cooled off a little".
It had gotten to the point where every phone call I received from her included a laundry list of computer woes. So you want to tell your Mom -- "Listen Mom, I'm starting to feel like all of our phone calls are just about computer stuff now. When I see your number on the caller ID I'm starting to get that same dread like when one of my regular clients calls unexpectedly -- that's not a good thing. Here, lemme give you the phone number for _____; they can help you out with this stuff, and they're not too expensive. I love helping you out, but let's make a rule of '2 per month' or something like that to keep things manageable".
Notice how you explain how this situation (not blaming anyone) is causing something *she* doesn't want -- namely, you're filled with dread when she calls instead of the normal, you know, pure ineffable joy you would feel. You know your Mom -- maybe you can think of something she'll respond to even better. Humor can also rescue almost anything -- e.g., pick up the phone and say "WAIT! Before you say a word, is this a computer conversation, or a mother-son conversation? Because in computer land today I am grinding their bones to make my bread -- but if this is family land I might be able to sit down for a bit and chat".
So many people either think good communication is easy (look, I'm talking!) or it's some kind of on/off thing. So either you're not communicating (and just doing whatever someone asks however much it sucks) or you're "communicating" and standing up for yourself by telling them to f*ck off. Folks, communication is an art. It takes a lot of intelligence and practice to do well, but every little improvement you make really pays off.
[Sorry for the preaching... so many of the replies around this kind of question bug me, though, to say nothing of the responses we always see when anyone has any conflict with company management!]
Brilliantly twisted world view, "We would much rather not waste our resources and send you these useless mails."
I like that. The obvious reply: Dear Spammer: Perhaps you were unaware, but Blue Security has provided a freely downloadable and easy-to-use software API so that you don't have to waste your precious time and resources sending emails to me, or anyone of the other members of the BlueSecurity list. Obviously, we are not an revenue source for you (if we needed ch34p onl1ne \/iagrra we would not be complaining), and we will only request removal each time -- so your returns can only be better with us off your lists.
Please contact BlueSecurity or almost ANYONE for assistance in scrubbing your lists -- we will be only too happy to assist.
Why is this being modded up? "Below is an email that I received, which pretty much confirms that they have been hacked"??
No, it confirms that the spammers are *claiming* the database has been hacked. Um, not the same thing.
The spammers have not managed to extract any addresses from the BlueSecurity database. The only addresses they have are addresses they already had. Sure, they can do a diff on a full list vs. a cleaned list -- but they can't actually extract any emails from the database that aren't already exposed.
No, the BlueFrog software does not send spam, organize DDoS attacks, or "await" BlueSecurity's next command; they only submit single requests to spammer sites, one per message that you personally have received -- and the client is open-source, so any user with a coding background can confirm this. Nothing even remotely illegal (on the other hand, sending threats like these to users and DDoS'ing BlueSecurity itself is quite illegal).
Yes, BlueSecurity has a revenue stream (and plenty of venture capital as well; google for "blue security million"); they are charging companies for protection, and plan to start charging for entire domain protection for individuals. Obviously they don't charge for the software download, because they need a pool of individuals to give them they clout they need to market to enterprises. Win-win for us little guys.
All of this is covered in other threads, but somehow mods are modding up the parent message.
I'm just reading the original question again. I'd never recommend the software, videos, books, etc. that purport to let you "teach yourself" whatever instrument. They simply can't compete with a decent human teacher, who can notice that your arm is way too stiff, that your thumb in your bow grip is wrong, etc. etc. when you first do it -- not after you've done it that way for months so that it's ingrained.
There's also software for helping you out with your pitch while playing, etc.. I wouldn't bother (you can talk to your teacher about this as well). Playing along with a recording, and just playing for your teacher will give you better feedback.
Anything else? Oh yeah -- don't get sucked in by the bevy of sites out there offering to teach you perfect pitch (usually for a surprisingly high price), a skill that will instantly turn you into a master musician. Perfect pitch isn't much use except as a party trick (because how hard is it to bring along a tuning fork or pitch pipe?), or if you're singing atonal music (not likely)... and it can actively screw you up in some cases. Focus on good relative pitch (intervals, etc.) instead.
I'd definitely encourage getting comfortable with at least basic music theory and sight-reading as part of learning any instrument. Not because you'll need it right at the beginning... but it's the sort of thing that's simple to learn gradually, but pretty painful when you hit the wall later and want to absorb it all at once.
Musition and Aurelia are okay, though aging a bit and not cheap. There are similar resources available online for free.
Musictheory.net is another site I recommend fairly often, with Flash-based music theory lessons and some exercises. EMusicTheory (my site) focusses on drills, not tutorials, so when students are having trouble understanding the concepts in the first place I tend to send them here.
Spend a month where you look at porn whenever the mood strikes you -- as hardcore as you want to go, for as long as you want. Just follow your impulses. Masturbate whenever you feel like it (assuming there's sufficient privacy available for these things).
Then spend a month on a strict porn diet. No video, no full nudity in photos even. No porn beyond, say, pre-selected sketches of pinups from the 1940s. Masturbate every 2 or 3 days to keep the hormones on an even keel. Instead of looking at porn, read a book, get some fresh air, spend time with your friends or family (or spend some time making new friends), get involved in an open source project, etc..
Keep a journal during each month on how happy you are, how satisfied with your life, how comfortable you are talking with other people, etc. etc.. I'm pretty sure the "porn glut" scenario will find you with a gaping unpleasant void that the "basic self-control" scenario will remedy. The real void is usually simple loneliness -- which is going to be awfully hard to fix when your conversations with others are stunted and difficult because your head is buzzing with incredibly graphic sexual imagery.
Sex is a basic drive we all share in varying degrees. But it's like any other drive (like hunger) that evolved in an environment where there wasn't usually enough to go around. Now that we have food everywhere, many people without self-control end up obese and miserable. Now that porn (which "sort of" matches up with the sex drive) is freely and widely available, some people without self-control are finding themselves equally overwhelmed and miserable.
[this post ended up pretty rambling; hopefully there's an insight in there somewhere...]
Right -- most paid programming doesn't even require calculus. Think about it -- most ecommerce requires... well, arithmetic, and that's about it. Look at the applications you use and think about the "hard" parts of programming them -- for the most part, it's not the math; it's simply dealing with the complexity of the functionality. Programming complicated apps elegantly is hard, but not because of any math involved. If you were actually only interested in incredibly difficult algorithms and mathematical computations, you'd actually start limiting the projects you can work on (since you'll either be in the academic world, or solving arcane data-crunching problems... and these tasks are not for everyone).
