Science should never be confused with absolute truth!
Our scientific "knowledge" is a tentative hypothesis, subject to revision at any time as new observations or new patterns of data come in. Science is a means, a compass that indicates the general direction of truths about the consensual objective universe. If you want "absolute truth", science will disappoint you every time.
the use of violence in this case is apparently mandatory for muslims...explain that in theory it's every muslims "sacred duty" to answer challenges to creationism with first a threat, then violence
Nice bigotry you've got there.
I know plenty of Muslims. None have threatened me with violence. None have tried to push their religion on me.
Well, okay, but don't get carried away here. I've had cataract surgery, and I am DAMNED SURE it was not a placebo surgery.
As a practical matter, as a patient or a clinician, it really doesn't matter if it's a placebo or not. "Do X and the odds are such-and-such that the patient will improve, and the possible complications are so-and-so", is all you need to know.
But from the point of view of a researcher, as a matter of (trumpet flourish please) *Scientific* *Knowledge*, how strongly can we assert that your cataract surgery was more effective than a placebo treatment would have been? Sure, it seems like common sense that a placebo treatment wouldn't affect cataracts, but it also seems like common sense that it wouldn't affect angina pectoris or knee pain.
I had an acupuncture session on Wednesday. I am DAMNED SURE it was not a placebo treatment. But my subjective DAMNED SURE will not carry any weight with skeptics - nor should it.
The danger of a pervasive distrust of surgery...
I'm not suggesting that people "trust" or "distrust" surgery, or any modality.
Really, I think that placebo surgery would have about the same result as placebo plumbing -- i.e. none.
But in those studies where placebo surgery has been used, many patients receiving the placebo improved.
The first placebo surgery test was for a treatment for angina pectoris called internal mammary artery ligation. This was at one time a popular procedure, but it's not used now because in a head-to-head comparison, 34% of those getting the surgery reported improvement, while 42% of those getting a placebo cut reported improvement.
A 2002 study of arthroscopic knee surgery found that the outcomes for a placebo procedure were as good as those of the "real" surgery.
In a 2004 study of transplantation of embryonic dopamine neurons into the brains of Parkinson's disease patients,
"Those who thought they received the transplant at 12 months reported better quality of life than those who thought they received the sham surgery, regardless of which surgery they actually received," according to the researcher.
While double-blind tests have not been performed, the vastly reduced mortality from appendicits since the introduction of the surgical procedure should be enough for anyone. It's all about the statistics.
The reduced mortality could be many factors. We have to consider improvements in nursing care, improved antibiotics, or better diet: "The decline of appendicitis cases in the United States since the 1930s has led some to suggest that dietary fiber or household hygiene is important in the pathogenesis of appendicitis. According to the "fiber hypothesis," fecaliths develop more readily in people who consume a diet deficient in fiber, because their stools are more tenacious. Societies with high fiber intake (Asia, India, Africa) have less than one-tenth the incidence of appendicitis compared with locations where fiber intake is lower (Europe, North America). A high-fiber diet speeds stool transit times, reduces fecal viscosity, and inhibits fecalith formation."
Here,
by the way, is a fascinating look at that question from a century ago. The author finds a mortality rate of 6.6% in the period before appendectomy was used, and of 7.8% in the first few decades of its use. Of course the mortality rate is much lower today; but if mortality rates actually climbed after appendectomy was first introduced, then clearly the situation is more complex than "cut here, cut now, cutting good!"
Which is not to say that, under the right circumstances, I'm going to refuse an appendectomy. The surgery is a pretty good gamble.
Maybe that's because surgery gives results that are good enough and consistent enough to be above such suspicion.
Uh huh. You want to quantify that some? "Homeopathy gives results that are good enough and consistent enough to be above such suspicion." "Scientology gives results that are good enough and consistent enough to be above such suspicion." "My magic rock gives results that are good enough and consistent enough to be above such suspicion." And so on.
If we are scientifically investigating what treatments are effective, no modality can be "above suspicion". The guys in scrubs sellin
I think he is saying that nobody has done placebo-controlled trial of a useful surgery.
Ah, but without a placebo-controlled trial, how do we determine that a surgery is useful?
