I hear that! My once-favorite radio station no longer has a music format -- it has a demographic. They don't care whether what they play is consistent as long as it's popular with white males and females aged 18-30. A once good alternative station is now mixing in white-boy rap and hip-hop.
I've gone pure college radio now. Sometimes its like musical nihilism when the station plays random Urdu music, Philip Glass, and Throbbing Gristle side-by-side or 50 hours straight of unstructured noise techno that's only distinguishable from radio static by its harshness, but at least it's always fresh, and it doesn't feel like I'm just being marketed to.
Re:Let's hope this means the end of veal
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Fortified soy milk for me.
Don't get too dependent on it. There are potential health risks involved in soy milk as well. I love how many sites tout the "healing magic" of soy isoflavones without mentioning one thing about thyroid problems from them. Personally, after reading this, I've just decided that all food is dangerous, and I'm going to die happy and not worry about what I eat.
Re:why mod up all the anti animal rights posts?
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Generally, the so-called "anti-animal rights" posts are actually funny, unlike the righteous indignation of all the PETA people.
It's true that compassion and arrogance generally don't mix very often. However, most of us meat eaters see a lot more arrogance than compassion from the PETA people. It's just like religious fundamentalism. It's a lot easier to feel superior about yourself and screech at and talk down to people who don't follow your worldview than it is to demonstrate your compassion.
I've never seen such a bunch of smug and insensitve jackasses as the PETA people themselves. The Rudy Giuliani "Got Prostate Cancer?" motherboard and this site (which used to actually claim that Jesus was a vegetarian and had a picture of Jesus with an orange for a halo) really show how far PETA is willing to go towards making asses of themselves in the public eye. I think Veganism is a great movement; I just can't stand the people.
By the way, where i live its not "coke" and not pop (doesn't matter if its sprite, dr pepper, or coca cola)
Where exactly is this? I've always wondered. You see, I've lived in Atlanta, the home of Coca-Cola, for six years, and I've never seen anyone call any non-cola beverage a Coke. I've seen Pepsi, RC, and hundreds of knock-off store brand colas called Coke, but I've never heard a Sprite, a Dr. Pepper, or anything else called a Coke.
Personally, I think the whole "everything's a Coke" bit is an urban legend.
"Soft drink" -- a holdover from Prohibition times that's still used today. I've lived in the South, and I don't think I've ever heard "fountain drink" used except maybe to specifically refer to whether or not a drink comes from a can or a fountain. "Soft drink" is definitely more popular where I've lived, with "Coke" being the most often.
(However, even living in Georgia, I've never actually heard anyone call any non-cola drink a "Coke." Ever.)
That was over the course of a few months after a 2-for-1 stock split, so it was really just a shaking out of the price to match the previous market capitalization of the company. However, I wasn't aware of the dip in 2001 and the fact that the price has hovered there ever since. (I don't own MSFT stock, so I don't watch it often.) Maybe the stock has finally stabilized after all these years.
I know this is blatantly off-topic, but does anyone here know where I can get a description of the physical interface for a GBA screen? I need the physical voltages on the pins as well as the protocol for sending data to the screen. I've managed to get my hands on a spare for repairs from eBay and I think it'd make for an interesting case mod.
The old fashioned way worked fine before new ways were invented. Before paper was invented the old fashioned way worked fine, before the car was invented everyone knew how to ride horses, should we all learn how to ride horses by default due to the fact that someday all cars may stop existing?
This is a flawed analogy.
Your analogy would be more appropriate if you were mocking him for advocating that people should learn slide rules in case a calculator broke down. The calculator is a better technological aid than a slide rule, just as a car is a better aid than a horse. However, the existence of the calculator is no reason to abandon learning basic math skills than motorized transportation is a reason to abandon the ability to walk.
A shovel and a screwdriver are basic tools needed to do a job that a person should know how to use when the more convenient method breaks down or is otherwise unavailable. Similarly, basic math skills and healthy legs are basic tools we should do our best to equip our children with in case more convenient methods are not available. My analogy breaks down here because having a shovel or a screwdriver is not a basic life skill like being able to walk or do arithmatic. We should view a lack of basic math knowlege as crippling a losing your legs or being illiterate.
If you think that Microsoft's $40 Billion is an impressive number calculate what Bill Gates would lose personally if Microsoft's stock lost half of its value.