Personally, I'm a fairly successful independant developer with a BA in Music. I completed enough courses for a CS minor (but ironically couldn't declare it because the school's software could only handle one minor, and I had already completed an English minor). I had some luck getting my first developer job (as a "software engineer"), but once I had solid experience and good contacts and went out on my own, it wasn't hard to keep getting new projects independantly.
My strengths that I draw on most are basic ability at understanding and organizing complexity, and good communication skills (and this goes far beyond good grammar; you also have to be good at dealing with all kinds of people and sensing *what* to communicate!).
The degree you can put on your resume does, of course, make a difference -- but don't be too hasty about ruling out possible tech careers just because you don't like high-level math. You don't really specify what your original plan was (beyond "going on in CS"...), but unless you intended to stay in academia, it's likely there's quite a lot out there still open for you. And your communication and writing skills will help you no matter *what* you end up doing.
This is an old frustration of mine. I have a bunch of related applets on different pages that share *most* of their code and resources, but not all.
If I put each one into its own JAR, the client JVM can't usefully cache classes -- it has to download the entire JAR for the next applet. So I still have the applets loading the way they did in the 1.0.2 days -- one class at a time, uncompressed.
I'm pretty sure even remotely recent Sun JREs support specifying multiple JARs, but of course I still have to support the (still quite pervasive) Microsoft 1.1 JRE.
Your approach, similar to Thomson's approach, talks about the rights of the fetus over against the rights of the mother. That is, IMO, the responsible avenue to pursue. Others approach the issue by trying to cut off the fetus from a claim to rights entirely, by denying personhood to the fetus.
See, this is more like where I thought we were, and why I was so confused to see you arguing that "the only questions left then are whether the living human being is a person [...] and whether abortion could be justifiable homicide." The only questions? I expected you to be focussing on why or why not an embryo should have a right to live that could outweight the mother's right to control her body, and not muddying the waters with the "person" idea.
The key flaw in the Warren article (what I read of it so far) is related to her building a definition of "person" that excludes a fetus, then using that to exclude it from any consideration of rights. The flaw in the argument you were making above is the same; you're building a definition of "person" that includes a fetus, and using that to include it in all applicable human rights.
I tend to lean more towards her definition of "person" over yours, because words are defined based on how we normally use them... but either way, the definition comes from *us*; it's begging the question to then point to that definition to justify a moral decision we make. It's offering "this is how we think about it" as the sole justification for "this is how we should think about it".
The facts remain (regardless of how you define person) that an embryo is not at all like the "people" we normally make these kinds of moral decisions about. A brain-dead person is also a different case (and is a different case from the embryo, in that it will probably never become a functioning person again). Animals like bonobos, dolphins, etc. that are not genetically human but have abilities approaching those of humans are a different case as well (as are the human-like aliens that Warren imagines). It may help us to *talk* about these issues by discussing the definitions we're using, but that's not the same thing as backing up an argument.
I thought we were both on the same page with that; that's why we were discussing the sources of rights, and how we decide/determine where they apply, etc. etc.
[...]you haven't answered all of them to my satisfaction (and vice-versa, no doubt).
2. I will let you close the window and loose you work without a warning. That's a big minus in my books. [...]Expect that I like the drop down menus [...]regular word possessors
Heh; I'm afraid a spellchecker isn't going to help you much...:-)
Seriously, though, this app isn't at all ready for primetime. It's not just the spellchecker or the slashdotting; I can't use most of my fonts or most font sizes, the Word import isn't up to scratch, I can't imagine it can handle auto-save, or tables of contents, or complex headers/footers, etc. etc.. I actually use those kinds of features in Open Office... it's not all that "advanced" to need to print out a chapter of a book (with page numbering starting non-zero, unusual margins, etc.).
The Firefox requirement will also rule it out for many people (though that's okay with many of *us*, it probably isn't for much of the general public). If they want a free, mostly MS-compatible word processor they'll do a lot better with OpenOffice.
No, I wouldn't say that the arguments have turned out to be flawed, though.:-D I'm not trying to say *all* of them or anything like that -- we're still in mid-discussion. Here's what frustrated me, though: The only questions left then are whether the living human being is a person -- which requires some sophistry to deny -- and whether abortion could be justifiable homicide. And then: My choice of drawing the line at fertilization is simple: that is the point at which the organism comes into existence. Any other line to be drawn has to assume that "personhood" is attached to one's abilities, which is not easily defensible.
It feels like you're either labelling everything I've said as sophistry or ignoring what I've discussed about the fuzzy boundaries of human life. There's no flashing arrow pointing to the DNA combination step in human development saying "most important". There's no reason to assume there *must* be a crucial step that's more important than the others that are also required. More about this in my other post in this thread.
I also felt like this initial argument was mostly word games, and that we'd moved on into more complete, reality-model-based discussions. But here you're arguing that we must only ask the question in terms of "is killing a fertilized egg justifiable homicide." This is fighting for moral ground based on using words with negative baggage. Did you go around asking people if pulling the feeding tube on Terri Schiavo was "justifiable homicide"? I doubt it, though I know words like homicide and murder were pretty thick in the air, used by people wanting to tip the emotional scales in favor of keeping her alive (and of course people on both sides of an argument often use similar tactics, until you can hardly tell they're even talking to each other). They wanted people to imagine killing Schiavo was the same as killing anyone else. Of course it's not, and killing an embryo is also not the same.
I'm simply insisting that we view the question through the lens of competing rights, not by appealing to some imaginary line that denies personhood to a living human being.
You might point out here (because it seemed like you eventually agreed with this) that the rights we think people have *are* dependant to some degree on ability -- kids forfeit many rights to parental control, insane people get locked up without criminal activity, brain-damaged folks are unplugged, etc. (and this is all morally okay). So (as the other poster was arguing) perhaps the real question is when in human development is it wrong to kill? Where do we draw that line? At what stages does this organism have the right to protection of its life? Because rights are not equally, globally applied to anything with human DNA, perhaps you should engage his question directly (explaining why you draw the line at DNA combination), with reasons *why* a single cell deserves a right you wouldn't accord to a full-grown, breathing person with only-probably-unimprovable brain damage.
You don't have to agree with everything I'm saying; but if these are sensible points you shouldn't ignore them.
Apologies if I'm being snippy; I have put a lot of thought into examining how rights work, how we make moral decisions, etc. etc., and I think I was tending to assume that if you stopped responding to a thread I had answered all of your questions to at least show rationality (if not convincing you), and hopefully causing you to refine your own arguments and models.