It's a tricky question. The placebo-controlled double-blinded trial is supposed to be the "gold standard" for medical research, but its structure is biased towards drug therapies. It's hard to do placebo surgery, placebo bodywork (acupressure, massage, etc.), placebo acupuncture, placebo diets, placebo psychological therapies, or placebo exercise programs. Heck, surgery is the easiest case of those - you get to knock the patient out so they don't remember the actual treatment!
after all those nsa/homeland security/executive authority shit, the only thing you can trust is a video.
Why in the world would we trust video more or less than still photos? If you're postulating a group of conspirators powerful enough to have pulled off 9/11, faking video would be trivial for them.
What makes the photographic record reliable is the variety of sources, and the analysis of the imagery, not the medium itself. (Though I'm sure you'll now pop up with "experts" who claim that photos were faked. They probably also have "evidence" that the Apollo photographs were faked, too...)
do not even dare to object to this, for, over 2-3 months we are talking on news government gagging and repressing many different companies and groups through fbi here in slashdot.
Oh, I must dare. Government attempts to gag dissent are completely different from getting hundreds of people, from airline workers to random eyewitnesses to cleanup workers, to spout similar sets of lies.
That the government lies about many things, is not proof that the government lies about everything. When a known con artist tells you that the sky is blue, you don't need to invoke some massive conspiracy about how it's really red but clones of Elvis Presely, using invisibility technology from the UFO that crashed at Roswell and led by the preserved brain of Richard Nixon, are actually following you around in hot air balloons with colored filters to keep you from seeing it.
If I could explain the placebo effect I'd be a millionaire.
The problem is that there are several different things that get lumped under the label "placebo effect":
Patient experiences no difference in their perception of symptoms, but feels compelled by social pressure to report an improvement. I.e., "It still hurts as much as ever, but I don't want to disappoint Dr. Smith, so I'll say it's better."
Patient has no difference in symptoms, but perceives them differently. The pain signal arriving at the brain is unchanged, but comes to be processed differently.
Patient believes in ability of the healer or treatment, gains confidence that they will recover, stress responses are reduced, and the immune and parasympathetic responses are improved.
Patient gains feelings of acceptance into their tribe/social group as a result of being tended to by the healer. Stress responses are reduced, and their relationship to their community is transformed; a new psychological perspective may be adopted that changes their "will to live" and perception of their "quality of life". Humans are social animals, and I think the social aspects of healing have been tremendously underexamined.
Patient comes to feel empowered over their own health because they are able to take simple actions, and so are eventually led to make lifestyle changes that lead to improvements.
Patient benefits from non-specific aspects of treatment. For example, after placebo surgery, skilled nursing during recovery may well have benefits. (I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that every double-blind placebo-controlled study of a surgical technique, has found the surgery to be no better than a placebo cut. Yet many "skeptics" who demand rigorous double-blind studies of "alternative" treatments will go under the knife without a second thought.)
There are probably more things going on too.
Interesting article on the placebo effect by Ted Kaptchuk here. If you can find it, his book with Michael Croucher, The Healing Arts: Exploring the Medical Ways of the World, is an excellent read.
So long as critical thinking courses are conspicuously absent from public school curricula, people will not understand the concept of logical fallacy.
I'm sorry, are critical thinking courses conspicuously present in private school curricula? About the only private schools around here are run by religious orders, not exactly groups known for encouraging critical thinking.
Oh, there are also a few military-style academies around - again, not exactly a style of education known for cultivating critical thinking.
Many of the public school teachers I had, took pains to instill in their students disciplined critical thinking skills. Granted, it was 20 years ago, but I know that I received a better education in Baltimore County's public schools than was available in most private schools in the area.
So, how about you take that gratuitous slam again public schools, and apply some critical thinking to it?
(To those not familiar with the area, I should mention that Baltimore County is a completely separate political entity than Baltimore City; the city's schools are, by and large, a mess, and have been for a long time. West of the city, in a five mile drive along Route 40 you can pass through Baltimore City, with one of the highest murder rates and the highest heroin addiction rate in the nation; Baltimore County, with one of the highest high school graduation rates in the nation; and Howard County, with one of the highest per capita income rates in the nation. It's an interesting area to live in...)
I'm going to opt for the Starship Troopers plan. Voting is not mandatory, and most taxpayers aren't even allowed to vote... until they demonstrate that they have some concern for the greater good of the society in which they would choose to cast their vote.