His fortune is less tied to MS than you might think. Gates has diversified his holdings over the past several years and as of Sept. 9th of this year only held 11.6% of the company's stock. I believe his current net holdings are worth $43 billion. MSFT has 5,346,449,872 shares as of Sept. 30th, and it closed on that day at $43.74. On that day, MS stock was worth $223 billion, and he held only $27 billion in MS stock. If he lost half that, he'd go from $43 billion to $29.5 billion (ignoring the fact that an MS crash would take down the whole market). Boo hoo. He'd still have over 100 times what he was worth back in 1986.
Of course, this in no way invalidates your argument which is 100% correct. MS is a very stock price-obsessed company, and a lot of mutual funds invest so much money into it because it's preceived as a stable growth company. A major Enron-like shake-up like Bill Parish has been hoping for would devistate the market as badly as Enron's did. MS's business personnel are wholy obsessed with keeping this growth stable, and it's been well documented that MS uses tricky accounting to smooth losses from one quarter to the next by storing up money from good quarters and counting it as "earnings" later.
Incidentally, the Bill Gates Net Worth Page is an amusing collection of statistics and extrapolations about his wealth, though its data is a little out of date. It shows things like how long he could buy off every major official in the government (if he stopped earning money), how fast you'd have to go picking up dollar bills from end to end to earn money as fast as he has since MS went public (35+ MPH), and how if he can maintain his current rate of growth per year (over 35%!), he'll be a trillionaire by 2014.
There are several problems with VFDs that OLEDs don't have. First, I've never found a VFD with the resolution of a GBA or PalmPilot screen. Second, they're far more expensive than OLEDs and LCDs. I know for a fact that the GBA's screen costs less than $10. I have a spare for my unit. The monocromatic, smaller, and less detailed screen reviewed here is over $100. Third, the GBA's LCD screen already draws extremely little power because it has no active light source instead relying on a reflective backscreen. VFDs use more power than LCDs -- not much more, but it's not saving you power.
Umm... so if I go take a dump in a public toilet, I own a patent on what I 'deposited'...? U.S. Patent law is insane!
Only if what you have desposited is useful, original, and nonobvious to a "pracitioner of the art." If you can do that, then I'd see a gastroenterologist before a patent attorney if I were you.
From what I've always understood, Digital Video Disc was the original meaning and Digital Versatile Disc was just a clumsy attempt to reinvent the name that never stuck. Anyway, that's what the DVD FAQ says.
The transfer rate for a 1X CD-ROM is 150 Kbps. The transfer rate for a 1X DVD-ROM is 1108 Kbps, with the media only having to spin 3X faster due to higher data densities. You can find out more here.
A 16X DVD-ROM would spin at the same speed as a 48X CD-ROM and would transfer 21.13 MBps (megabytes per second). This would take about 3.7 minutes to fill a 4.7 GB disk.
It's not like my hard drive doesn't do nearly one-and-a-half to twice that rate in write speeds when I'm capturing video....or are you worried about the wide world of EIDE / 486 users that are going to be left behind?
That's only about enough to saturate an UltraATA/33 bus (when you take into account command overhead). Unless you put the source and target drives on the same chain, you shouldn't have a problem.
That is some amazingly scary stuff, none of which has shown up in American publications according to Google News. Gee, I wonder why. It just wouldn't do to let the voters be informed, now would it?
The Students for an Orwellian Society also stand in support of the realization of Orwell's great dream as set forth in his prophetic work in 1984. Unite to bring Orwell and Bush's dream of IngSoc to the Oceania people today!
As for G. W., I doubt that he's going to get voted in during the 2004 elections, since it's doubtless by now that he's going to have half the country nuked by screwing with Iraq.
Yeah, Bush's horrible 65% approval rating really hurt the Republicans in this last election. Riiight. (Oh!... and I hope you weren't serious in evaluating Iraq as a serious nuclear threat to us.)
Face it, the masses love this guy. There's nothing that he can do wrong so long as he keeps consolodating power in the background while waving the flag of fighting Iraq in the foreground. We're doomed to another 4 years of him, and there's nothing that we can do. Privacy issues? Corporate accountability? The environment? Corruption in government? No one cares anymore. No one but marginalized intellectuals care, and we aren't a significant voter base in this nation of happy and complacently uninformed consumers.