I was using the example to [attempt to?] point out again the dangers of building morality on word definitions as opposed to really considering the actual situation.
Words are defined in the way that best facilitates human communication. That's the basis for any definition. Dictionaries research and record definitions based on how most people seem to use a word. Words used in scientific pursuits generally have more precise, measurable boundaries because they are required for scientific communication. Hence the definition of pregnancy starting at implantation -- that's what we can detect, so that's the starting point. You can't build moral choices based on these definitions, though (it would be silly to argue "well, the pregnancy hasn't started yet, so preventing implantation is okay"); it's just a matter of communication.
Most definitions of "human being" or "person" don't mention zygotes simply because that's not how we use the word. I'm not *at all* claiming that therefore zygotes don't deserve any protection -- the point is that saying "human organism" or something like that, finding words that fit what you want, doesn't provide any moral foundation, either.
Suppose the fertilization process happens differently than we think in the womb, since we can't actually observe the process there. Suppose the sperm's DNA is *in* the egg, but the combination doesn't happen until after implantation for some reason (this scenario is fairly improbable but bear with me for a second). Presumably you'd change your views on drugs that prevent implantation, since you'd no longer be destroying a cell with full human DNA.
That just seems strange to me, though. Nothing magical happens when the DNA combines; and of course plenty of eggs are fertilized that naturally do not implant and are killed by the unfriendly environment. The probability of getting an infant out of an egg surrounded by a mass of sperm (assuming correct hormone balance, etc.) is not that much higher the instant *after* the egg is fertilized than the instant before. Why suddenly invest that single cell with so much weight?
The "why" you are giving above is basically "well, the DNA has combined". Okay, that's one of many, many steps that must happen correctly before a living, breathing baby can be born. You need a real reason why this single cell needs protection at the cost of protecting the woman's rights.
You want to use the word "homicide" to put a finger on the emotional scales; an opponent might want to stick with phrases like "cell viability". But that's all still just playing with word definitions. Your moral reasoning mustn't depend primarily on this kind of device.
Does this all just strike you as sophistry? This is not some kind of "depends what your definition of 'is' is" dodge. You can't get close to the truth of much of anything unless you're aware how your thinking is shaped by your language.
My choice of drawing the line at fertilization is simple: that is the point at which the organism comes into existence. Any other line to be draw has to assume that "personhood" is attached to one's abilities, which is not easily defensible.
Anyone can play the relativism game. Just because "not everyone thinks like that" doesn't mean that everyone's beliefs are equally well-founded.
This is why subjecting these beliefs to critical review periodically is so important. If drawing a line "has little to do with either souls or potential", but you are sacrificing a woman's rights for rights you imagine a single cell should have, that seems worthy of very careful thought.
Are fetuses (latin for "babies") living human beings? Biologically, the answer is yes. Abortion *is* killing on demand.
"Biologically", like the definition in your sig? The dictionary definition of "human being" points to "human", which is this: Human, noun: a bipedal primate mammal of the genus Homo (H. sapiens) : MAN; broadly : any living or extinct member of the family Hominidae.
Interestingly, this includes dead people, but not a zygote, which is not bipedal. My point here is not that this "proves" abortion is okay -- my point is that your reasoning above (and implied in the sig) depends on this kind of logic.
My choice of drawing the line at fertilization is simple: that is the point at which the organism comes into existence. Any other line to be draw has to assume that "personhood" is attached to one's abilities, which is not easily defensible.
It's not a definition of "personhood" at stake; it's a decision of the rights we should accord to a fertilized egg. We grant "personhood" to Terry Schiavo, but most people still find it morally okay when her husband decides to remove the feeding tube (yourself included, IIRC). Hence -- even we accord "personhood" to a single cell, that still doesn't automatically mean its needs outclass the mother's [unquestioned] rights.
Haven't we gone through all this? I assumed you were updating arguments that turned out to be flawed.
You mixed up the details (as others pointed out) but the end result here is you'd be eating an average of 2.4 fresh habaneros a day.
That's not so much, but I do worry about that little word: "fresh". I can eat some chilis by themselves once they're cooked (or out of a jar), but even jalapenos (much milder than habaneros) freshly cut can be tough to eat without coughing.
Anyway, if your conclusion from "we get contradictory info, and we're all going to die someday anyway" is "ignore all the info" that's just another extreme approach that's going to hurt you.
It's like you should probably avoid the extreme diets premised on dubious (or little-explored) studies. But you aren't choosing between that and eating Ho-Hos and pizza for every meal. There's a ton we *do* know about leading a healthy life. Don't spend hours a day counting calories, but get some exercise, avoid the junk food (just don't even bring it home unless you have an iron will), and start eating less if you start getting fat. It's not that hard once you're in the habit, and you'll live a much better life than anyone swinging between the extremes.
About cancer... often it's worth checking into actual incidence rates of different cancers before you make choices of what recommendations you want to ignore. Some carcinogens have a tiny effect. Something like smoking has a pretty huge effect (something like 1 in 19 people get lung cancer in their lives, and 90% of people who die from lung cancer are smokers.. and that's ignoring all of the other health effects of smoking, including other cancers).
In the end, you do have to balance the benefit against the gain, but it IS worth putting some thought into...and actually reading the numbers.
Yes, freaking out at every headline isn't much use (since many of the reporters don't always seem to understand the actual significance of the studies they're reporting on... they just want the big headline), but that doesn't mean useful info isn't readily available. If you don't want to parse it yourself, talk to your doctor about it.
Alas, the capsaicin is the part that makes it hot. So if you're skipping the hot part, your prostate won't benefit.
Personally, I'm married to a woman who's Malaysian/Indian, and a great cook, so some weeks I definitely make the capsaicin goal. It's important to keep track of what you're eating your spicy food *with*, though. I have a decent tolerance to begin with (and I like the rush when my food makes sweat a little, as long as it's *good*) -- but balancing the heat with cucumber raita (which is yoghurt-based) or something like that will make a big difference in how your mouth can deal with it.
Also (and I really don't know exactly what's going on with this...) if the heat is building up in your mouth and getting painful (or interfering with you tasting your meal), you can take a mouthful of hot rice or tea and press it against the roof of your mouth for 10-20 seconds. Your mouth will get crazy hot for a bit, then it'll die down... and you'll be sweating bullets and your head will be swimming, but the burn-level is somehow reset.
This is discussed in their help section on the site. I'm getting the same thing no matter what email I enter, including ones I can guarantee have not been signed up. [I also signed up for the discussion boards on the site, but the confirmation email hasn't come yet... and it's been about 1/2 hour.]