Restricting the franchise to those who've served in the military, a la Starship Troopers, is fine - just provided that government elected by the military has no authority over the rest of us.
Giving the vote to every subject to the government's rule is democracy. Giving the vote only to those who have chosen to serve the government is dictatorship.
The Constitution says Congress gets to determine how those work.
The Constitution says Congress has only the specific powers enumerated to it. It can legitimately determine how copyright and patent law law only within the framework of those powers.
Among those powers is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries".
Congress has no power to secure and exclusive right to anyone other than the authors or inventors (heirs, employers, assignees). Nor can it grant exclusive rights for an unlimited time; nor create a copyright or patent scheme that retards the progress of science and useful arts.
I thought the first and foremost intention of patents was to reward inventors ? Only the second intention is to get a public domain pool of technologies when the patent expires.
No. In the United States, under the Constitution the only legitimate use of patents (and copyrights) is to "promote the progress of science and useful arts". Rewarding inventors is not the goal; getting technologies out there for people to use is.
Of course, it's not like the Constitution means much. Under our corporate plutocracy, the only "legitimate" use of patents (and copyrights, and pretty much all other laws) is to fatten the pockets of the investment class.
Ok, you disagree with the accepted definition of conception, that I posted. Perhaps this was the point you should have shared your own definition.
Your definition, whether "accepted" or not, is meaningless. In the moment before conception, you've got living tissue; in the moment after, you've got living tissue. Saying that "life begins at conception" is meaningless.
No, conception has never been shown to do that, citation required.
What, you need a citation on the existence of identical twins? Here ya go. One incident of conception can ultimately result in multiple organisms.
So a newborn baby can't make a conscious decision to move his arm or turn his head,
Correct.
Those actions are observable characteristics of conscious behavior.
No, they are not. I can make an unconscious robot that moves its arm and makes crying noises. An amoeba can extend a pseudopod; an insect can move its legs. None of these are the actions of conscious, self-aware beings.
Consciousness arises as an organism with a complex brain interacts with its environment. A fetus or neonate has not yet significantly interacted with its environment, and its cortical development is still rudimentary, with synapses still forming.
As noted here, "By birth, only the lower portions of the nervous system (the spinal cord and brain stem) are very well developed, whereas the higher regions (the limbic system and cerebral cortex) are still rather primitive. The lower brain is therefore largely in control of a newborn's behavior: all of that kicking, grasping, crying, sleeping, rooting, and feeding are functions of the brain stem and spinal cord."
I never said or implied the ethics of anything would ever be settled. What I did say is there should be no ethical impediments once the law is made clear.
A complete non sequitur. The law - clear or unclear - has no impact on what is or is not ethical.
If the law is clear on when human life begins, then there should be no ethical impediments.
Surely you don't believe that question of ethics are settled by legal decisions? Did the Dredd Scott case make slavery ethically ok?
(To be clear: I know a lot of "pro life" people use Dred Scott as some sort of code word. I'm not one of them.)
And the question is not when human life begins; human life began thousands of years ago, with the first organism of genus Homo. The question is when does the personhood of an individual begin.
Conception is the fusion of gametes to produce a new organism of the same species. That new organism, produced by process of conception, is indeed the start of a life.
The sperm and egg are both alive before conception. No life is created at conception; life started billions of years ago and is an ongoing process.
And let me point out that conception can ultimately result in the production of multiple organisms of the parent's species. Unless you want to argue that identical twins (or even identical triplets or quadruplets) are the same organism?
Life is just an interesting chemical reaction, of little ethical relevance. What is relevant is consciousness and personhood; these are things generated by the brain. A fetus, or even a newborn, does not have sufficient brain development to be possessed of either.
We understand that the end of complex brain activity is the true end of a person; we ought to understand that the start of complex brain activity is the true start of a person. There isn't a single moment when it happens, any more that than there was a single moment when the Earth formed out the protoplanetary cloud of dust and gas.
why there was NO remainder of anything a passenger plane crash leaves in a crash site, and there were NO bodies, passenger belongings, pieces of bodies, ANYTHING but fairly intact TWO bodies in the scene.
Are you saying there were no bodies, or were you saying there were two?
Of course, once you reach the level of batshitness you've achieved, you can simply ignore his testimony by saying "they got to him too!"
