If a fetus is indeed human, then they won't have reached said age of reason at the point that they're aborted. How could they make any informed choice at that point? Don't parents have complete control over their children anyway?
Parents are granted the power to decide for their children provided their decision is in the best interest of the child. Killing said child obviously isn't.
A popular phrase often used to comfort grieving loved ones (yes, after a death in the family) is "(S)he's better off where (s)he is now." Why exactly would you want to force a baby who might potentially live a horrible life to live?
Ever since the Nicene Creed (Ad 325)the organized Christian church has been much more concerned with power than religion. Compare the Nicene Creed to the Jesus's (a great guy, but not the son of god)Sermon on the Mount. Just a wee bit different. (Google is your friend if not familar with these two famous works)
The Nicene creed is an expression of belief in the Trinity and the possibility of salvation. That is but one aspect of my faith. The Sermon on the Mount is another equally important guide.
The Nicene creed was developed to combat heresies, particularly that of Arius, who claimed that Jesus was not fully God. Thus the bits about "begotten, not made, one in being with the Father" and "God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God." It similarly re-emphasizes the humanity of Jesus with the phrase "by the power of the Holy Spirit
he was born of the Virgin Mary
and became man."
The creed does not claim to cover all of Jesus' teachings just as it does not preclude further revelation from the Spirit.
The organized church in Europe most certainly held back science, but the organized Chrsitian church is as close to Christ's teachings as a fundamentalist is to a scientist.
The organized church was so concerned with holding onto power that the first person to publish a bible in English was burned at the stake for his trouble.
Clearly Christianity has troubling elements in its history, as do all things involving humans. However, they do not invalidate the core faith or the works of people who have been guided by the message of Christ, nor do they invalidate the role of the (in my case Catholic) Church. Mistakes are made, we grow in faith and understanding. Hopefully restitution is made along the way. It hasn't always been, but even that is slowly changing.
First of all, I am not "forcing" my views on anyone. I am expressing them, debating them and generally becoming more informed on the issue.
It is my belief that human life begins at conception and should not be terminated artificially under any circumstances. It's relatively easy to come to a decision on embryonic stem cell research given that position.
Even if you don't accept that humans have souls, you must accept that the embryo has the potential to become a fully-formed human being. Why should human life in later stages get special treatment?
A political party that is so pro-life is also so pro-death penalty.
First off, the Republican party is most definitely not pro-life. They are against abortion.
I was unable to avoid that impression when, in the wake of David Gunn's assasination, reams of letters came flying into the local papers which stated, effectively: 1) It's baaad for us that this was done, because it undermines our cause, BUT 2) He had it coming to him anyway.
That is tragic. I don't think I've ever heard that sort of opinion expressed by any pro-lifers I know.
But the label "pro-life" implies a commitment to the sanctity of life, which when examined in depth just doesn't exist.
Oh, it very much exists. It's just that we as humans have a tendacy to focus on the hypocrites to back up our arguments. I do it, you do it, everyone does.
But as long as the pro-life president
He is not pro-life. Don't get confused by the media.:) I'm curious: has Bush ever actually claimed to be pro-life? He has almost certainly attended pro-life functions, but has he ever come out and said directly, "I am pro-life?" I don't recall him doing so.
Bias is a fighting word to me, sir. It intends to cast a pall of ill will over an opinion that differs from the speaker's. It's an ad-hominem attack, which is: "ignore this man's position because he has an irrational reason for holding it."
I agree with you completely here -- the poster used a poor method of argument. However, aren't you doing the same by labeling all pro-lifers as hypocrites?
You do not take stem cells, make them do what you want, and then turn women into baby factories to harvest more stem cells. Stem cells, because they are undifferentiated, can be coaxed into making more stem cells
If that's true, then why are many in the scientific community disappointed with Bush's decision? Shouldn't there be enough stem cells for everyone now?
I'm not putting your argument down here. I really want to know.
by this line of reasoning, anyone having a child by biological means is a narcissist.
No. A child conceived though natural biological means is a product of the intimate love between husband and wife. The child is conceived as a result of each partner giving fully to the other, without reservation.
I have no doubt that these couples deeply love each other and will have the endless love for their children that they deserve. But why can't such love be bestowed upon a child not produced from the husband's sperm and/or the wife's egg?
Mostly, I find that the people most opposed to cloning as a method of having children are people who have no difficulties procreating normally, and I find that telling.