Apparently that's just the response you get when the servers are overloaded and can't process the registration.
A friend of mine had a story published recently in the New Yorker -- a *fictional* story, about a street family sniffing glue (among other things) in Nairobi, Kenya. They ran into problems with it for awhile during the editing process because it was difficult for them to verify that the slang, the setting, the food, everything -- was valid and realistic. Was the brandname of glue actually available in Nairobi? Etc.. He would find them contacts who turned out to be basically unreachable, etc. etc..
True, this is *fiction* -- but the quality of that kind of story depends partly on its realism, so they needed to check.
I was surprised to hear about the difficulty of the process, but pleased as well that they do put the time into these details. (Now if only their taste in fiction always matched up better with mine...)
Slashdot Mirror
Why are you assuming I do any mainstream entertainment?
Those were the two main examples you gave. Sorry, I thought that would be clear. You seemed to be concerned mostly with creators like Lucas and Rowling.
The world of video games seem to survive. Only a small percentage are hits (and a slightly bigger percentage make money) but it's enough to subsidize the rest. The shelf life of games is extremely short, copyright or not, and the industry has variety and seems to survive.
Right, the world of video games is quite different, especially while the technology is still changing so quickly. Unfortunately for authors, books do not have the same extremely short shelf life. That's what I was talking about that industry in particular.
Also, all the niche-authors I know (and very small niche) usually have to pay their own printing costs to get their book "published." By this, I mean authors in antique collectibles, since this is what I assume you mean by niche.
I was talking about bigger niches than the self-published type, but there's quite a large range of "authors who cannot make a living by writing" as it is. How do your self-published author friends feel about copyright that short? Would they be comfortable seeing their book, with no attribution but a nicer binding, appear on the market after they've been fighting for only 5-10 years to make some money out of it?
Otherwise, I believe publishing houses do make money, no? They cast out a net and catch fish, so to speak? I doubt they print up too much for charity (reputation). That's partly my point. They make enough money right now on the occasional wildly selling Dan Brown or whatever to fund some real literature that'll be taught in English classrooms 30 years from now. The *less* money they make, the *less* they will have to spare on these long-term, lower-interest, non-mainstream titles.
I fail to see your point. Publishing houses aren't the future. In 15-30 years, the electronic book (electronic paper is out now) will be ubiquitous anyway.
That's only relevant to how we define copyright law... in the future. Right now we're talking about laws that will be useful to us now. Trust me, people will be there to make new arguments as the situation changes.
Not that I'm convinced the issue will disappear, though -- production and distribution costs will go way down, so "book" costs will drop, but the same problems will exist, advertising will still cost money, and it'll still take years of work to *write* the thing in the first place.
Anyway, I don't see why a short copyright would be bad. Perhaps 5 years (Pirate bay) or my decade is too short. But 40-50 years is way too long.
I know, that's what you said before.
But then, I'm for the 8-12 year patent as well. Oh, and the 0 year software patent.
Patents, and especially software patents, and extra-especially very broad software patents are a very different issue from copyright.
So why does Disney get to grab from the Public Domain (Grimm's collection of Fairytales) but never get to put some back in the pot? Oh wait, they are "authors." I see.
You're still missing my point. You have to consider how *most* people are going to be affected, and to what extent. If you want to lose a swath of literary fiction so you can get the Mickey Mouse lunchbox for the same price as the Michael Mouse lunchbox, I say that's a poor trade. (I guess I'd also point out that I'm not arguing for a life+70 or whatever term, either...).
You are welcome to argue by pointing out specifically how large numbers of people would suffer under a 50-year copyright system that would be remedied by a short one, and how the people that would suffer under the short one are less important, a smaller group, suffering less, etc.
I understand that there can be a cost to longer copyright -- the trick is finding a balance.
I'm sure It's a Wonderful Life got better distribution once it was public domain. But what was the real loss to society before that? I don't think other creative work was seriously being stifled because they couldn't use clips from Wonderful Life.
Was the copyright owner simply not distributing it?
A minority of examples should not hold the majority of people hostage with overly long copyrights. I say a decade is good. Five years too short and 40-50 years way too long - works tend to become culturally irrevelent by then.
Holding them hostage... to what? Paying too much for a DVD? Avoiding building a new movie that uses clips from the old one? I don't see that as such a great gaping hole in the creative world (and parody is still protected). No, I don't want to suppress those kinds of works needlessly, but in many cases the need exists -- more on that below.
George Lucas can make his new Starwars. He just can't rake in the cash for the old ones forever.
That's fine for George Lucas. Obviously he can afford it. And you are saying he's the "norm" among artists and content creators, presumably.
And Rowling would still have economic incentive (actually, even more so) to make Harry Potter books. So I don't see your point.
Good lord, you're pointing to the wealthiest woman in the world, and the wealthiest author ever, as the example we should judge by? Remember how you said "a minority of examples should not hold the majority of people hostage"? Rowling is in a tiny, tiny minority among authors. She's in a set of ONE.
Also, try moving even slightly out of the mainstream pap-for-the-masses creative work. Do you think *most* bands are like the ones you see on TV? They aren't. Yes, the music industry is messed up, but more because the money goes to the wrong people, not because we need to remove most of that money entirely.
Most publishing houses, in the *current* world of very-very-long copyright, only publish literary fiction and niche-interest work to build up their reputation and hope for the occasional breakout. They sell it at a loss, even over the long term. And don't forget that when they give "big" advances to authors... well, even a half million bucks in payment for a work that took, say 6 years, is only $83K/year before taxes, with no benefits or guarantee of future income. Not chump change, but no jackpot either (and again, that's way out of the realm of "normal" writers ).
Don't just look at the ridiculous extremes when you're arguing for a system that would affect so many other people.
For starters, it's not the creator normally who has to convince the general public that the work is good -- it's the publishers, recording companies, etc., who have an advertising budget because of the long-term earnings of the work. Regardless of the problems in these industries, they do need some money to do that, and if they're losing the revenue stream for that book/album in 5 years, they'll have far less incentive to publish works that aren't directly in the mainstream.
My wife is a writer, so let's talk about that. She recently completed a novel which took her almost 8 years to write and revise. I know of plenty of instances of people who took 10 years or more of their lives to create a work. If you remove that revenue stream for both the writer *and* the publisher after 5 years, not only would she be unable to get any kind of decent advance from a publisher (because their long-term expected revenue would be so much lower), but if she was hawking her book from a website, there's no way she'd sell enough to possibly support her. ESPECIALLY because people would know -- if you hear about a great new book, just wait a few years, and you'll be able to get it for a buck and a quarter instead of $25.
