Personally I prefer German beer. American beer is just... piss. Sorry but there just isn't a nice way to say it.
American megabrew (Budweiser, Coors, Miller, Michelob et al.) is disgusting, yes. But American microbrew is excellent. I found German beer disappointing--the lager fascination is just strange. Lagers are clean & boring. My favourite style was Berliner weisse, which uses an ale yeast. Ales (British, Belgian & American micros) are complex & interesting, just what the doctor ordered.
Hint: spying on citizens on our own soil is illegal/unconstitutional, unethical, and immoral.
Wrong, wrong and...wrong. Or how else do you think they catch spies?
Show that first amendment rights no longer exist.
Wrong again. Notice that you are free to post what you posted. Notice that no-one is arresting you--or fining you--for it. Notice that your First Amendment rights are preserved.
I would expect intelligence agencies to do this. The Internet is a massive source of data--yes, some of it highly inaccurate--and sifting & sorting it is exactly the sort of thing the NSA is supposed to excel at. Blog, Usenet & forum postings reveal a great deal of information about persons of interest; that information can be of great use in investigation & interogation. Connexions (blogrolls, friends on MySpace, Friendster, facebook et al., fellow posters) can also be useful.
This is in many ways just extending traditional techniques to the online world. I can guarantee that if the CIA were trailing a Russian spy in the Cold War, they'd do a quick check on people he saw regularly. If a KGB spymaster and a lance corporal in the US Army were seen to always use the same table one after another at the same coffeehouse, the CIA would take a quick look. If the KGB agent used the same coffeehouse regularly, the CIA might also take a look. And if it noticed that the clerk was a member of the CPUSA, then it might look further, whereas if it discovered that the clerk was a member of the John Birch Society, it might make such an investigation a somewhat lower priority.
This is all pretty standard stuff, and nothing much to worry about.
Guinness has and always shall be the #1 selling beer in Ireland.
Considering that it only got its start in 1759, how could it have 'always' been the #1 selling beer?
I don't understand the fascination with Guinness, quite frankly. AFAICT it's a triumph of marketing over good taste. It's just not a very good stout. Now, Murphy's is excellent--and Samuel Smith's makes an excellent one too IIRC. Guinness is too sour & too dry.
That's what's known as a lifeboat situation, and those are different from normal ethics. I'd choose to save one of my brothers over hundreds of other people, but that doesn't mean I should be allowed to kill those folks if I want to...
Re:probably on Microsoft's list of next important
on
Apache down, IIS up
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· Score: 2, Funny
In fact one of the very first things Bush did when he entered the White House was remove all of the DOJ lawyers on the Microsoft monopoly case who had any legal experience with monopolies.
Could you please provide a link to this information? I was unable to find any.
What, haven't you gotten the memo? One needn't back up anything bad one says about the current administration. Why, I heard that Bush is in league with the Martians in a plot to detonate the Sun!!!!!!!!
I must have phrased things very poorly, since you weren't the only one to appear to think I was advocating that viewpoint. I wasn't--I just wanted to indicate that there are differing rational views on the start of life. I'm still curious to hear one which justifies, say, third-trimester abortions (or even the majority of first-trimester abortions).
It is pretty obvious that an embryo is not YET human life. To state otherwise is ignorance.
So when, in your opinion, does it become human? I'm honestly asking this, for I'm curious what you think, and how carefully you've considered the question.
I doubt most people capable of rational thought would call blanket euthanasia of the infirm and disabled "rational".
Historically quite a few rational people supported the idea. Even today such philosophers as Peter Singer support it. I don't (IMHO it's a great evil); I mention it as an example only.
The "brain" that exists very early in pregnancy is a lump of undifferentiated cells that are in the right place and destined to become the brain. It's not like there are neurons all connected up and firing.
Well, once again I ask: when does that brain become an actual brain? Surely the brain of a forty-year-old man is a real brain, and so too that of a four-year-old, and so too that of a newborn, and so too that of a child minutes away from being born: at what point going backwards is it no longer a brain? If you set the point at, say, 7 weeks does that mean that at 6 weeks, 7 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes there's no brain there?