Well, given my lack of procreative experience, I can't tell you from which side I am arguing.:) I can, however, speculate. If I or my future wife were found to be infertile, certainly it would be somewhat disappointing. I think that's a natural human reaction. Surely sex would still have deep meaning for me and my partner but the possibility of creating something wonderful out of our love would not be there.
That said, I believe I would be perfectly happy to raise an adopted child as my own. I know a few families who have adopted and they couldn't be more thrilled. If it weren't for certain ethnic differences, one would never know the child was adopted. They have the same joys and struggles of any family.
When you can tell me the difference between wanting to make a child by cloning and wanting to make a child by traditional sex, I'll consider your argument more seriously.
Mostly it's a matter of a deep expression of love between husband and wife and God's activeness in their lives. It's difficult to explain other than to say it involves a very deep and personal faith.
Besides all these faith-based arguments, there remain arguments concerning discarded embryos (ok, that's faith-based too), genetic diversity, Dolly-like problems, etc. Practically speaking, it's just too dangerous.
I do acknowledge that. However, if my arm gets cut off, I don't lose part of my soul (presumably.)
Sure, no argument there. But this sort of research does more to embryos than cutting off an arm. A life is snuffed out.
I would argue a tiny clump of undifferentiated cells is like a cut off arm in that it simply has not yet developed the biological portions required to have a soul.
This, of course, is a matter of faith.
No, no one should be forced to use tax dollars on things they don't believe in, certainly. But try to get a politician to let you not pay taxes for the military, or welfare, or social security, or what have you. Nahh, they all have to worship at the other false god of Democracy. Vox populi, Vox dei and all that.
Certainly tax dollars will be used for things we don't agree with. That's part of living in a republic. Compromises are made. The best we can do is work to change things through political lobbying, explaining our views to the public or other such action.
There's a wonderful concept in Catholic theology known as "social sin." This is the idea that we have responsibility for the ills of society (violence, prejudice, etc.) even though we may not be directly responsible. The best way I've heard this explained is that we not only have a duty to serve the poor but also to work against those forces that cause people to become poor in the first place.
So? You cant enter a debate and base your arguments on facts that you arbitrarily change.
What "facts" have I changed? I stated a moral position, not a fact.
The fetus IS being thrown out. Whether or not that should happen is a completely different debate.
No, it isn't, because a decision in one area can affect the other.
This one is based upon the fact they are being thrown out, so your conclusions are invalid to begin with.
No, they are not. Can we harvest organs from dead people simply because they're dead? No, we need consent.
When I go fishing up in Canada, I cannot keep any muskie I catch that fall within certain ranges of length and/or weight. Even if they happened to die. This is because any fisherman could claim that their trophy just "happened" to die on the way into the boat. Furthermore, spawning areas are restricted during mating season. It seems that fish embryos are very valuable indeed.
Why do we have more protections for fish than we do for human beings? Are fish more valuable simply because there are fewer of them and more of us?
I consider myself a member of the "Religious Left" as you put it. I am a Catholic and as such hold moral views generally considered conservative and social views generally considered liberal. But the moral/social distinction is completely unnatural, as I'll explain later.
You want more people to risk their own lives with the underground abortion clinics?
Any such life-risking is a conscious choice made by the mother. The fetus has no such choice. That is one of the reasons abortion is wrong.
You point to all your other beliefs, other things that are generally viewed as good and just, and try to tie them to your fanatical ones.
First off, labelling views you disagree with as "fanatical" is disingenuous. As I mentioned above, the moral/social distinction is artifical. Our moral views drive our social views. Because I believe it is morally wrong to take advantage of others for personal gain, I believe abortion, embryonic stem cell research, murder, oppression, prejudice and capital punishment are all wrong.
Others have obviously arrived at different conclusions, but one cannot dismiss my views as incongruous.
But then you state that you know that taking a dead person and experimenting on them is unethical.
A fetus is not dead. Neither is an embryo. Because of my beliefs I can't support research on cells from "already dead" embryos because those deaths were caused by an immoral act. The ends cannot justify the means.
The thought of somebody mucking around in my corpse isn't exactly pleasant, but then again, I'm going to be dead so what do I care? And if I end up having cells that prevents thousands to millions of deaths, hey, even better.
Ah, but you have a choice in the matter. The embryo doesn't.
However, don't go whining when you're placed in the group of the religious extreme.