Remember, an author doesn't get squat during the years they're just writing, so even a nice advance and some royalties, say 200K, after 8 years of work means she has earned 25K/year with no benefits, before tax (which, yeah, will be rough for that one year).
And what would the world gain by her losing that copyright (and not being able to afford to write the novel in the first place)? Well, cheap paperbacks for work that IS published. But you'd have to choose between Chicken Soup for the DaVinci Code Lover's Soul and the latest Danielle Steele book with a Fabio lookalike on the cover.
Hopefully it's starting to be clear why copyright was started in the first place. Yes, corporate interests have been pushing the extension period out, not because of the creator but to futher their own bottom line. It blows my mind that Mickey Mouse is still protected.
But this isn't some kind of black/white question. Overly short copyright terms would harm society just as much, if not more, than overly long ones. If you're balancing "the music that exists will be cheap" vs. "the music I like will exist", I imagine you'd choose the latter.
This is incorrect on two counts -- first, the Pirate Party isn't arguing for abolishing copyright (just limiting it to something like 5 years), second (as mentioned in other posts below) the GPL is *based* on copyright law.
GPL uses copyright protection specifically to stop commercial interests from, say, enhancing the Linux kernel and selling the result as a closed source product. Without copyright protections, the commercial company COULD do this with impunity.
Personally, I agree that current copyright law is ridiculous, but 5 years seems way too short. I would argue for something like 40 or 50 years. There are plenty of examples of creative work that was a dud on initial release, but became a cult favorite a decade later... or creative work that was the product of decades of work, from a creator who would not be able to "just do more" to keep an income stream once copyright ended. We want to support these kinds of "master works" or "life's work" projects, not say, "sorry, but your 5 years is up -- if the word is still spreading, hey; sucks to be you".
100% correct -- all this tool is doing is evening out the balance so that spam becomes more like a normal commercial interaction.
If the spammers were willing to manually type out each spam message and type my address in by hand, THEN it would be balanced when, receiving the spam, I need to manually navigate to the advertised site, find a "remove me" page, and manually type in my address.
Of course they aren't going to do that -- this is the computer age. Computers exist to rapidly accomplish these kind of tedious tasks: hence the obviousness of also automating the complaint/opt-out procedure for the steadily growing amounts of email I don't want. No DDoS, no "attack", no "fighting fire with fire" or "spamming the spammers" -- just carrying out a normal, totally-legal business relationship on the scale the spammers have chosen.
The point is NOT to build a DDoS machine (and that's not what BF was). That would be illegal, and I understand that everyone is pissed off about spam and so on, but if we want a solution that will really make a difference it MUST be totally above board so that major corporations, media, etc. can back it once it gains some momentum.
Blue Frog just facilitated the complaint process for an individual. One complaint per spam, sent FROM the individual that got the spam. We aren't building a DDoS army. If people aren't getting spam, their client won't be doing a damned thing. If they ARE getting spam, they don't need a central directing authority telling them where to complain (hint: it's in the email they just marked "spam"). They just need a helpful script telling their client how to complain, exactly. That's where the P2P network comes in.
Sorry for being severe about this, but every time someone makes a comment like "we'll DDoS them!" -- and of course there's much worse out there -- the coverage any eventual tool is going to get goes negative one notch, and our chances of coming up with a real solution that the general public will use (and understand to be legal and moral) go down.
I have an uncle who's a SCUBA instructor. When I turned 13 (and same deal with my brother a few years earlier) I went and visited him for a few weeks during the summer; he got me certified and we went diving. It was awesome.
It wasn't *required*, and we wouldn't have asked, but hey, cool.
A few years ago that very same uncle wanted a website for the battery & emergency lighting company he has with another of my uncles. Guess who built it, and hosts the site and company email for them at less than cost? They understand that my normal clients always come first, and it might even take me a few weeks to get around to making updates. I'm comfortable saying "I'm going to be pretty busy this month, so...", and they don't treat me like they're entitled full-paying clients.
That's how it's supposed to work.
There's no reason to refuse any and all family requests for support because you're afraid of getting sucked in... and the "escape" if you start spending too much time is *not* necessarily being rude. Just learn how to say "I can't", politely and respectfully. Know your limits and don't even blink when someone asks you to cross them; switch it around so it's not even a choice for you. Learn how to say up front, "I'd love to stop by on Sunday and spend an hour talking computers after lunch... but it's possible you'd need more than that, and you might need to hire someone or take a class". If you offered to help with something that turns out to be bigger than you thought, SAY SO. "Wow, this looks like a bigger job than I thought -- lemme just close this up; you should take it in to a repair shop." Some relatives will already "get it"; some might not (or will ignore the signals because they're getting a little greedy). If *you* understand your priorities this won't be a problem. Just smile and say "well, I'm glad to help out, but I can't spend my whole weekend doing work stuff". Or "I've got a lot of projects going on right now -- try me again early summer when things will have cooled off a little".
It had gotten to the point where every phone call I received from her included a laundry list of computer woes.
So you want to tell your Mom -- "Listen Mom, I'm starting to feel like all of our phone calls are just about computer stuff now. When I see your number on the caller ID I'm starting to get that same dread like when one of my regular clients calls unexpectedly -- that's not a good thing. Here, lemme give you the phone number for _____; they can help you out with this stuff, and they're not too expensive. I love helping you out, but let's make a rule of '2 per month' or something like that to keep things manageable".
Notice how you explain how this situation (not blaming anyone) is causing something *she* doesn't want -- namely, you're filled with dread when she calls instead of the normal, you know, pure ineffable joy you would feel. You know your Mom -- maybe you can think of something she'll respond to even better. Humor can also rescue almost anything -- e.g., pick up the phone and say "WAIT! Before you say a word, is this a computer conversation, or a mother-son conversation? Because in computer land today I am grinding their bones to make my bread -- but if this is family land I might be able to sit down for a bit and chat".
So many people either think good communication is easy (look, I'm talking!) or it's some kind of on/off thing. So either you're not communicating (and just doing whatever someone asks however much it sucks) or you're "communicating" and standing up for yourself by telling them to f*ck off. Folks, communication is an art. It takes a lot of intelligence and practice to do well, but every little improvement you make really pays off.
[Sorry for the preaching... so many of the replies around this kind of question bug me, though, to say nothing of the responses we always see when anyone has any conflict with company management!]
Brilliantly twisted world view, "We would much rather not waste our resources and send you these useless mails."