Part of my point is that the entire process of development is a collection of gradual changes starting from a certain particularly defined point, and that after that point there are no precisely defined points, but simply approximations.
I think that your definition of 'technological intervention' isn't terribly useful in drawing distinctions. Technology is just a lever whereby man makes the difficult less so. It never does the impossible (it can't); it just makes the very, very improbable probable.
Yes, of course I meant new life--since if we're just talking about cells belonging to some other organism, naturally that organism has rights over it.
I'm also aware that spontaneous abortions are quite common; in fact, IIRC the vast majority of those conceived never make it through the first few weeks, much less birth. I'm not certain that this has much bearing, though: we can't do anything about those (any more than we can do anything about the murder rate on another planet). We can only affect what we can affect, after all!
You make an interesting point that the negative consequences to society are (at least somewhat) independent of the moral/ethical status of the question. I'm not comfortable with this line of reasoning, as it is used by foes of contraception and drugs--two things which I strongly believe should be legal, although I think they also have severe negative effects on society as a whole.
Oh, you know what I meant. I was using 'magical moment' as a shorthand for 'a single moment, on one side of which the thing is not human, and on the other side of which the thing is human.'
And I'm really embarassed that I used 'their' for 'there.' Sigh...
There is one important difference, though: once brain activity has ended, it can never start again; thus we know that someone who is brain dead cannot be revivived. On the other hand, in an embryo the lack of brain activity doesn't indicate that it won't start.
The question is this: is it brain activity which means one is alive, or is it that cessation of brain activity means one has become dead?
The brain begins to develop, according to Wikipedia, at 5-8 weeks after conception; others have argued that the brain starts to exist before a woman likely knows she's pregnant. In that case, the existence of a brain would tend to argue against abortion (but in favour of abortaficient birth control pills and the sometimes mis-named emergency contraception).
I wasn't making the argument that life begins after it's impossible for twins to split--I was just noting that it exists. You're not the only person to make this mistake, so I must have been unclear. Don't see how, though. Regardless, I apologise for my lack of clarity.
Regarding viability & technology: what's technological intervention? Using a bulb to draw excess mucus from an infant's nose? Feeding it synthesised milk if its mother died in childbirth? Oxygenating its blood if its lungs are weak?
I disagree with viability-as-a-milestone as well: it seems to me pretty clear that after conception, life is simply a sequence of small changes. A four-year-old and a forty-year-old are very different physically, but those differences came about gradually. So too a four-month-old and a four-year-old, and a four-minute-old, and a foetus four months after conception, and so on. The only clear and stark dividing line I can see is conception, and so it seems reasonable to say that's when life begins.
Now, that doesn't mean that the unborn child is more important than its mother or anyone else--it's as important, and obviously its situation is closely linked with its mother. Thus abortion should be legal in cases such as ectopic pregnancies, as killing one is the only way to save the other.
Are you unable to read? I presented the scientfic side, which indicates that life begins at conception, while noting that there exists a religious argument that life begins after conception. Does mentioning another argument mean that one is making it? I think not.
Speaking as an American, and as one with a severely handicapped child, the day the United States values science that much over superstitious ignorance is the day pigs fly.
You should be glad we do value 'superstitious ignorance' as you (wrongly) term it: other nations that were more 'scientific' and 'rational' would have euthanised your child. To take a human life is murder, pure and simple. It may be necessary, but it is never good. The question, then, is whether or not the embryo is human. It's pretty obvious that it is, thus that to kill one is murder, thus that we should not kill them without a very good reason. The off-chance of perhaps healing some people isn't good enough, any more than killing retarded or handicapped children for medical experimentation that could possibly help others would be good.
Why does the life of an embryo with no family, or home, or even gurantee of survival, outweigh the life of someone who is already established in society; who loves and is loved, who has built up a life, and who would be sorely missed by many people?
The embryo's life doesn't outweigh the adult's; it is worth the same. Your question is much like asking why the life of a homeless man--with no family, or home or even guarantee of survival (they freeze to death all the time)--outweighs mine, for I'm established in society, love and am loved, have built up a life and would be missed by at least a few. Why, I should be able to kill the homeless man if doing so advances me! I might want that few bucks he's been collecting, or the food he's eating--or perhaps I just don't want him sitting on my step.