This is not solely a religious issue. Certainly many religious or spiritual people oppose this sort of research, but so do many atheists and agnostics. Would you label these people "religious extremists?"
My view of religious extremism is merely rabid evangelism and unwillingness to even consider another point of view because it goes against religion.
Most reasonable religious types are perfectly willing to debate controversial issues and listen to various points of view. But you must also accept that at the end of the day they may disagree with your arguments. This does not make them unreasonable religious zealots.
And typically that's represented by stating that you know something that is controversial rather than believing it.
No one can claim to "know" anything in a scientific sense with an issue like this. As has been noted several times, it is impossible to pinpoint scientifically exactly when "human life" begins. Any such decision is arbitrary. I believe life begins at conception. That is a matter of faith.
Why do you think so many people go out-of-country to adopt children?
Do you consider children from out-of-country to be less deserving of parents or lesser individuals?
The majority of adopting parents are white in the US; however, the available pool of white children is relatively low (less than 20%).
You are imposing an artificial barrier. There is nothing invalid about parents of one or two ethnic backgrounds raising a child of a second or third.
Other ethnic groups, (native americans, for instance) have successfully put legislation in place to restrict cross-ethnic adoption, or have called for such legislation.
The usual reasoning for such legislation is that the child will not receive the proper education in some particular culture. This is very unfortunate. If such education is desired then perhaps the local community can offer programs for children adaopted by parents of another culture or perhaps the community can find parents of the same ethnicity to adopt the child.
Again, such laws impose artificial barriers. We're all human beings!
More than half of the "available" pool of children waiting for adoption in the US are over the age of 5;
So children can be "too old" for adoption? That is sad.
20-40% (depending on the survey used) have mental, physical, or emotional problems that require extra care.
Yes, these are certainly difficult cases. Finding parents able and willing to care for such children is extremely hard. I don't have a good solution to this except to encourage loving care by those who can provide it, be they private families, government programs or religious organizations.
30% have been in foster care programs for 3 years or more.
Is there anything to justify the stigmatizing of all foster children other than the mental and physical anguish some of these children go through? I would hope that not all foster children are difficult cases.
3. In many states, the costs of sucessful adoption can be double or triple the costs of artficial methods of pregnancy.
Then regulations have to change.
You left at least one problem off your list: often it is difficult for adoptive parents to feel secure with their child as there are many cases where the biological parents later contest the adoption. Grace periods already exist and it is probably time that these be more strictly enforced for the sanity of the adoptive parents.
Papal infallibility is definitely one of them an historically it's a highly pretentious notion which ignores the fact that the pope is ultimately a man who takes his personal opinion, experiences etc. into the job.
Keep in mind that infallibility only comes into play when the pop speaks ex cathedra -- "from the chair" (of Peter). I believe it has only been used three times.
As for questioning the Church's stance on various issues, that is a perfectly valid thing for a Catholic to do. That's how we grow in faith.
However, being practical, I reckon that our ability to think makes us human. (In deference to Aquinas's "I think therefore I am".
That was Descartes, who arrived at that conclusion by somehow getting to know the mind of God before himself.:) Aquinas' approach was quite the opposite. Where as Descartes started from the view that nothing could be taken as given, Aquinas believed that we could actually trust our senses. I find that much more logical.
I believe that life means more than brainwaves. Obviously neither of us will change the mind of the other, but that doesn't mean debate isn't useful. I appreciate your candor about your hypocrisy. If only more people would realize the same.
But even if one doesn't accept human life as beginning at conception, then surely one must agree that the potential is there. I can't fathom trading a life for a life.
THEN came Christianity, and Europe went into a thousand year dark age because of that before the Greek tradition saw rebirth.
I have to take issue with this. Christianity was not the cause of the dark ages. Rome's own decay and corruption brought it about, with the help of your local friendly Germanic barbarians.:)
Keep in mind that Christian monks preserved a lot of the ancient knowledge we still possess.
Why do you use a qualification here? Are only certain forms of human life valid?
A miscarriage is not treated as accidental death by the law.
A miscarriage is a natural occurrence. A miscarriage caused by unnatural act is punishable.
An abortion is not treated as murder by the law.
Yes, this is unfortunate.
A tumor is "living human tissue" yet we have no trouble killing those cells.
This is not even relevant to the discussion.
Grow up, your thousands of years old religious ideas have been continuously proved wrong over the centuries
You sure about that? Our entire society is based around those "thousands of years old religious ideas." I could just as easily say, "thousands, hundreds or tens of years old scientific ideas have been continuously proved wrong." But that would set up an unnatural conflict between religion and science.