I like that. The obvious reply:
Dear Spammer:
Perhaps you were unaware, but Blue Security has provided a freely downloadable and easy-to-use software API so that you don't have to waste your precious time and resources sending emails to me, or anyone of the other members of the BlueSecurity list. Obviously, we are not an revenue source for you (if we needed ch34p onl1ne \/iagrra we would not be complaining), and we will only request removal each time -- so your returns can only be better with us off your lists.
Please contact BlueSecurity or almost ANYONE for assistance in scrubbing your lists -- we will be only too happy to assist.
Sincerely,
"Useless Mail" Recipient
Why is this being modded up? "Below is an email that I received, which pretty much confirms that they have been hacked"??
No, it confirms that the spammers are *claiming* the database has been hacked. Um, not the same thing.
The spammers have not managed to extract any addresses from the BlueSecurity database. The only addresses they have are addresses they already had. Sure, they can do a diff on a full list vs. a cleaned list -- but they can't actually extract any emails from the database that aren't already exposed.
No, the BlueFrog software does not send spam, organize DDoS attacks, or "await" BlueSecurity's next command; they only submit single requests to spammer sites, one per message that you personally have received -- and the client is open-source, so any user with a coding background can confirm this. Nothing even remotely illegal (on the other hand, sending threats like these to users and DDoS'ing BlueSecurity itself is quite illegal).
Yes, BlueSecurity has a revenue stream (and plenty of venture capital as well; google for "blue security million"); they are charging companies for protection, and plan to start charging for entire domain protection for individuals. Obviously they don't charge for the software download, because they need a pool of individuals to give them they clout they need to market to enterprises. Win-win for us little guys.
All of this is covered in other threads, but somehow mods are modding up the parent message.
Please explain -- what did that email prove?
I'm just reading the original question again.
I'd never recommend the software, videos, books, etc. that purport to let you "teach yourself" whatever instrument. They simply can't compete with a decent human teacher, who can notice that your arm is way too stiff, that your thumb in your bow grip is wrong, etc. etc. when you first do it -- not after you've done it that way for months so that it's ingrained.
There's also software for helping you out with your pitch while playing, etc.. I wouldn't bother (you can talk to your teacher about this as well). Playing along with a recording, and just playing for your teacher will give you better feedback.
Anything else? Oh yeah -- don't get sucked in by the bevy of sites out there offering to teach you perfect pitch (usually for a surprisingly high price), a skill that will instantly turn you into a master musician. Perfect pitch isn't much use except as a party trick (because how hard is it to bring along a tuning fork or pitch pipe?), or if you're singing atonal music (not likely)... and it can actively screw you up in some cases. Focus on good relative pitch (intervals, etc.) instead.
I'd definitely encourage getting comfortable with at least basic music theory and sight-reading as part of learning any instrument. Not because you'll need it right at the beginning... but it's the sort of thing that's simple to learn gradually, but pretty painful when you hit the wall later and want to absorb it all at once.
Musition and Aurelia are okay, though aging a bit and not cheap. There are similar resources available online for free.
And now, a bit of shameless self-promotion:
I run a website with free music theory exercises and explorations of music theory concepts. Requires Java 1.1 or above.
Feel free to send me feedback through the site or here.
Musictheory.net is another site I recommend fairly often, with Flash-based music theory lessons and some exercises. EMusicTheory (my site) focusses on drills, not tutorials, so when students are having trouble understanding the concepts in the first place I tend to send them here.
Porn "fills" a void? Not quite.
Try an experiment.
Spend a month where you look at porn whenever the mood strikes you -- as hardcore as you want to go, for as long as you want. Just follow your impulses. Masturbate whenever you feel like it (assuming there's sufficient privacy available for these things).
Then spend a month on a strict porn diet. No video, no full nudity in photos even. No porn beyond, say, pre-selected sketches of pinups from the 1940s. Masturbate every 2 or 3 days to keep the hormones on an even keel. Instead of looking at porn, read a book, get some fresh air, spend time with your friends or family (or spend some time making new friends), get involved in an open source project, etc..
Keep a journal during each month on how happy you are, how satisfied with your life, how comfortable you are talking with other people, etc. etc.. I'm pretty sure the "porn glut" scenario will find you with a gaping unpleasant void that the "basic self-control" scenario will remedy. The real void is usually simple loneliness -- which is going to be awfully hard to fix when your conversations with others are stunted and difficult because your head is buzzing with incredibly graphic sexual imagery.
Sex is a basic drive we all share in varying degrees. But it's like any other drive (like hunger) that evolved in an environment where there wasn't usually enough to go around. Now that we have food everywhere, many people without self-control end up obese and miserable. Now that porn (which "sort of" matches up with the sex drive) is freely and widely available, some people without self-control are finding themselves equally overwhelmed and miserable.
[this post ended up pretty rambling; hopefully there's an insight in there somewhere...]
Right -- most paid programming doesn't even require calculus. Think about it -- most ecommerce requires... well, arithmetic, and that's about it. Look at the applications you use and think about the "hard" parts of programming them -- for the most part, it's not the math; it's simply dealing with the complexity of the functionality. Programming complicated apps elegantly is hard, but not because of any math involved. If you were actually only interested in incredibly difficult algorithms and mathematical computations, you'd actually start limiting the projects you can work on (since you'll either be in the academic world, or solving arcane data-crunching problems... and these tasks are not for everyone).
Personally, I'm a fairly successful independant developer with a BA in Music. I completed enough courses for a CS minor (but ironically couldn't declare it because the school's software could only handle one minor, and I had already completed an English minor). I had some luck getting my first developer job (as a "software engineer"), but once I had solid experience and good contacts and went out on my own, it wasn't hard to keep getting new projects independantly.
My strengths that I draw on most are basic ability at understanding and organizing complexity, and good communication skills (and this goes far beyond good grammar; you also have to be good at dealing with all kinds of people and sensing *what* to communicate!).
The degree you can put on your resume does, of course, make a difference -- but don't be too hasty about ruling out possible tech careers just because you don't like high-level math. You don't really specify what your original plan was (beyond "going on in CS"...), but unless you intended to stay in academia, it's likely there's quite a lot out there still open for you. And your communication and writing skills will help you no matter *what* you end up doing.
This is an old frustration of mine. I have a bunch of related applets on different pages that share *most* of their code and resources, but not all.
If I put each one into its own JAR, the client JVM can't usefully cache classes -- it has to download the entire JAR for the next applet. So I still have the applets loading the way they did in the 1.0.2 days -- one class at a time, uncompressed.