Hell, they don't even care that we still haven't gotten Osama bin Ladin yet, just like GWB's dad never got Sadaam Hussein. GWB started beating the Iraq war drums when it became evident that we weren't going to get him. As long as we've perpetually got some future military action to keep America distracted, he can do whatever he likes with a high approval rating. As long as Americans know that we'll never get mired in another Vietnam and we can sit back and plunk missles and bombs at disadvantaged enemies, they'll love any Republican President that gets us involved in a war, because Republicans know just what kinds of enemies get Americans riled up.
"Corrupt Somalians oppressing their people? Butchers in the Balkans performing 'ethnic cleansing?' Who cares? Get our boys back home!" As long as they can keep the masses scared, they'll ladel love and worship on any President who "stands up to" a country that would never ever defeat us in a straight-up war. Bush knows it. Clinton got us involved in wars in other nations based on issues and principles like opposing racist genocide without giving us a reason to fear the enemies. America hated it. The key to the love of the American people is fear of foreigners. As long as you can stoke up nationalism and fear of another nation, you can keep their hearts by doing something about the "problem."
It's disgusting. Real issues don't matter. Constitutional freedoms, civil liberties, and the accountability of those in power don't matter next to fighting Eastasia or Eurasia in our coming Orwellian nightmare. Welcome to at least four more years of Bush and four more years of the War against Terrorism where the words Freedom and Terrorism have lost all meaning.
Screw this. I'm voting Green in 2004. If whoever I vote for is destined to lose anyway, I want a chance for federal money to go to someone in 2008 who'll try to at least get issues in the public limelight without fear of "looking bad" like the Democrats will in the next election. I'll bet money that they'll soft-shoe their way through the next election without raising any issues like they did this year in the new Democrat / "Republicans Lite" fashion. At least in 2008, there's a chance the American people will have become tired of Bush after he has four years to run the nation into the ground without caring about getting reelected.
So how does the NYT website differ from an archive that is freely accessible by anyone and everyone? Sure, it's privately not publicly owned, but so is every other news site, so that's an argument you can forego.
Though you'll note I didn't say that it was exclusive, and this is really a side issue...
My bad. I misinterpretted your meaning. I will put that to the wayside since you seen to agree with the point I was making about pain.
My use of the word person is pretty darn clear: I'm talking about the class of beings for which we have a developed account of moral rights and legal obligations. This is what the law talks about when it talks about persons.
My point is that that term should apply to all human lifeforms, irregardless of developmental status. By viewing the meaning of the word "person" differently that I do, we cannot come to a middle ground on the issue. You refuse to see anyone not born as a person; I refuse to see any human lifeform as not a person. This is the core of the debate, and accusation of who is and is not using the "right" definition of the word is essentially arguing around the same issue. The use of the word itself reveals the speaker's bias. That's what I was trying to point out in my objection to the use of the term "future persons." It predisposes the debate. You said that you didn't hear any arguments that were less flimsy than ones about "future persons," and I said that there's no such thing as "future persons." They're persons already.
My own values why it's wrong to kill other people is based on my experience with them, and my empathy for them, not as definitions, but as actual beings with certain characteristics.
Whereas my values are based on a broader acceptance of humanity in general. I don't just value people I know and can talk to.
To explain it one last time, you've made the error of applying your value for human life directly to the _definition_ of human life, not to what is actually concieved of when most people speak of human life being of moral consideration for various reasons having to do with people's capacity to have feelings, relationships, interests, expectations, obligaitons, etc. (which zygotes can't have, in any way shape or form). You can define "person" however you wish: that doesn't remove from you the burden of explaining why zygotes/embryos should have the same rights as do the people we deal with everyday.
It's because I don't limit myself to valuing those I deal with everyday. I don't value a person based on their ability to interact with others or feel and experience the same things I do. As such, I see no reason to deny the unborn basic human rights. Perhaps you should justify why rights should be denied instead of asking me to justify why they should be granted other than that you don't feel a connection to them.
Furthermore, saying that your use of the word person is the "legal" definition isn't a strong argument. As I've pointed out, people have frequently in the past considered those they wanted to infringe upon the rights of as not people. Now you've got solid science on your side in claming that they're different. The unborn aren't fully developed yet. They don't have developed nervous systems. Though they can't think and they can't feel pain, yet they are no less human than you or I. Should they not then be treated as people? Have we not developed past treating all other groups of humans as not people? Why should be unborn be the last holdout of discrimination against fellow humans?