And I'm sure you simply don't accept the claim that the remains of 184 people were identified; surely "they" got to all 102 DNA analysts, sample processors, logistics staff, and administrative personnel at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. It's a DOD facility, after all.
Are you saying there was no debris from the plane? That's simply incorrect; hell, you can even see photos of a bunch of it at this batshit conspiracy site. And photos of the plane debris inside the building (where, in answer to your question about the lawn, most of it ended up, in agreement with conservation of momentum) can be seen at this somewhat less batshit crazy site. And some more photos here. And more photos, with amazingly detailed analysis, here
But I'm sure "they" got to the owners of all of those sites.
tell me where the hell did the 767's huge tail has vanished.
757. If you can't get that much right after being corrected, I don't see any point in talking to you further.
It's like shooting an aluminum foil origami crane out of an air cannon at high speed, through a stack of steel cheese graters, and then demanding "where's the crane's tail? There must be a trick!"
please, spare the bullshit. as if the world has never seen a passenger liner crash.
Into a building? One as hardened as the part of the Pentagon that was hit? Please, name me one similar crash.
Oh, and by the way, regarding your original question about simulating the piloting of the crash, see this:
Brian also consulted with a pair of commercial airline pilots who decided to try this kind of approach in a flight training simulator. Although the pilots were not sure the simulator models such scenarios with complete accuracy, they reported no significant difficulties in flying a 757 within an altitude of tens of feet at speeds between 350 and 550 mph (565 to 885 km/h) across smooth terrain. The only issue they encountered was constant warnings from the simulator about flying too fast and too low. These warnings were expected since the manufacturer does not recommend and FAA regulations prohibit flying a commercial aircraft the way Flight 77 was flown. These restrictions do not mean it is impossible for a plane to fly at those conditions but that it is extremely hazardous to do so, and safety was obviously not a concern to the terroris
Type how fast? I can type on my Zaurus SL-C3000, not very fast but fast enough to pound out rough drafts of poems and essays while on the go. It's about the size of a pack of 3x5 index cards; I would love to find something that size with a more standard architecture. I guess the Nokia 810 is the closest thing in current production; but that sliding keyboard looks like the suck, the Z's clamshell formfactor blows it out of the water.
How the fuck did you arrive at the conclusion that debit cards are somehow more evil than credit cards?
Debit cards have much less protection against fraud and disputed charges than credit cards. And if your debit card gets stolen, the perp can drain your checking account; until it gets sorted out, you're broke. If he just steals my credit card, I can still pay my bills out of my intact checking account while I dispute the credit card charges.
Debit cards definitely go in the "considered harmful" pile.
Making multi minute phone calls from 30k ft with 2001 phone tech and no onboard plane phones (I already know its not possible, but would love to see them try)
You know that's not possible? So you tried it, eh? Please, post the details of your experiment.
Getting a 767 sim and attempt to fly the same path as pentagon plane
Why would you try it with a sim for a plane of a different model than the one that hit the Pentagon? Flight 77 (with a former co-worker of mine and his whole family on board) was a 757.
Of course, why let facts get in the way of a good batshit conspiracy theory?
Re:Professional organization?
on
Should IT Unionize?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Thinking you know better than your boss what your job is? Not so professional.
How's that? My doctor knows what her job is better than I do (at least, I hope!); that's professional.
I know tech better than my boss. He's an antiques dealer, for crying out loud. Of course I know better than him what my job is. That's professional.
When an architect is hired, he very often has to tell his client things like "no, we can't build you a building that high out of sticks and mud, because of local codes and because of the laws of physics." I often have to tell my boss "no, I can't create code to do that in a week, because we don't even fully understand the requirements yet, and the package you've required me to use doesn't have the functionality to do what you want."
Telling bosses and clients "no, you can't have that" is professional. Indeed, I'd have to say it's one of the hallmarks of professionalism: displaying greater loyalty to the art and to the impact on society as a whole, than to the desires of your current client or employer.
Slashdot Mirror
Science should never be confused with absolute truth!
Our scientific "knowledge" is a tentative hypothesis, subject to revision at any time as new observations or new patterns of data come in. Science is a means, a compass that indicates the general direction of truths about the consensual objective universe. If you want "absolute truth", science will disappoint you every time.
Nice bigotry you've got there.