The answer, of course, is that his life doesn't outweigh mine, nor does mine his. We are both equal in the eyes of the law, and if I killed him so that I could keep his corneas onhand in case mine go, that law would punish me. Why should it be any different for someone who kills humans for medical experimentation?
I don't believe that an embryo is a life. It's a collection of cells with the ability to become life if allowed to develop fully.
So when, in your opinion, does life begin? It's pretty obvious that birth is a poor milestone, since there's no real difference between a baby one minute before it's born and one minute afterwards. Viability's not good either, as it moves backward with medical progress: an unviable foetus thirty years ago may be perfectly viable now. What about the presence of certain major organs, such as the heart or brain? Well, there's no magical instant when they suddenly appear--rather, they slowly develop over time. Indeed, there's only one magical instant in the entire process: conception, before which their are two different things and after which there is a new organism. From that moment on, the process is not essentially different from that whereby an infant becomes a man: gradual and slight changes.
Note that I'm arguing purely from the scientific side. There's actually a religious argument that life begins sometime after conception (basically, we know that souls cannot split; we know that early-stage embryos can; thus an early stage embryo must not have a soul), but I'm trying to avoid the religious angle.
Although of course the root of the argument is religious, or moral, or ethical, for it hinges on murder: does it matter if we kill a human being? If you don't think it does then it also doesn't matter if the embryo is human or not. But to be honest, I don't see the point of arguing with someone who thinks murder is okay by him.
On the other hand, many people drive drunk yet few drunk drivers have killed someone.
The cases are different, as there is a demonstrable causal link between drunk driving and accidents, but none has been demonstrated for gaming. Yet, anyway; it's not inherently implausible.
Witches were executed not for devil worship, but for causing harm to others. The devil worship was a lurid sidenote.
You're right. Devil worship was just an excuse. The fundamental cause is fear, fear of being harmed by "witches". Fear is a very powerful human emotion. It easily overcomes the rational part of us. And religion at that time only just happened to provide something for the villagers to believe what they were doing was right despite the absence of hard evidence.
No, actually the Church denied the existence of witches. It was a secular crime, not a religious one. And as I mentioned, the Church denied that it was possible for a curse or hex to have any ill effect.
If you are implying that a Judeo-Christian religion would help them I would recommend taking a hard look at the past 2,000 years of our religion. It does nothing to stop crime nor prevents society as whole from doing horrible things to other people even with the anger of god and damnation hanging over their head.
Nothing is rather a strong word, and I think demonstrably false.
Hanging suspected witches for devil worship...
Witches were executed not for devil worship, but for causing harm to others. The devil worship was a lurid sidenote.
Flying planes into buildings.... Blowing your self up in a crowded market in the name of your god.
I'm not aware of any Jews or Christians doing those things, although of course it's possible.
Food and clothing are basic needs to, yet the State shouldn't be providing them. The State should not be in the business of satisfying basic needs, period: its sole role is to punish those who violate the rights of others.
I feel kinda sorry for XFree86. It was a cool project, did some great and vital work, and then the maintainer went insane. It's kinda surprising that he's continuing at all. It can't be very easy to be essentially going it alone.
Could you explain what you don't like about the close button being on the tab?
It's poor UI: there's far too great a chance of accidentally closing a tab when one means to switch to another. I use Lotus Notes regularly at work, and this problem creeps up constantly. Moreover, especially with tabbed browsing the convenience of having a single screen area to hit with the mouse in order to close tabs is wonderful.
Fox News doesn't censor--it merely gives equal time. It commits the seemingly-grave sin of having commentators on both the left and the right, instead of the left alone.
Slashdot Mirror
American megabrew (Budweiser, Coors, Miller, Michelob et al.) is disgusting, yes. But American microbrew is excellent. I found German beer disappointing--the lager fascination is just strange. Lagers are clean & boring. My favourite style was Berliner weisse, which uses an ale yeast. Ales (British, Belgian & American micros) are complex & interesting, just what the doctor ordered.
Wrong, wrong and...wrong. Or how else do you think they catch spies?
Wrong again. Notice that you are free to post what you posted. Notice that no-one is arresting you--or fining you--for it. Notice that your First Amendment rights are preserved.