We are part of nature, so everything we do is necessarily natural.
Now you're really discrediting your arguments by using that old semantic trick. You, and any other reader knows quite well what the term "natural" is supposed to mean. Claiming that no artificial work is not natural is just verbal sleight-of-hand.
So on what logical basis does the zygote acquire a greater ethical status a moment after fertilization than the sperm and egg had the moment before?
The fact that the sperm and egg cell, as haploid cells, are not complete beings capable of growing into a human regardless of their environment. Creating a zygote with no intention of allowing it to live can be at least construed as callous if the term malicious does not apply.
This being the case, there are serious ethical concerns regarding the use of such inflammatory language.
Point conceded. As noted previously, a better term could've been used. I am not too hypocritical to speak on the importance of use of language and be disingenuous about what I did actually say.
I don't think you should look at these cells as a potential human. Unlike human creation, there is no mixing of genes. The egg is never fertilized. All the researchers hope to do is to take a skin cell from a patient, reprogram it so it goes back to an embryonic state, and then use those "rejuvenated" cells to cure the patient's disease. There's an egg involved, but only the cytoplasm is used -- there is no maternal DNA involved. It may even be possible to use an animal egg to reprogram the cell.
Technically, that's exactly how cloning has been done. You take genetic material from the source from the donor, implant it into an egg cell, and let it grow. These aren't really rejuvenated cells. I have no problem with calling a clone an individual with their own rights. There are too many other ethical issues if we don't treat them that way, especially if workable reproductive cloning ever happens.
Pretty soon, we'll figure out the complicated recipe for egg cytoplasm, and then we won't need an egg anymore. Will that change its moral standing?
I wouldn't say pretty soon. It's not just raw cytoplasm. Even an egg has a complex set of organelles, including mitochondria, which would be prohibitively expensive to artificially create compared to naturally letting them grow. I don't think it would change its moral standing, but I'm pretty transhumanist with regards to what I'd consider giving rights and citizenship to. I'd have problems with deleting full-fledged AIs if we ever get that far, for example.
Embryonic stem cells are immortal, and adult stem cells seem to share the 50-division limit of other adult cells. That, unfortunately, rules them out for therapies that require genetic engineering.
The Stanford approach here is certainly less objectionable to the original harvesting of aborted fetuses that coined the phrase fetal stem cell research. However, my main problem is that I don't think people aren't focusing hard enough on adult stem cell techniques, which have not proven to be a dead end. Quite the contrary, they're proving to be quite promising. These researchers are taking the quicker, easier route and denying or whitewashing any ethical concerns about it. It's a moral grey area, but many refuse to see it as such. The people who say that there's nothing wrong with it trouble me.
Re:I wonder how much of this is quality . . .
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How about Gibson, Sterling, and Stephenson?
Someone here's got a cyberpunk fetish...
Re:Classic SciFi: Bester's "The Stars My Destinati
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Critics Pan Nemesis
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Personally, the books I love I hope never get touched by Hollywood. I'll never forgive Hollywood for "Starship Troopers."
However, yes, "The Stars My Destination," is one of the best SF books ever. I put Bester's other famous work, "The Demolished Man," as even better, though. The prose just grips you and absolutely will not let you put the book down. It's also a story that depends on the medium and would never survive the silver screen transition. Ben Reich is a great character, a truly magnificent predator among men.
If brain death is accepted as the end of life, why shouldn't the onset of mental function define the beginning?
My stance is that it's because brain death is the irreversable end of a sentient life, while an embryo that is given a chance can still lead a full life. There is no saving someone who is brain dead, but that does not mean there is no life to one who has yet to grow their brain.
The reason researchers are pursuing cloning is because there is no other way to prevent tissue rejection. The stem cells that result are genetically identical to the patient. No new human is created at any point.
This can be done today with bone marrow stem cells. There is no need to clone a fresh new individual and harvent the embryonic stem cells. That is a new human. With research being done on taking cells from an adult (or child) and manipulating them into growing new organs, there is little need to pursue fetal stem cell research. Then again, I think we may be talking about the same technology but assuming different stances on whether or not it counts as fetal stem cell research.
I have no inherent problem with stem cell research. My problem is with research from cells that could become a viable new person or that came from fetuses. Not all stem cells have that capacity.