I know plenty of Muslims. None have threatened me with violence. None have tried to push their religion on me.
So the ancient Israelites, God's "chosen people", were stupider about time than the people of India? Curious.
As a practical matter, as a patient or a clinician, it really doesn't matter if it's a placebo or not. "Do X and the odds are such-and-such that the patient will improve, and the possible complications are so-and-so", is all you need to know.
But from the point of view of a researcher, as a matter of (trumpet flourish please) *Scientific* *Knowledge*, how strongly can we assert that your cataract surgery was more effective than a placebo treatment would have been? Sure, it seems like common sense that a placebo treatment wouldn't affect cataracts, but it also seems like common sense that it wouldn't affect angina pectoris or knee pain.
I had an acupuncture session on Wednesday. I am DAMNED SURE it was not a placebo treatment. But my subjective DAMNED SURE will not carry any weight with skeptics - nor should it.
I'm not suggesting that people "trust" or "distrust" surgery, or any modality.
But in those studies where placebo surgery has been used, many patients receiving the placebo improved.
The first placebo surgery test was for a treatment for angina pectoris called internal mammary artery ligation. This was at one time a popular procedure, but it's not used now because in a head-to-head comparison, 34% of those getting the surgery reported improvement, while 42% of those getting a placebo cut reported improvement.
A 2002 study of arthroscopic knee surgery found that the outcomes for a placebo procedure were as good as those of the "real" surgery.
In a 2004 study of transplantation of embryonic dopamine neurons into the brains of Parkinson's disease patients, "Those who thought they received the transplant at 12 months reported better quality of life than those who thought they received the sham surgery, regardless of which surgery they actually received," according to the researcher.
The reduced mortality could be many factors. We have to consider improvements in nursing care, improved antibiotics, or better diet: "The decline of appendicitis cases in the United States since the 1930s has led some to suggest that dietary fiber or household hygiene is important in the pathogenesis of appendicitis. According to the "fiber hypothesis," fecaliths develop more readily in people who consume a diet deficient in fiber, because their stools are more tenacious. Societies with high fiber intake (Asia, India, Africa) have less than one-tenth the incidence of appendicitis compared with locations where fiber intake is lower (Europe, North America). A high-fiber diet speeds stool transit times, reduces fecal viscosity, and inhibits fecalith formation."
Here, by the way, is a fascinating look at that question from a century ago. The author finds a mortality rate of 6.6% in the period before appendectomy was used, and of 7.8% in the first few decades of its use. Of course the mortality rate is much lower today; but if mortality rates actually climbed after appendectomy was first introduced, then clearly the situation is more complex than "cut here, cut now, cutting good!"
Which is not to say that, under the right circumstances, I'm going to refuse an appendectomy. The surgery is a pretty good gamble.
Uh huh. You want to quantify that some? "Homeopathy gives results that are good enough and consistent enough to be above such suspicion." "Scientology gives results that are good enough and consistent enough to be above such suspicion." "My magic rock gives results that are good enough and consistent enough to be above such suspicion." And so on.
If we are scientifically investigating what treatments are effective, no modality can be "above suspicion". The guys in scrubs sellin
Ah, but without a placebo-controlled trial, how do we determine that a surgery is useful?
It's a tricky question. The placebo-controlled double-blinded trial is supposed to be the "gold standard" for medical research, but its structure is biased towards drug therapies. It's hard to do placebo surgery, placebo bodywork (acupressure, massage, etc.), placebo acupuncture, placebo diets, placebo psychological therapies, or placebo exercise programs. Heck, surgery is the easiest case of those - you get to knock the patient out so they don't remember the actual treatment!
Unknown. No study of appendectomy versus placebo surgery has been done; the hypothesis has not been tested. No scientific statement can be made.
Why in the world would we trust video more or less than still photos? If you're postulating a group of conspirators powerful enough to have pulled off 9/11, faking video would be trivial for them.
What makes the photographic record reliable is the variety of sources, and the analysis of the imagery, not the medium itself. (Though I'm sure you'll now pop up with "experts" who claim that photos were faked. They probably also have "evidence" that the Apollo photographs were faked, too...)
Oh, I must dare. Government attempts to gag dissent are completely different from getting hundreds of people, from airline workers to random eyewitnesses to cleanup workers, to spout similar sets of lies.