This is in many ways just extending traditional techniques to the online world. I can guarantee that if the CIA were trailing a Russian spy in the Cold War, they'd do a quick check on people he saw regularly. If a KGB spymaster and a lance corporal in the US Army were seen to always use the same table one after another at the same coffeehouse, the CIA would take a quick look. If the KGB agent used the same coffeehouse regularly, the CIA might also take a look. And if it noticed that the clerk was a member of the CPUSA, then it might look further, whereas if it discovered that the clerk was a member of the John Birch Society, it might make such an investigation a somewhat lower priority.
This is all pretty standard stuff, and nothing much to worry about.
Considering that it only got its start in 1759, how could it have 'always' been the #1 selling beer?
I don't understand the fascination with Guinness, quite frankly. AFAICT it's a triumph of marketing over good taste. It's just not a very good stout. Now, Murphy's is excellent--and Samuel Smith's makes an excellent one too IIRC. Guinness is too sour & too dry.
That's what's known as a lifeboat situation, and those are different from normal ethics. I'd choose to save one of my brothers over hundreds of other people, but that doesn't mean I should be allowed to kill those folks if I want to...
What, haven't you gotten the memo? One needn't back up anything bad one says about the current administration. Why, I heard that Bush is in league with the Martians in a plot to detonate the Sun!!!!!!!!
I must have phrased things very poorly, since you weren't the only one to appear to think I was advocating that viewpoint. I wasn't--I just wanted to indicate that there are differing rational views on the start of life. I'm still curious to hear one which justifies, say, third-trimester abortions (or even the majority of first-trimester abortions).
So when, in your opinion, does it become human? I'm honestly asking this, for I'm curious what you think, and how carefully you've considered the question.
Historically quite a few rational people supported the idea. Even today such philosophers as Peter Singer support it. I don't (IMHO it's a great evil); I mention it as an example only.
Well, once again I ask: when does that brain become an actual brain? Surely the brain of a forty-year-old man is a real brain, and so too that of a four-year-old, and so too that of a newborn, and so too that of a child minutes away from being born: at what point going backwards is it no longer a brain? If you set the point at, say, 7 weeks does that mean that at 6 weeks, 7 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes there's no brain there?
Part of my point is that the entire process of development is a collection of gradual changes starting from a certain particularly defined point, and that after that point there are no precisely defined points, but simply approximations.
Yes, of course I meant new life--since if we're just talking about cells belonging to some other organism, naturally that organism has rights over it.
I'm also aware that spontaneous abortions are quite common; in fact, IIRC the vast majority of those conceived never make it through the first few weeks, much less birth. I'm not certain that this has much bearing, though: we can't do anything about those (any more than we can do anything about the murder rate on another planet). We can only affect what we can affect, after all!
You make an interesting point that the negative consequences to society are (at least somewhat) independent of the moral/ethical status of the question. I'm not comfortable with this line of reasoning, as it is used by foes of contraception and drugs--two things which I strongly believe should be legal, although I think they also have severe negative effects on society as a whole.
And I'm really embarassed that I used 'their' for 'there.' Sigh...
The question is this: is it brain activity which means one is alive, or is it that cessation of brain activity means one has become dead?
The brain begins to develop, according to Wikipedia, at 5-8 weeks after conception; others have argued that the brain starts to exist before a woman likely knows she's pregnant. In that case, the existence of a brain would tend to argue against abortion (but in favour of abortaficient birth control pills and the sometimes mis-named emergency contraception).
Regarding viability & technology: what's technological intervention? Using a bulb to draw excess mucus from an infant's nose? Feeding it synthesised milk if its mother died in childbirth? Oxygenating its blood if its lungs are weak?
I disagree with viability-as-a-milestone as well: it seems to me pretty clear that after conception, life is simply a sequence of small changes. A four-year-old and a forty-year-old are very different physically, but those differences came about gradually. So too a four-month-old and a four-year-old, and a four-minute-old, and a foetus four months after conception, and so on. The only clear and stark dividing line I can see is conception, and so it seems reasonable to say that's when life begins.