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The Peter Jackson version is left as an extra credit exercise.
Uruk-Hai: I kick arse for the Dark Lord!
I hear that! My once-favorite radio station no longer has a music format -- it has a demographic. They don't care whether what they play is consistent as long as it's popular with white males and females aged 18-30. A once good alternative station is now mixing in white-boy rap and hip-hop.
I've gone pure college radio now. Sometimes its like musical nihilism when the station plays random Urdu music, Philip Glass, and Throbbing Gristle side-by-side or 50 hours straight of unstructured noise techno that's only distinguishable from radio static by its harshness, but at least it's always fresh, and it doesn't feel like I'm just being marketed to.
Fortified soy milk for me.
Don't get too dependent on it. There are potential health risks involved in soy milk as well. I love how many sites tout the "healing magic" of soy isoflavones without mentioning one thing about thyroid problems from them. Personally, after reading this, I've just decided that all food is dangerous, and I'm going to die happy and not worry about what I eat.
Generally, the so-called "anti-animal rights" posts are actually funny, unlike the righteous indignation of all the PETA people.
It's true that compassion and arrogance generally don't mix very often. However, most of us meat eaters see a lot more arrogance than compassion from the PETA people. It's just like religious fundamentalism. It's a lot easier to feel superior about yourself and screech at and talk down to people who don't follow your worldview than it is to demonstrate your compassion.
I've never seen such a bunch of smug and insensitve jackasses as the PETA people themselves. The Rudy Giuliani "Got Prostate Cancer?" motherboard and this site (which used to actually claim that Jesus was a vegetarian and had a picture of Jesus with an orange for a halo) really show how far PETA is willing to go towards making asses of themselves in the public eye. I think Veganism is a great movement; I just can't stand the people.
By the way, where i live its not "coke" and not pop (doesn't matter if its sprite, dr pepper, or coca cola)
Where exactly is this? I've always wondered. You see, I've lived in Atlanta, the home of Coca-Cola, for six years, and I've never seen anyone call any non-cola beverage a Coke. I've seen Pepsi, RC, and hundreds of knock-off store brand colas called Coke, but I've never heard a Sprite, a Dr. Pepper, or anything else called a Coke.
Personally, I think the whole "everything's a Coke" bit is an urban legend.
"Soft drink" -- a holdover from Prohibition times that's still used today. I've lived in the South, and I don't think I've ever heard "fountain drink" used except maybe to specifically refer to whether or not a drink comes from a can or a fountain. "Soft drink" is definitely more popular where I've lived, with "Coke" being the most often.
(However, even living in Georgia, I've never actually heard anyone call any non-cola drink a "Coke." Ever.)
That was over the course of a few months after a 2-for-1 stock split, so it was really just a shaking out of the price to match the previous market capitalization of the company. However, I wasn't aware of the dip in 2001 and the fact that the price has hovered there ever since. (I don't own MSFT stock, so I don't watch it often.) Maybe the stock has finally stabilized after all these years.
I know this is blatantly off-topic, but does anyone here know where I can get a description of the physical interface for a GBA screen? I need the physical voltages on the pins as well as the protocol for sending data to the screen. I've managed to get my hands on a spare for repairs from eBay and I think it'd make for an interesting case mod.
The old fashioned way worked fine before new ways were invented. Before paper was invented the old fashioned way worked fine, before the car was invented everyone knew how to ride horses, should we all learn how to ride horses by default due to the fact that someday all cars may stop existing?
This is a flawed analogy.
Your analogy would be more appropriate if you were mocking him for advocating that people should learn slide rules in case a calculator broke down. The calculator is a better technological aid than a slide rule, just as a car is a better aid than a horse. However, the existence of the calculator is no reason to abandon learning basic math skills than motorized transportation is a reason to abandon the ability to walk.
A shovel and a screwdriver are basic tools needed to do a job that a person should know how to use when the more convenient method breaks down or is otherwise unavailable. Similarly, basic math skills and healthy legs are basic tools we should do our best to equip our children with in case more convenient methods are not available. My analogy breaks down here because having a shovel or a screwdriver is not a basic life skill like being able to walk or do arithmatic. We should view a lack of basic math knowlege as crippling a losing your legs or being illiterate.
If you think that Microsoft's $40 Billion is an impressive number calculate what Bill Gates would lose personally if Microsoft's stock lost half of its value.