Why not, as the plains indians did, use all the parts of the buffalo?
Because we aren't talking about buffalo here. The problem with embryonic stem cell research is that it can be used as a justification for the status quo.
If a fetus is going to be destroyed anyway, why not allow this?
Because the fetus shouldn't have been destroyed in the first place.
It's bad enough my tax dollars are not going towards a balls-out effort in stem cell research because of anachronistic beliefs in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy and Souls Imbued Into Tissue At Conception.
Even if you don't believe that we have souls, then at least consider that every embryo has the potential to become a fully-developed human being. That in itself should be enough to give us all pause when considering this and other life issues.
A cure is a cure.
So the ends justify the means? Please tell this to the unwitting victims of U.S. government nuclear radiation experiments.
Does anybody have a problem using the pre-born to extend the lives of the elderly?
Yes. This whole line of reasoning (stem cells will cure countless diseases!) smacks of extreme hypocrisy. Suppose there was a proposal to harvest organs from the mentally disabled, those in comas or anyone else not able to make decisions for themselves. People would be up in arms. But the prevailing attitude concerning embryonic stem cells seems to be one of convenience for personal gain. We are proposing to sacrifice one life to save perhaps many others.
Yes, I know people will disagree with me because "an embryo is not a human life." Well, we'll have to differ there. Bush's stance on this takes him further down the slippery slope. Given his stance on capital punishment, it should have been obvious to those in the pro-life camp (as opposed to the opponents of abortion) that Bush is not on their side.
If I may digress slightly, I'd like to comment on the cloning announcement made a few days back. I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of cloning for infertile parents (or any sort of human cloning). Not only does it require the destroying of many "failed attempts" but it seems utterly selfish and inhumane given the number of children waiting for adoption. It's the hight of narcissism on the part of these parents.
It's taken a fairly old plot (old before Voyager used it) and the traditional format (individual episodes, occasionally two- or three-parters, the rare reference to previous plots), but managed to be truly excellent.
Actually, Farscape is a novel for television but doesn't hit you over the head with it. Many times I have seen a "one-off" episode only later to realize how much it contributed to the overall arc. The current (US) season is a perfect example. Plenty of references to earlier seasons, explanations and thread interweaving has made for an outstanding experience!
You are right about its avoidance of cliches. The writing on the show is just great. I wish B5 had done as well. JMS is a great storyteller, but an episodic writer he is not. Some of the B5 dialogue was horrendous, not to mention the often tedious amount of explication. That's not to
say that I didn't love B5. It remains one of my all-time favorites. Doesn't mean it couldn't be better, though.
Farscape's homage/satire of all of SciFi is incredibly fun. DRD Pike, for goodness sake!:)
The thing that I find most endearing, though, are the characters. They grow, change, form bonds, deceive, cheat, make up and generally act like real people. I'm very interested to see where the current character threads go at this point in the series. This is what makes a show great.
CSE and loop unrolling are high-level optimizations left to the compiler. Show me any processor that can do these on chip.
I don't know if any of this has made it into commercial processors, but there have been many publications on value caches, prediction, etc. Essentially they are doing hardware CSE. Some papers have even gone so far as to have the hardware examine instructions as they are entered into the window and optimize sequences on-the-fly.
As for loop unrolling, the P4's trace cache can theoretically remove branch instructions (in the sense of removing them from the critical path), though I'm doubtful whether that is at all practical. The trace cache is mainly a decode cache. I'm not aware of any completely hardware-oriented method to remove counter increments and tests.
Let's start with the whole RISC vs. CISC thing. Everyone knows that RISC is more efficient
Really? By what measure? CISC is generally much more efficient with respect to code size, an important consideration in embedded systems.
I'll assume you were talking about the performance domain. Be careful with your categorizations. There are no "pure" RISC or CISC designs anymore. O-O-O superscalar architectures have pretty much killed any simplicity in so-called RISC designs. Now it's true that uniform instructions make
O-O-O much easier. But vector processing and multimedia operations don't really qualify as RISC in the classic sense.
Sun has made some obvious mistakes in the past: fixed-size register windows and delay slots come to mind. Like Intel/HP they have in the past made the mistake of thinking that the compiler can do more than it really can (at least at this point). Parallelism is hard enough to extract at run time. It's much more difficult at compile time. Some of this has to do with maintaining the separate compilation model and speed/memory complexity issues (many compiler algorithms are NP-complete).