I'm pretty sure even remotely recent Sun JREs support specifying multiple JARs, but of course I still have to support the (still quite pervasive) Microsoft 1.1 JRE.
Your approach, similar to Thomson's approach, talks about the rights of the fetus over against the rights of the mother. That is, IMO, the responsible avenue to pursue. Others approach the issue by trying to cut off the fetus from a claim to rights entirely, by denying personhood to the fetus.
See, this is more like where I thought we were, and why I was so confused to see you arguing that "the only questions left then are whether the living human being is a person [...] and whether abortion could be justifiable homicide." The only questions? I expected you to be focussing on why or why not an embryo should have a right to live that could outweight the mother's right to control her body, and not muddying the waters with the "person" idea.
The key flaw in the Warren article (what I read of it so far) is related to her building a definition of "person" that excludes a fetus, then using that to exclude it from any consideration of rights. The flaw in the argument you were making above is the same; you're building a definition of "person" that includes a fetus, and using that to include it in all applicable human rights.
I tend to lean more towards her definition of "person" over yours, because words are defined based on how we normally use them... but either way, the definition comes from *us*; it's begging the question to then point to that definition to justify a moral decision we make. It's offering "this is how we think about it" as the sole justification for "this is how we should think about it".
The facts remain (regardless of how you define person) that an embryo is not at all like the "people" we normally make these kinds of moral decisions about. A brain-dead person is also a different case (and is a different case from the embryo, in that it will probably never become a functioning person again). Animals like bonobos, dolphins, etc. that are not genetically human but have abilities approaching those of humans are a different case as well (as are the human-like aliens that Warren imagines). It may help us to *talk* about these issues by discussing the definitions we're using, but that's not the same thing as backing up an argument.
I thought we were both on the same page with that; that's why we were discussing the sources of rights, and how we decide/determine where they apply, etc. etc.
[...]you haven't answered all of them to my satisfaction (and vice-versa, no doubt).
Yup; no problem. That conversation is ongoing...
2. I will let you close the window and loose you work without a warning. That's a big minus in my books .
:-)
[...] Expect that I like the drop down menus
[...]regular word possessors
Heh; I'm afraid a spellchecker isn't going to help you much...
Seriously, though, this app isn't at all ready for primetime. It's not just the spellchecker or the slashdotting; I can't use most of my fonts or most font sizes, the Word import isn't up to scratch, I can't imagine it can handle auto-save, or tables of contents, or complex headers/footers, etc. etc.. I actually use those kinds of features in Open Office... it's not all that "advanced" to need to print out a chapter of a book (with page numbering starting non-zero, unusual margins, etc.).
The Firefox requirement will also rule it out for many people (though that's okay with many of *us*, it probably isn't for much of the general public). If they want a free, mostly MS-compatible word processor they'll do a lot better with OpenOffice.
No, I wouldn't say that the arguments have turned out to be flawed, though. :-D
I'm not trying to say *all* of them or anything like that -- we're still in mid-discussion. Here's what frustrated me, though:
The only questions left then are whether the living human being is a person -- which requires some sophistry to deny -- and whether abortion could be justifiable homicide.
And then:
My choice of drawing the line at fertilization is simple: that is the point at which the organism comes into existence. Any other line to be drawn has to assume that "personhood" is attached to one's abilities, which is not easily defensible.
It feels like you're either labelling everything I've said as sophistry or ignoring what I've discussed about the fuzzy boundaries of human life. There's no flashing arrow pointing to the DNA combination step in human development saying "most important". There's no reason to assume there *must* be a crucial step that's more important than the others that are also required. More about this in my other post in this thread.
I also felt like this initial argument was mostly word games, and that we'd moved on into more complete, reality-model-based discussions. But here you're arguing that we must only ask the question in terms of "is killing a fertilized egg justifiable homicide." This is fighting for moral ground based on using words with negative baggage. Did you go around asking people if pulling the feeding tube on Terri Schiavo was "justifiable homicide"? I doubt it, though I know words like homicide and murder were pretty thick in the air, used by people wanting to tip the emotional scales in favor of keeping her alive (and of course people on both sides of an argument often use similar tactics, until you can hardly tell they're even talking to each other). They wanted people to imagine killing Schiavo was the same as killing anyone else. Of course it's not, and killing an embryo is also not the same.
I'm simply insisting that we view the question through the lens of competing rights, not by appealing to some imaginary line that denies personhood to a living human being.
You might point out here (because it seemed like you eventually agreed with this) that the rights we think people have *are* dependant to some degree on ability -- kids forfeit many rights to parental control, insane people get locked up without criminal activity, brain-damaged folks are unplugged, etc. (and this is all morally okay). So (as the other poster was arguing) perhaps the real question is when in human development is it wrong to kill? Where do we draw that line? At what stages does this organism have the right to protection of its life? Because rights are not equally, globally applied to anything with human DNA, perhaps you should engage his question directly (explaining why you draw the line at DNA combination), with reasons *why* a single cell deserves a right you wouldn't accord to a full-grown, breathing person with only-probably-unimprovable brain damage.
You don't have to agree with everything I'm saying; but if these are sensible points you shouldn't ignore them.
Apologies if I'm being snippy; I have put a lot of thought into examining how rights work, how we make moral decisions, etc. etc., and I think I was tending to assume that if you stopped responding to a thread I had answered all of your questions to at least show rationality (if not convincing you), and hopefully causing you to refine your own arguments and models.
BTW, biological definitions don't work like this.
I was using the example to [attempt to?] point out again the dangers of building morality on word definitions as opposed to really considering the actual situation.
Words are defined in the way that best facilitates human communication. That's the basis for any definition. Dictionaries research and record definitions based on how most people seem to use a word. Words used in scientific pursuits generally have more precise, measurable boundaries because they are required for scientific communication. Hence the definition of pregnancy starting at implantation -- that's what we can detect, so that's the starting point. You can't build moral choices based on these definitions, though (it would be silly to argue "well, the pregnancy hasn't started yet, so preventing implantation is okay"); it's just a matter of communication.
Most definitions of "human being" or "person" don't mention zygotes simply because that's not how we use the word. I'm not *at all* claiming that therefore zygotes don't deserve any protection -- the point is that saying "human organism" or something like that, finding words that fit what you want, doesn't provide any moral foundation, either.
Suppose the fertilization process happens differently than we think in the womb, since we can't actually observe the process there. Suppose the sperm's DNA is *in* the egg, but the combination doesn't happen until after implantation for some reason (this scenario is fairly improbable but bear with me for a second). Presumably you'd change your views on drugs that prevent implantation, since you'd no longer be destroying a cell with full human DNA.