His fortune is less tied to MS than you might think. Gates has diversified his holdings over the past several years and as of Sept. 9th of this year only held 11.6% of the company's stock. I believe his current net holdings are worth $43 billion. MSFT has 5,346,449,872 shares as of Sept. 30th, and it closed on that day at $43.74. On that day, MS stock was worth $223 billion, and he held only $27 billion in MS stock. If he lost half that, he'd go from $43 billion to $29.5 billion (ignoring the fact that an MS crash would take down the whole market). Boo hoo. He'd still have over 100 times what he was worth back in 1986.
Of course, this in no way invalidates your argument which is 100% correct. MS is a very stock price-obsessed company, and a lot of mutual funds invest so much money into it because it's preceived as a stable growth company. A major Enron-like shake-up like Bill Parish has been hoping for would devistate the market as badly as Enron's did. MS's business personnel are wholy obsessed with keeping this growth stable, and it's been well documented that MS uses tricky accounting to smooth losses from one quarter to the next by storing up money from good quarters and counting it as "earnings" later.
Incidentally, the Bill Gates Net Worth Page is an amusing collection of statistics and extrapolations about his wealth, though its data is a little out of date. It shows things like how long he could buy off every major official in the government (if he stopped earning money), how fast you'd have to go picking up dollar bills from end to end to earn money as fast as he has since MS went public (35+ MPH), and how if he can maintain his current rate of growth per year (over 35%!), he'll be a trillionaire by 2014.
There are several problems with VFDs that OLEDs don't have. First, I've never found a VFD with the resolution of a GBA or PalmPilot screen. Second, they're far more expensive than OLEDs and LCDs. I know for a fact that the GBA's screen costs less than $10. I have a spare for my unit. The monocromatic, smaller, and less detailed screen reviewed here is over $100. Third, the GBA's LCD screen already draws extremely little power because it has no active light source instead relying on a reflective backscreen. VFDs use more power than LCDs -- not much more, but it's not saving you power.
Umm... so if I go take a dump in a public toilet, I own a patent on what I 'deposited'...? U.S. Patent law is insane!
Only if what you have desposited is useful, original, and nonobvious to a "pracitioner of the art." If you can do that, then I'd see a gastroenterologist before a patent attorney if I were you.
From what I've always understood, Digital Video Disc was the original meaning and Digital Versatile Disc was just a clumsy attempt to reinvent the name that never stuck. Anyway, that's what the DVD FAQ says.
The transfer rate for a 1X CD-ROM is 150 Kbps. The transfer rate for a 1X DVD-ROM is 1108 Kbps, with the media only having to spin 3X faster due to higher data densities. You can find out more here.
A 16X DVD-ROM would spin at the same speed as a 48X CD-ROM and would transfer 21.13 MBps (megabytes per second). This would take about 3.7 minutes to fill a 4.7 GB disk.
It's not like my hard drive doesn't do nearly one-and-a-half to twice that rate in write speeds when I'm capturing video. ...or are you worried about the wide world of EIDE / 486 users that are going to be left behind?
That's only about enough to saturate an UltraATA/33 bus (when you take into account command overhead). Unless you put the source and target drives on the same chain, you shouldn't have a problem.
That is some amazingly scary stuff, none of which has shown up in American publications according to Google News. Gee, I wonder why. It just wouldn't do to let the voters be informed, now would it?
The Students for an Orwellian Society also stand in support of the realization of Orwell's great dream as set forth in his prophetic work in 1984. Unite to bring Orwell and Bush's dream of IngSoc to the Oceania people today!
As for G. W., I doubt that he's going to get voted in during the 2004 elections, since it's doubtless by now that he's going to have half the country nuked by screwing with Iraq.
... and I hope you weren't serious in evaluating Iraq as a serious nuclear threat to us.)
Yeah, Bush's horrible 65% approval rating really hurt the Republicans in this last election. Riiight.
(Oh!
Face it, the masses love this guy. There's nothing that he can do wrong so long as he keeps consolodating power in the background while waving the flag of fighting Iraq in the foreground. We're doomed to another 4 years of him, and there's nothing that we can do. Privacy issues? Corporate accountability? The environment? Corruption in government? No one cares anymore. No one but marginalized intellectuals care, and we aren't a significant voter base in this nation of happy and complacently uninformed consumers.