And of course, all CPU vendors except Intel/HP have made the mistake of having an inadequate number of general-purpose registers. Ironic, eh?:)
That's not to say the compiler can't do more. It can do a lot. Unfortunately, CPU vendors have not provided the necessary hardware to make this possible. In the future you will see a style much more similar to IA-64: the hardware and compiler conspiring together to extract parallelism, save power, etc.
Here's something to think about: the original intent of RISC was to allow simpler pipeline stages and higher clock speeds. So why does a CPU implementing a CISC-ish ISA have a 50% higher clock rate than a RISC-ish ISA implementation? Deeper pipeline, sure. But don't let labels fool you. There is much more going on in the architecture world.
I do agree with you on the scalability issues of SPARC systems. That's their bread and butter.
I'm not a particularly keyboardist (and an even worse pianist:), but I can easily I can easily discern an old, untuned upright from my $200 yamaha keyboard.
Of course an electronic 'board is going to sound much better than an old beater acoustic that hasn't been kept up. It's sad what some of these instruments go through. But take a well-maintained acoustic and it will blow away any electronic "equivalent."
Some of the higher-end digital pianos are actually quite good for what they do. They won't replace the real thing, but it's a pretty good simulation. I got mine for the portability.
In a few years, maybe it can be used or "classic" (ie - dead) voices, where people are onlyfamiliar with a memory of how it goes, but I don't think it will ever (ie - within my lifetime) be indistinguishable from the real thing.
There are instrument synth's that have been out for a while that actually acoustically model the instrument being synthesized, and instead of altering the frequency/amplitude of the generated noise, actually change the model's airflow, resonance, etc.
Having extensive experience with digital "pianos," I can testify that the technology to realistically produce an authentic piano sound is a long, long, long way off. The synth is close, but any trained pianist can easily tell the difference. I have a fairly modern (about 1.5 years old) professional digital piano and every time I use it I lament the limitations of the resonance reproduction. It's just not there.
Acoustic instruments (including voice) are very complex beasts. To reproduce the qualities of a piano's strings, pedal effects, soundboard and overall resonance is not easily done. That's not even taking into account temperature and humidity. In the end it would probably take more memory than is practical, if it is even possible.
Better to treat these things as they are: another class of instrument. I don't call my keyboard a piano. I call it a keyboard.
All he did was sell a machine that allows you to pour any cola you might lay your hands on, and it would then print out a recipe, allowing you to make more of the said cola in your own home, and
never have to buy more from the original manufacturer.
No, that's not quite right either. What Dmitry did was sell a machine to allow you to drink your Coca Cola using a mechanism other than the provided hole in the top of the can. You still have to buy more if you want additional Coke. The fact that he can reproduce an eBook gives him no additional value since he already owns a legal copy.
He was arrested for this. Scary, eh?
BTW, trade secrets don't provide a very good analogy, because unless they're obtained illegally (through theft, etc.), once the trade secret is out, Coca Cola loses all rights to it.
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Parents are granted the power to decide for their children provided their decision is in the best interest of the child. Killing said child obviously isn't.
You can't possibly be serious.
The Nicene creed is an expression of belief in the Trinity and the possibility of salvation. That is but one aspect of my faith. The Sermon on the Mount is another equally important guide.
The Nicene creed was developed to combat heresies, particularly that of Arius, who claimed that Jesus was not fully God. Thus the bits about "begotten, not made, one in being with the Father" and "God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God." It similarly re-emphasizes the humanity of Jesus with the phrase "by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary and became man."
The creed does not claim to cover all of Jesus' teachings just as it does not preclude further revelation from the Spirit.
Clearly Christianity has troubling elements in its history, as do all things involving humans. However, they do not invalidate the core faith or the works of people who have been guided by the message of Christ, nor do they invalidate the role of the (in my case Catholic) Church. Mistakes are made, we grow in faith and understanding. Hopefully restitution is made along the way. It hasn't always been, but even that is slowly changing.
I object to killing human beings. It's really very simple. It doesn't matter what stage of development that person is in.
It is my belief that human life begins at conception and should not be terminated artificially under any circumstances. It's relatively easy to come to a decision on embryonic stem cell research given that position.
Even if you don't accept that humans have souls, you must accept that the embryo has the potential to become a fully-formed human being. Why should human life in later stages get special treatment?