That just seems strange to me, though. Nothing magical happens when the DNA combines; and of course plenty of eggs are fertilized that naturally do not implant and are killed by the unfriendly environment. The probability of getting an infant out of an egg surrounded by a mass of sperm (assuming correct hormone balance, etc.) is not that much higher the instant *after* the egg is fertilized than the instant before. Why suddenly invest that single cell with so much weight?
The "why" you are giving above is basically "well, the DNA has combined". Okay, that's one of many, many steps that must happen correctly before a living, breathing baby can be born. You need a real reason why this single cell needs protection at the cost of protecting the woman's rights.
You want to use the word "homicide" to put a finger on the emotional scales; an opponent might want to stick with phrases like "cell viability". But that's all still just playing with word definitions. Your moral reasoning mustn't depend primarily on this kind of device.
Does this all just strike you as sophistry? This is not some kind of "depends what your definition of 'is' is" dodge. You can't get close to the truth of much of anything unless you're aware how your thinking is shaped by your language.
Hey - are you planning on coming back to our discussion of these issues sometime?
About these posts:
My choice of drawing the line at fertilization is simple: that is the point at which the organism comes into existence. Any other line to be draw has to assume that "personhood" is attached to one's abilities, which is not easily defensible.
Anyone can play the relativism game. Just because "not everyone thinks like that" doesn't mean that everyone's beliefs are equally well-founded.
This is why subjecting these beliefs to critical review periodically is so important. If drawing a line "has little to do with either souls or potential", but you are sacrificing a woman's rights for rights you imagine a single cell should have, that seems worthy of very careful thought.
Are fetuses (latin for "babies") living human beings? Biologically, the answer is yes. Abortion *is* killing on demand.
"Biologically", like the definition in your sig? The dictionary definition of "human being" points to "human", which is this: Human, noun: a bipedal primate mammal of the genus Homo (H. sapiens) : MAN; broadly : any living or extinct member of the family Hominidae.
Interestingly, this includes dead people, but not a zygote, which is not bipedal. My point here is not that this "proves" abortion is okay -- my point is that your reasoning above (and implied in the sig) depends on this kind of logic.
My choice of drawing the line at fertilization is simple: that is the point at which the organism comes into existence. Any other line to be draw has to assume that "personhood" is attached to one's abilities, which is not easily defensible.
It's not a definition of "personhood" at stake; it's a decision of the rights we should accord to a fertilized egg. We grant "personhood" to Terry Schiavo, but most people still find it morally okay when her husband decides to remove the feeding tube (yourself included, IIRC). Hence -- even we accord "personhood" to a single cell, that still doesn't automatically mean its needs outclass the mother's [unquestioned] rights.
Haven't we gone through all this? I assumed you were updating arguments that turned out to be flawed.
You mixed up the details (as others pointed out) but the end result here is you'd be eating an average of 2.4 fresh habaneros a day.
That's not so much, but I do worry about that little word: "fresh".
I can eat some chilis by themselves once they're cooked (or out of a jar), but even jalapenos (much milder than habaneros) freshly cut can be tough to eat without coughing.
I'm guessing the heat affects the capsaicin....
"Carbs evil! Eat meat! No, eat carbs! Tofu FTW!"
...and actually reading the numbers.
Huh? Tofu is pretty much all protein, not carbs.
Anyway, if your conclusion from "we get contradictory info, and we're all going to die someday anyway" is "ignore all the info" that's just another extreme approach that's going to hurt you.
It's like you should probably avoid the extreme diets premised on dubious (or little-explored) studies. But you aren't choosing between that and eating Ho-Hos and pizza for every meal. There's a ton we *do* know about leading a healthy life. Don't spend hours a day counting calories, but get some exercise, avoid the junk food (just don't even bring it home unless you have an iron will), and start eating less if you start getting fat. It's not that hard once you're in the habit, and you'll live a much better life than anyone swinging between the extremes.
About cancer... often it's worth checking into actual incidence rates of different cancers before you make choices of what recommendations you want to ignore. Some carcinogens have a tiny effect. Something like smoking has a pretty huge effect (something like 1 in 19 people get lung cancer in their lives, and 90% of people who die from lung cancer are smokers.. and that's ignoring all of the other health effects of smoking, including other cancers).
In the end, you do have to balance the benefit against the gain, but it IS worth putting some thought into
Yes, freaking out at every headline isn't much use (since many of the reporters don't always seem to understand the actual significance of the studies they're reporting on... they just want the big headline), but that doesn't mean useful info isn't readily available. If you don't want to parse it yourself, talk to your doctor about it.
Alas, the capsaicin is the part that makes it hot. So if you're skipping the hot part, your prostate won't benefit.
Personally, I'm married to a woman who's Malaysian/Indian, and a great cook, so some weeks I definitely make the capsaicin goal. It's important to keep track of what you're eating your spicy food *with*, though. I have a decent tolerance to begin with (and I like the rush when my food makes sweat a little, as long as it's *good*) -- but balancing the heat with cucumber raita (which is yoghurt-based) or something like that will make a big difference in how your mouth can deal with it.
Also (and I really don't know exactly what's going on with this...) if the heat is building up in your mouth and getting painful (or interfering with you tasting your meal), you can take a mouthful of hot rice or tea and press it against the roof of your mouth for 10-20 seconds. Your mouth will get crazy hot for a bit, then it'll die down... and you'll be sweating bullets and your head will be swimming, but the burn-level is somehow reset.
This is discussed in their help section on the site. I'm getting the same thing no matter what email I enter, including ones I can guarantee have not been signed up. [I also signed up for the discussion boards on the site, but the confirmation email hasn't come yet... and it's been about 1/2 hour.]
Apparently that's just the response you get when the servers are overloaded and can't process the registration.
Just close it and try later.
A friend of mine had a story published recently in the New Yorker -- a *fictional* story, about a street family sniffing glue (among other things) in Nairobi, Kenya. They ran into problems with it for awhile during the editing process because it was difficult for them to verify that the slang, the setting, the food, everything -- was valid and realistic. Was the brandname of glue actually available in Nairobi? Etc.. He would find them contacts who turned out to be basically unreachable, etc. etc..
True, this is *fiction* -- but the quality of that kind of story depends partly on its realism, so they needed to check.
I was surprised to hear about the difficulty of the process, but pleased as well that they do put the time into these details. (Now if only their taste in fiction always matched up better with mine...)