Hell, they don't even care that we still haven't gotten Osama bin Ladin yet, just like GWB's dad never got Sadaam Hussein. GWB started beating the Iraq war drums when it became evident that we weren't going to get him. As long as we've perpetually got some future military action to keep America distracted, he can do whatever he likes with a high approval rating. As long as Americans know that we'll never get mired in another Vietnam and we can sit back and plunk missles and bombs at disadvantaged enemies, they'll love any Republican President that gets us involved in a war, because Republicans know just what kinds of enemies get Americans riled up.
"Corrupt Somalians oppressing their people? Butchers in the Balkans performing 'ethnic cleansing?' Who cares? Get our boys back home!" As long as they can keep the masses scared, they'll ladel love and worship on any President who "stands up to" a country that would never ever defeat us in a straight-up war. Bush knows it. Clinton got us involved in wars in other nations based on issues and principles like opposing racist genocide without giving us a reason to fear the enemies. America hated it. The key to the love of the American people is fear of foreigners. As long as you can stoke up nationalism and fear of another nation, you can keep their hearts by doing something about the "problem."
It's disgusting. Real issues don't matter. Constitutional freedoms, civil liberties, and the accountability of those in power don't matter next to fighting Eastasia or Eurasia in our coming Orwellian nightmare. Welcome to at least four more years of Bush and four more years of the War against Terrorism where the words Freedom and Terrorism have lost all meaning.
Screw this. I'm voting Green in 2004. If whoever I vote for is destined to lose anyway, I want a chance for federal money to go to someone in 2008 who'll try to at least get issues in the public limelight without fear of "looking bad" like the Democrats will in the next election. I'll bet money that they'll soft-shoe their way through the next election without raising any issues like they did this year in the new Democrat / "Republicans Lite" fashion. At least in 2008, there's a chance the American people will have become tired of Bush after he has four years to run the nation into the ground without caring about getting reelected.
So how does the NYT website differ from an archive that is freely accessible by anyone and everyone? Sure, it's privately not publicly owned, but so is every other news site, so that's an argument you can forego.
Though you'll note I didn't say that it was exclusive, and this is really a side issue...
My bad. I misinterpretted your meaning. I will put that to the wayside since you seen to agree with the point I was making about pain.
My use of the word person is pretty darn clear: I'm talking about the class of beings for which we have a developed account of moral rights and legal obligations. This is what the law talks about when it talks about persons.
My point is that that term should apply to all human lifeforms, irregardless of developmental status. By viewing the meaning of the word "person" differently that I do, we cannot come to a middle ground on the issue. You refuse to see anyone not born as a person; I refuse to see any human lifeform as not a person. This is the core of the debate, and accusation of who is and is not using the "right" definition of the word is essentially arguing around the same issue. The use of the word itself reveals the speaker's bias. That's what I was trying to point out in my objection to the use of the term "future persons." It predisposes the debate. You said that you didn't hear any arguments that were less flimsy than ones about "future persons," and I said that there's no such thing as "future persons." They're persons already.
My own values why it's wrong to kill other people is based on my experience with them, and my empathy for them, not as definitions, but as actual beings with certain characteristics.
Whereas my values are based on a broader acceptance of humanity in general. I don't just value people I know and can talk to.
To explain it one last time, you've made the error of applying your value for human life directly to the _definition_ of human life, not to what is actually concieved of when most people speak of human life being of moral consideration for various reasons having to do with people's capacity to have feelings, relationships, interests, expectations, obligaitons, etc. (which zygotes can't have, in any way shape or form). You can define "person" however you wish: that doesn't remove from you the burden of explaining why zygotes/embryos should have the same rights as do the people we deal with everyday.
It's because I don't limit myself to valuing those I deal with everyday. I don't value a person based on their ability to interact with others or feel and experience the same things I do. As such, I see no reason to deny the unborn basic human rights. Perhaps you should justify why rights should be denied instead of asking me to justify why they should be granted other than that you don't feel a connection to them.
Furthermore, saying that your use of the word person is the "legal" definition isn't a strong argument. As I've pointed out, people have frequently in the past considered those they wanted to infringe upon the rights of as not people. Now you've got solid science on your side in claming that they're different. The unborn aren't fully developed yet. They don't have developed nervous systems. Though they can't think and they can't feel pain, yet they are no less human than you or I. Should they not then be treated as people? Have we not developed past treating all other groups of humans as not people? Why should be unborn be the last holdout of discrimination against fellow humans?