First off, the Republican party is most definitely not pro-life. They are against abortion.
That is tragic. I don't think I've ever heard that sort of opinion expressed by any pro-lifers I know.
Oh, it very much exists. It's just that we as humans have a tendacy to focus on the hypocrites to back up our arguments. I do it, you do it, everyone does.
He is not pro-life. Don't get confused by the media. :) I'm curious: has Bush ever actually claimed to be pro-life? He has almost certainly attended pro-life functions, but has he ever come out and said directly, "I am pro-life?" I don't recall him doing so.
I agree with you completely here -- the poster used a poor method of argument. However, aren't you doing the same by labeling all pro-lifers as hypocrites?
If that's true, then why are many in the scientific community disappointed with Bush's decision? Shouldn't there be enough stem cells for everyone now?
I'm not putting your argument down here. I really want to know.
No. A child conceived though natural biological means is a product of the intimate love between husband and wife. The child is conceived as a result of each partner giving fully to the other, without reservation.
I have no doubt that these couples deeply love each other and will have the endless love for their children that they deserve. But why can't such love be bestowed upon a child not produced from the husband's sperm and/or the wife's egg?
Well, given my lack of procreative experience, I can't tell you from which side I am arguing. :) I can, however, speculate. If I or my future wife were found to be infertile, certainly it would be somewhat disappointing. I think that's a natural human reaction. Surely sex would still have deep meaning for me and my partner but the possibility of creating something wonderful out of our love would not be there.
That said, I believe I would be perfectly happy to raise an adopted child as my own. I know a few families who have adopted and they couldn't be more thrilled. If it weren't for certain ethnic differences, one would never know the child was adopted. They have the same joys and struggles of any family.
Mostly it's a matter of a deep expression of love between husband and wife and God's activeness in their lives. It's difficult to explain other than to say it involves a very deep and personal faith.
Besides all these faith-based arguments, there remain arguments concerning discarded embryos (ok, that's faith-based too), genetic diversity, Dolly-like problems, etc. Practically speaking, it's just too dangerous.
Sure, no argument there. But this sort of research does more to embryos than cutting off an arm. A life is snuffed out.
This, of course, is a matter of faith.
Certainly tax dollars will be used for things we don't agree with. That's part of living in a republic. Compromises are made. The best we can do is work to change things through political lobbying, explaining our views to the public or other such action.
There's a wonderful concept in Catholic theology known as "social sin." This is the idea that we have responsibility for the ills of society (violence, prejudice, etc.) even though we may not be directly responsible. The best way I've heard this explained is that we not only have a duty to serve the poor but also to work against those forces that cause people to become poor in the first place.
What "facts" have I changed? I stated a moral position, not a fact.
No, it isn't, because a decision in one area can affect the other.
No, they are not. Can we harvest organs from dead people simply because they're dead? No, we need consent.When I go fishing up in Canada, I cannot keep any muskie I catch that fall within certain ranges of length and/or weight. Even if they happened to die. This is because any fisherman could claim that their trophy just "happened" to die on the way into the boat. Furthermore, spawning areas are restricted during mating season. It seems that fish embryos are very valuable indeed.
Why do we have more protections for fish than we do for human beings? Are fish more valuable simply because there are fewer of them and more of us?
Any such life-risking is a conscious choice made by the mother. The fetus has no such choice. That is one of the reasons abortion is wrong.
First off, labelling views you disagree with as "fanatical" is disingenuous. As I mentioned above, the moral/social distinction is artifical. Our moral views drive our social views. Because I believe it is morally wrong to take advantage of others for personal gain, I believe abortion, embryonic stem cell research, murder, oppression, prejudice and capital punishment are all wrong.
Others have obviously arrived at different conclusions, but one cannot dismiss my views as incongruous.
A fetus is not dead. Neither is an embryo. Because of my beliefs I can't support research on cells from "already dead" embryos because those deaths were caused by an immoral act. The ends cannot justify the means.
Ah, but you have a choice in the matter. The embryo doesn't.
This is not solely a religious issue. Certainly many religious or spiritual people oppose this sort of research, but so do many atheists and agnostics. Would you label these people "religious extremists?"
Most reasonable religious types are perfectly willing to debate controversial issues and listen to various points of view. But you must also accept that at the end of the day they may disagree with your arguments. This does not make them unreasonable religious zealots.