That the government lies about many things, is not proof that the government lies about everything. When a known con artist tells you that the sky is blue, you don't need to invoke some massive conspiracy about how it's really red but clones of Elvis Presely, using invisibility technology from the UFO that crashed at Roswell and led by the preserved brain of Richard Nixon, are actually following you around in hot air balloons with colored filters to keep you from seeing it.
The problem is that there are several different things that get lumped under the label "placebo effect":
There are probably more things going on too.
Interesting article on the placebo effect by Ted Kaptchuk here. If you can find it, his book with Michael Croucher, The Healing Arts: Exploring the Medical Ways of the World, is an excellent read.
I'm sorry, are critical thinking courses conspicuously present in private school curricula? About the only private schools around here are run by religious orders, not exactly groups known for encouraging critical thinking.
Oh, there are also a few military-style academies around - again, not exactly a style of education known for cultivating critical thinking.
Many of the public school teachers I had, took pains to instill in their students disciplined critical thinking skills. Granted, it was 20 years ago, but I know that I received a better education in Baltimore County's public schools than was available in most private schools in the area.
So, how about you take that gratuitous slam again public schools, and apply some critical thinking to it?
(To those not familiar with the area, I should mention that Baltimore County is a completely separate political entity than Baltimore City; the city's schools are, by and large, a mess, and have been for a long time. West of the city, in a five mile drive along Route 40 you can pass through Baltimore City, with one of the highest murder rates and the highest heroin addiction rate in the nation; Baltimore County, with one of the highest high school graduation rates in the nation; and Howard County, with one of the highest per capita income rates in the nation. It's an interesting area to live in...)
Your typical car battery is designed to be a short-lived, end-user-replaceable unit.
A hybrid's batteries are different beasties altogether; replacing them is more like replacing your car's engine.
Restricting the franchise to those who've served in the military, a la Starship Troopers, is fine - just provided that government elected by the military has no authority over the rest of us.
Giving the vote to every subject to the government's rule is democracy. Giving the vote only to those who have chosen to serve the government is dictatorship.
The Constitution says Congress has only the specific powers enumerated to it. It can legitimately determine how copyright and patent law law only within the framework of those powers.
Among those powers is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries".
Congress has no power to secure and exclusive right to anyone other than the authors or inventors (heirs, employers, assignees). Nor can it grant exclusive rights for an unlimited time; nor create a copyright or patent scheme that retards the progress of science and useful arts.
Feh. You can have my daylight savings time when you pry it from my cold dead hand.
If you're going to join a cult that uses lawyer and the DCMA to silence critics, why not go all the way for Scientology?
No. In the United States, under the Constitution the only legitimate use of patents (and copyrights) is to "promote the progress of science and useful arts". Rewarding inventors is not the goal; getting technologies out there for people to use is.
Of course, it's not like the Constitution means much. Under our corporate plutocracy, the only "legitimate" use of patents (and copyrights, and pretty much all other laws) is to fatten the pockets of the investment class.
Your definition, whether "accepted" or not, is meaningless. In the moment before conception, you've got living tissue; in the moment after, you've got living tissue. Saying that "life begins at conception" is meaningless.
What, you need a citation on the existence of identical twins? Here ya go. One incident of conception can ultimately result in multiple organisms.
Correct.
No, they are not. I can make an unconscious robot that moves its arm and makes crying noises. An amoeba can extend a pseudopod; an insect can move its legs. None of these are the actions of conscious, self-aware beings.
Consciousness arises as an organism with a complex brain interacts with its environment. A fetus or neonate has not yet significantly interacted with its environment, and its cortical development is still rudimentary, with synapses still forming.
As noted here, "By birth, only the lower portions of the nervous system (the spinal cord and brain stem) are very well developed, whereas the higher regions (the limbic system and cerebral cortex) are still rather primitive. The lower brain is therefore largely in control of a newborn's behavior: all of that kicking, grasping, crying, sleeping, rooting, and feeding are functions of the brain stem and spinal cord."
A complete non sequitur. The law - clear or unclear - has no impact on what is or is not ethical.
Surely you don't believe that question of ethics are settled by legal decisions? Did the Dredd Scott case make slavery ethically ok?
(To be clear: I know a lot of "pro life" people use Dred Scott as some sort of code word. I'm not one of them.)