We are part of nature, so everything we do is necessarily natural.
Now you're really discrediting your arguments by using that old semantic trick. You, and any other reader knows quite well what the term "natural" is supposed to mean. Claiming that no artificial work is not natural is just verbal sleight-of-hand.
So on what logical basis does the zygote acquire a greater ethical status a moment after fertilization than the sperm and egg had the moment before?
The fact that the sperm and egg cell, as haploid cells, are not complete beings capable of growing into a human regardless of their environment. Creating a zygote with no intention of allowing it to live can be at least construed as callous if the term malicious does not apply.
This being the case, there are serious ethical concerns regarding the use of such inflammatory language.
Point conceded. As noted previously, a better term could've been used. I am not too hypocritical to speak on the importance of use of language and be disingenuous about what I did actually say.
I don't think you should look at these cells as a potential human. Unlike human creation, there is no mixing of genes. The egg is never fertilized. All the researchers hope to do is to take a skin cell from a patient, reprogram it so it goes back to an embryonic state, and then use those "rejuvenated" cells to cure the patient's disease. There's an egg involved, but only the cytoplasm is used -- there is no maternal DNA involved. It may even be possible to use an animal egg to reprogram the cell.
Technically, that's exactly how cloning has been done. You take genetic material from the source from the donor, implant it into an egg cell, and let it grow. These aren't really rejuvenated cells. I have no problem with calling a clone an individual with their own rights. There are too many other ethical issues if we don't treat them that way, especially if workable reproductive cloning ever happens.
Pretty soon, we'll figure out the complicated recipe for egg cytoplasm, and then we won't need an egg anymore. Will that change its moral standing?
I wouldn't say pretty soon. It's not just raw cytoplasm. Even an egg has a complex set of organelles, including mitochondria, which would be prohibitively expensive to artificially create compared to naturally letting them grow. I don't think it would change its moral standing, but I'm pretty transhumanist with regards to what I'd consider giving rights and citizenship to. I'd have problems with deleting full-fledged AIs if we ever get that far, for example.
Embryonic stem cells are immortal, and adult stem cells seem to share the 50-division limit of other adult cells. That, unfortunately, rules them out for therapies that require genetic engineering.
Not true. Look at this link on mesenchymal adult progenitor cells.
The Stanford approach here is certainly less objectionable to the original harvesting of aborted fetuses that coined the phrase fetal stem cell research. However, my main problem is that I don't think people aren't focusing hard enough on adult stem cell techniques, which have not proven to be a dead end. Quite the contrary, they're proving to be quite promising. These researchers are taking the quicker, easier route and denying or whitewashing any ethical concerns about it. It's a moral grey area, but many refuse to see it as such. The people who say that there's nothing wrong with it trouble me.
How about Gibson, Sterling, and Stephenson?
Someone here's got a cyberpunk fetish...
Personally, the books I love I hope never get touched by Hollywood. I'll never forgive Hollywood for "Starship Troopers."
However, yes, "The Stars My Destination," is one of the best SF books ever. I put Bester's other famous work, "The Demolished Man," as even better, though. The prose just grips you and absolutely will not let you put the book down. It's also a story that depends on the medium and would never survive the silver screen transition. Ben Reich is a great character, a truly magnificent predator among men.
If brain death is accepted as the end of life, why shouldn't the onset of mental function define the beginning?
My stance is that it's because brain death is the irreversable end of a sentient life, while an embryo that is given a chance can still lead a full life. There is no saving someone who is brain dead, but that does not mean there is no life to one who has yet to grow their brain.
The reason researchers are pursuing cloning is because there is no other way to prevent tissue rejection. The stem cells that result are genetically identical to the patient. No new human is created at any point.
This can be done today with bone marrow stem cells. There is no need to clone a fresh new individual and harvent the embryonic stem cells. That is a new human. With research being done on taking cells from an adult (or child) and manipulating them into growing new organs, there is little need to pursue fetal stem cell research. Then again, I think we may be talking about the same technology but assuming different stances on whether or not it counts as fetal stem cell research.
I have no inherent problem with stem cell research. My problem is with research from cells that could become a viable new person or that came from fetuses. Not all stem cells have that capacity.