No one can claim to "know" anything in a scientific sense with an issue like this. As has been noted several times, it is impossible to pinpoint scientifically exactly when "human life" begins. Any such decision is arbitrary. I believe life begins at conception. That is a matter of faith.
Do you consider children from out-of-country to be less deserving of parents or lesser individuals?
You are imposing an artificial barrier. There is nothing invalid about parents of one or two ethnic backgrounds raising a child of a second or third.
The usual reasoning for such legislation is that the child will not receive the proper education in some particular culture. This is very unfortunate. If such education is desired then perhaps the local community can offer programs for children adaopted by parents of another culture or perhaps the community can find parents of the same ethnicity to adopt the child.
Again, such laws impose artificial barriers. We're all human beings!
So children can be "too old" for adoption? That is sad.
Yes, these are certainly difficult cases. Finding parents able and willing to care for such children is extremely hard. I don't have a good solution to this except to encourage loving care by those who can provide it, be they private families, government programs or religious organizations.
Is there anything to justify the stigmatizing of all foster children other than the mental and physical anguish some of these children go through? I would hope that not all foster children are difficult cases.
Then regulations have to change.
You left at least one problem off your list: often it is difficult for adoptive parents to feel secure with their child as there are many cases where the biological parents later contest the adoption. Grace periods already exist and it is probably time that these be more strictly enforced for the sanity of the adoptive parents.
Keep in mind that infallibility only comes into play when the pop speaks ex cathedra -- "from the chair" (of Peter). I believe it has only been used three times.
As for questioning the Church's stance on various issues, that is a perfectly valid thing for a Catholic to do. That's how we grow in faith.
That was Descartes, who arrived at that conclusion by somehow getting to know the mind of God before himself. :) Aquinas' approach was quite the opposite. Where as Descartes started from the view that nothing could be taken as given, Aquinas believed that we could actually trust our senses. I find that much more logical.
I believe that life means more than brainwaves. Obviously neither of us will change the mind of the other, but that doesn't mean debate isn't useful. I appreciate your candor about your hypocrisy. If only more people would realize the same.
But even if one doesn't accept human life as beginning at conception, then surely one must agree that the potential is there. I can't fathom trading a life for a life.
Because it can be used to justify a practice that many find reprehensible.
We cannot trade a life for a life.
I have to take issue with this. Christianity was not the cause of the dark ages. Rome's own decay and corruption brought it about, with the help of your local friendly Germanic barbarians. :)
Keep in mind that Christian monks preserved a lot of the ancient knowledge we still possess.
Why do you use a qualification here? Are only certain forms of human life valid?
A miscarriage is a natural occurrence. A miscarriage caused by unnatural act is punishable.
Yes, this is unfortunate.
This is not even relevant to the discussion.
You sure about that? Our entire society is based around those "thousands of years old religious ideas." I could just as easily say, "thousands, hundreds or tens of years old scientific ideas have been continuously proved wrong." But that would set up an unnatural conflict between religion and science.
Because we aren't talking about buffalo here. The problem with embryonic stem cell research is that it can be used as a justification for the status quo.
Because the fetus shouldn't have been destroyed in the first place.
Even if you don't believe that we have souls, then at least consider that every embryo has the potential to become a fully-developed human being. That in itself should be enough to give us all pause when considering this and other life issues.
So the ends justify the means? Please tell this to the unwitting victims of U.S. government nuclear radiation experiments.
Yes. This whole line of reasoning (stem cells will cure countless diseases!) smacks of extreme hypocrisy. Suppose there was a proposal to harvest organs from the mentally disabled, those in comas or anyone else not able to make decisions for themselves. People would be up in arms. But the prevailing attitude concerning embryonic stem cells seems to be one of convenience for personal gain. We are proposing to sacrifice one life to save perhaps many others.
Yes, I know people will disagree with me because "an embryo is not a human life." Well, we'll have to differ there. Bush's stance on this takes him further down the slippery slope. Given his stance on capital punishment, it should have been obvious to those in the pro-life camp (as opposed to the opponents of abortion) that Bush is not on their side.
If I may digress slightly, I'd like to comment on the cloning announcement made a few days back. I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of cloning for infertile parents (or any sort of human cloning). Not only does it require the destroying of many "failed attempts" but it seems utterly selfish and inhumane given the number of children waiting for adoption. It's the hight of narcissism on the part of these parents.