And the question is not when human life begins; human life began thousands of years ago, with the first organism of genus Homo. The question is when does the personhood of an individual begin.
The sperm and egg are both alive before conception. No life is created at conception; life started billions of years ago and is an ongoing process.
And let me point out that conception can ultimately result in the production of multiple organisms of the parent's species. Unless you want to argue that identical twins (or even identical triplets or quadruplets) are the same organism?
Life is just an interesting chemical reaction, of little ethical relevance. What is relevant is consciousness and personhood; these are things generated by the brain. A fetus, or even a newborn, does not have sufficient brain development to be possessed of either.
We understand that the end of complex brain activity is the true end of a person; we ought to understand that the start of complex brain activity is the true start of a person. There isn't a single moment when it happens, any more that than there was a single moment when the Earth formed out the protoplanetary cloud of dust and gas.
Are you saying there were no bodies, or were you saying there were two?
Allyn E. Kilsheimer, CEO of KCE Structural Engineers (a company involved in providing emergency engineering and post-collapse assistance) said "I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts."
Of course, once you reach the level of batshitness you've achieved, you can simply ignore his testimony by saying "they got to him too!"
And I'm sure you simply don't accept the claim that the remains of 184 people were identified; surely "they" got to all 102 DNA analysts, sample processors, logistics staff, and administrative personnel at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. It's a DOD facility, after all.
Are you saying there was no debris from the plane? That's simply incorrect; hell, you can even see photos of a bunch of it at this batshit conspiracy site. And photos of the plane debris inside the building (where, in answer to your question about the lawn, most of it ended up, in agreement with conservation of momentum) can be seen at this somewhat less batshit crazy site. And some more photos here. And more photos, with amazingly detailed analysis, here
But I'm sure "they" got to the owners of all of those sites.
757. If you can't get that much right after being corrected, I don't see any point in talking to you further.
Like most of the plane, the tail and wings got shredded, and ended up inside the building. As Mete Sozen, a structural engineer who studied the impact in computer simulation, put it, "At that speed, the plane itself is like a sausage skin. It doesn't have much strength and virtually crumbles on impact."
It's like shooting an aluminum foil origami crane out of an air cannon at high speed, through a stack of steel cheese graters, and then demanding "where's the crane's tail? There must be a trick!"
Into a building? One as hardened as the part of the Pentagon that was hit? Please, name me one similar crash.
Oh, and by the way, regarding your original question about simulating the piloting of the crash, see this:
Formfactor-wise, nothing beats a Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000 (or 3100/3200). It's pocketsized, clamshell, with a QWERTY keyboard usable for two-finger (or thumb) typing.
Type how fast? I can type on my Zaurus SL-C3000, not very fast but fast enough to pound out rough drafts of poems and essays while on the go. It's about the size of a pack of 3x5 index cards; I would love to find something that size with a more standard architecture. I guess the Nokia 810 is the closest thing in current production; but that sliding keyboard looks like the suck, the Z's clamshell formfactor blows it out of the water.
Debit cards have much less protection against fraud and disputed charges than credit cards. And if your debit card gets stolen, the perp can drain your checking account; until it gets sorted out, you're broke. If he just steals my credit card, I can still pay my bills out of my intact checking account while I dispute the credit card charges.
Debit cards definitely go in the "considered harmful" pile.
You know that's not possible? So you tried it, eh? Please, post the details of your experiment.
Why would you try it with a sim for a plane of a different model than the one that hit the Pentagon? Flight 77 (with a former co-worker of mine and his whole family on board) was a 757.
Of course, why let facts get in the way of a good batshit conspiracy theory?
How's that? My doctor knows what her job is better than I do (at least, I hope!); that's professional.
I know tech better than my boss. He's an antiques dealer, for crying out loud. Of course I know better than him what my job is. That's professional.
When an architect is hired, he very often has to tell his client things like "no, we can't build you a building that high out of sticks and mud, because of local codes and because of the laws of physics." I often have to tell my boss "no, I can't create code to do that in a week, because we don't even fully understand the requirements yet, and the package you've required me to use doesn't have the functionality to do what you want."
Telling bosses and clients "no, you can't have that" is professional. Indeed, I'd have to say it's one of the hallmarks of professionalism: displaying greater loyalty to the art and to the impact on society as a whole, than to the desires of your current client or employer.