Now, that doesn't mean that the unborn child is more important than its mother or anyone else--it's as important, and obviously its situation is closely linked with its mother. Thus abortion should be legal in cases such as ectopic pregnancies, as killing one is the only way to save the other.
Are you unable to read? I presented the scientfic side, which indicates that life begins at conception, while noting that there exists a religious argument that life begins after conception. Does mentioning another argument mean that one is making it? I think not.
You should be glad we do value 'superstitious ignorance' as you (wrongly) term it: other nations that were more 'scientific' and 'rational' would have euthanised your child. To take a human life is murder, pure and simple. It may be necessary, but it is never good. The question, then, is whether or not the embryo is human. It's pretty obvious that it is, thus that to kill one is murder, thus that we should not kill them without a very good reason. The off-chance of perhaps healing some people isn't good enough, any more than killing retarded or handicapped children for medical experimentation that could possibly help others would be good.
The embryo's life doesn't outweigh the adult's; it is worth the same. Your question is much like asking why the life of a homeless man--with no family, or home or even guarantee of survival (they freeze to death all the time)--outweighs mine, for I'm established in society, love and am loved, have built up a life and would be missed by at least a few. Why, I should be able to kill the homeless man if doing so advances me! I might want that few bucks he's been collecting, or the food he's eating--or perhaps I just don't want him sitting on my step.
The answer, of course, is that his life doesn't outweigh mine, nor does mine his. We are both equal in the eyes of the law, and if I killed him so that I could keep his corneas onhand in case mine go, that law would punish me. Why should it be any different for someone who kills humans for medical experimentation?
So when, in your opinion, does life begin? It's pretty obvious that birth is a poor milestone, since there's no real difference between a baby one minute before it's born and one minute afterwards. Viability's not good either, as it moves backward with medical progress: an unviable foetus thirty years ago may be perfectly viable now. What about the presence of certain major organs, such as the heart or brain? Well, there's no magical instant when they suddenly appear--rather, they slowly develop over time. Indeed, there's only one magical instant in the entire process: conception, before which their are two different things and after which there is a new organism. From that moment on, the process is not essentially different from that whereby an infant becomes a man: gradual and slight changes.
Note that I'm arguing purely from the scientific side. There's actually a religious argument that life begins sometime after conception (basically, we know that souls cannot split; we know that early-stage embryos can; thus an early stage embryo must not have a soul), but I'm trying to avoid the religious angle.
Although of course the root of the argument is religious, or moral, or ethical, for it hinges on murder: does it matter if we kill a human being? If you don't think it does then it also doesn't matter if the embryo is human or not. But to be honest, I don't see the point of arguing with someone who thinks murder is okay by him.
The cases are different, as there is a demonstrable causal link between drunk driving and accidents, but none has been demonstrated for gaming. Yet, anyway; it's not inherently implausible.
No, actually the Church denied the existence of witches. It was a secular crime, not a religious one. And as I mentioned, the Church denied that it was possible for a curse or hex to have any ill effect.
Nothing is rather a strong word, and I think demonstrably false.
Hanging suspected witches for devil worship...
Witches were executed not for devil worship, but for causing harm to others. The devil worship was a lurid sidenote.
Flying planes into buildings.... Blowing your self up in a crowded market in the name of your god.
I'm not aware of any Jews or Christians doing those things, although of course it's possible.
Food and clothing are basic needs to, yet the State shouldn't be providing them. The State should not be in the business of satisfying basic needs, period: its sole role is to punish those who violate the rights of others.
I feel kinda sorry for XFree86. It was a cool project, did some great and vital work, and then the maintainer went insane. It's kinda surprising that he's continuing at all. It can't be very easy to be essentially going it alone.
It's poor UI: there's far too great a chance of accidentally closing a tab when one means to switch to another. I use Lotus Notes regularly at work, and this problem creeps up constantly. Moreover, especially with tabbed browsing the convenience of having a single screen area to hit with the mouse in order to close tabs is wonderful.
Ah yes, the woman single-handedly responsible for the 1,728% increase in the Finnish tourism market...
Fox News doesn't censor--it merely gives equal time. It commits the seemingly-grave sin of having commentators on both the left and the right, instead of the left alone.