Actually, Farscape is a novel for television but doesn't hit you over the head with it. Many times I have seen a "one-off" episode only later to realize how much it contributed to the overall arc. The current (US) season is a perfect example. Plenty of references to earlier seasons, explanations and thread interweaving has made for an outstanding experience!
You are right about its avoidance of cliches. The writing on the show is just great. I wish B5 had done as well. JMS is a great storyteller, but an episodic writer he is not. Some of the B5 dialogue was horrendous, not to mention the often tedious amount of explication. That's not to say that I didn't love B5. It remains one of my all-time favorites. Doesn't mean it couldn't be better, though.
Farscape's homage/satire of all of SciFi is incredibly fun. DRD Pike, for goodness sake! :)
The thing that I find most endearing, though, are the characters. They grow, change, form bonds, deceive, cheat, make up and generally act like real people. I'm very interested to see where the current character threads go at this point in the series. This is what makes a show great.
I don't know if any of this has made it into commercial processors, but there have been many publications on value caches, prediction, etc. Essentially they are doing hardware CSE. Some papers have even gone so far as to have the hardware examine instructions as they are entered into the window and optimize sequences on-the-fly.
As for loop unrolling, the P4's trace cache can theoretically remove branch instructions (in the sense of removing them from the critical path), though I'm doubtful whether that is at all practical. The trace cache is mainly a decode cache. I'm not aware of any completely hardware-oriented method to remove counter increments and tests.
Really? By what measure? CISC is generally much more efficient with respect to code size, an important consideration in embedded systems.
I'll assume you were talking about the performance domain. Be careful with your categorizations. There are no "pure" RISC or CISC designs anymore. O-O-O superscalar architectures have pretty much killed any simplicity in so-called RISC designs. Now it's true that uniform instructions make O-O-O much easier. But vector processing and multimedia operations don't really qualify as RISC in the classic sense.
Sun has made some obvious mistakes in the past: fixed-size register windows and delay slots come to mind. Like Intel/HP they have in the past made the mistake of thinking that the compiler can do more than it really can (at least at this point). Parallelism is hard enough to extract at run time. It's much more difficult at compile time. Some of this has to do with maintaining the separate compilation model and speed/memory complexity issues (many compiler algorithms are NP-complete).
And of course, all CPU vendors except Intel/HP have made the mistake of having an inadequate number of general-purpose registers. Ironic, eh? :)
That's not to say the compiler can't do more. It can do a lot. Unfortunately, CPU vendors have not provided the necessary hardware to make this possible. In the future you will see a style much more similar to IA-64: the hardware and compiler conspiring together to extract parallelism, save power, etc.
Here's something to think about: the original intent of RISC was to allow simpler pipeline stages and higher clock speeds. So why does a CPU implementing a CISC-ish ISA have a 50% higher clock rate than a RISC-ish ISA implementation? Deeper pipeline, sure. But don't let labels fool you. There is much more going on in the architecture world.
I do agree with you on the scalability issues of SPARC systems. That's their bread and butter.
Of course an electronic 'board is going to sound much better than an old beater acoustic that hasn't been kept up. It's sad what some of these instruments go through. But take a well-maintained acoustic and it will blow away any electronic "equivalent."
Some of the higher-end digital pianos are actually quite good for what they do. They won't replace the real thing, but it's a pretty good simulation. I got mine for the portability.
Agreed.
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Having extensive experience with digital "pianos," I can testify that the technology to realistically produce an authentic piano sound is a long, long, long way off. The synth is close, but any trained pianist can easily tell the difference. I have a fairly modern (about 1.5 years old) professional digital piano and every time I use it I lament the limitations of the resonance reproduction. It's just not there.
Acoustic instruments (including voice) are very complex beasts. To reproduce the qualities of a piano's strings, pedal effects, soundboard and overall resonance is not easily done. That's not even taking into account temperature and humidity. In the end it would probably take more memory than is practical, if it is even possible.
Better to treat these things as they are: another class of instrument. I don't call my keyboard a piano. I call it a keyboard.
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No, that's not quite right either. What Dmitry did was sell a machine to allow you to drink your Coca Cola using a mechanism other than the provided hole in the top of the can. You still have to buy more if you want additional Coke. The fact that he can reproduce an eBook gives him no additional value since he already owns a legal copy.
He was arrested for this. Scary, eh?
BTW, trade secrets don't provide a very good analogy, because unless they're obtained illegally (through theft, etc.), once the trade secret is out, Coca Cola loses all rights to it.
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