The basis of antiabortion legislation is the theory that abortion kills a human person.
This theory also has no bearing on the pro-choice decision in Roe V Wade. ...
There are many situations in which it is acceptable to end the life of another person. Not arbitrarily. Legislation would make it arbitrary.
It does have bearing. Roe v. Wade presumed that abortion kills "potential life". A different premise would allow abortion to be treated in law on the same terms as any other act of killing. Legislation wouldn't make it arbitrary unless that legislation was a blanket ban.
In situations where the mother is at risk, discretion would have to be granted to doctors; it would essentially be a triage. However, elective abortion could be prohibited.
Antiabortion legislation was aimed at taking those medical decisions away from doctors, patients, and public health planners.
I'll say it again. The basis of antiabortion legislation is the theory that abortion kills a human person. If that premise is granted, such legislation is firmly grounded in law and reason.
I think you're being highly irrational. If human life/personhood/whatever does begin before birth, why would those decisions belong in the hands of doctors and public health planners? Why should any patient have the right to arbitrarily end the life of another?
If you reason from the premise that the personhood of a fetus is an unanswerable question, I can understand your point. But you're not even recognizing the debatability of that premise. You're just condemning people for the sin of disagreeing with you--and that's bigotry.
Frankly, I would have expected more from you, going by your other posts in this story.
In general, the difference is that "legalizing" carries the implication of official sanction. Declaring unconstitutional a law that prohibits X doesn't necessarily sanction X. In particular, if the courts overturn a law due to a conflict with a higher law (such as the Constitution), you can't say they are "legislating" or "legalizing" anything.
In this case, however, the court did enshrine a right to abortion in the law. If you think their reasoning had no basis in actual constitutional law, then it's appropriate to criticize them for "legislating from the bench."
I'm also quite upset with the Republican Party regarding the current philosophy of restricting freedom in the name of security, and I agree with you regarding the nature of our rights and the importance of regarding them as inherent and ungranted.
However, I think abortion is a terrible example. Anti-abortion legislation was aimed at the protection of human life. Whatever you think about the beginning of human life (or personhood, or whatever term you want to use), that was the reasoning behind it. The Supreme Court side-stepped the issue, assuming without cause that the conflict is between an individual's rights and governmental intervention, instead of between two individuals' rights.
If the "religious" forces expressed half the love for babies that they do for foetuses, maybe I'd feel differently about this.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Seriously, I'm asking what you actually mean by that. What are they doing wrong? What do you think they should be saying or supporting or lobbying for that they're not? For that matter, who exactly is "they"? Is it that all groups opposed to abortion fail to do what you're requiring, or do you have someone specific in mind?
And if you do have something specific in mind, why do you think they should be expanding their efforts to be "acceptable"? Do you criticize the ACLU for not working harder to secure good economic policy? Do you criticize a worker's union for not expressing moral outrage at voter fraud?
Or are you just condemning a group of people of whom you have a prejudicial negative opinion?
They come with the installation of software--after you've already paid for it.
The big problem most people have with EULA's is that they aren't presented at the time of purchase. I go to the store to buy a copy of Warcraft 3, I see no license agreement, I am presented with no conditions on my purchase, I pay for it. Contract concluded. Finito. I now have all the standard rights of the consumer to a copy of a copyright-protected work.
What makes you think Blizzard can then say, "Oh, and you have to agree to surrender some of those rights. Tough luck."
Life doesn't start at any point, it is continuous. The sperm and egg are alive, the person they come from are alive, so at no point is a zygote/fetus/baby *not* alive. But you have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise menstruation and masturbation is murder.
Me? I draw the line here: If the entity is capable of surviving outside of the mother's body, regardless of whether it needs assistance, and there is trivial danger to the mother in removing the entity intact, then abortion is wrong.
You didn't present an argument straight from hard science, so I'll assume your answer is, "I guess I was wrong; it's not anti-science to say personhood begins at conception."
Your standard seems nice--"viability" satisfies the "common sense, gut feeling" test--but it seems rather useless to me without a precise definition of "assistance." I'm sure we'll eventually gain the technological prowess to remove a fetus at any point and bring it to term, ex-utero. You're basically saying that the personhood of a fetus can be affected by the surrounding society's technological achievements.
Another standard I think passes the "common sense, gut feeling" test is this: Once an egg has been fertilized and a new entity with its own DNA has come into being, that entity is a human being.
You may find problems with that standard, and who knows, you might even be right--but that doesn't mean the standard involves "denying biology."
I also reject out of hand the assumption that judging when life begins is a personal decision. An abortion either is the unjustifiable killing of a human being, or it isn't. If it isn't--if a fetus really is just a "potential person," and there's no distinct point at which a person appears--then you're right. But it strikes me as ludicrous--and frankly, somewhat childish--to ask someone to concede the point out of hand.
Incidentally, I also think the ethics of "plastering pictures of aborted fetuses on the sides of buses" is highly debatable, and is greatly impacted by whether there really are hundreds of thousands of innocent people being killed every year.
and eliminate biology altogether by claiming that...stem cells are people.
Not stem cells--embryos. IIRC, research from existing lines of stem cells was not under fire--the problem was with extracting new lines from newly terminated/aborted/whatevered embryos.
You know, it might help if you gave a concise explanation of why you think biology proves embryos aren't people. When does biology tell us personhood starts--birth? During the 2nd trimester? Seven weeks, two days, three hours, and five seconds after conception? Really, I'm fascinated.
You don't give him enough credit. Have you read Songmaster, with protagonists in homosexual relationships without hint of negativity? While he definitely opposes gay marriage, you can't write off his attitudes/opinions with a simple "dang homophobe." There's a lot more complexity to it than that.
Re:The Libertarians are just as bad
on
Is IP Property?
·
· Score: 1
The problem is, they were into the whole "IP is property" scam since day one (go read Atlas Shrugged for an early example).
You may be right--I don't know--but Atlas Shrugged isn't the best support for your point. I assume you're talking about Rearden steel. IIRC, Rearden never asked for government protection; he didn't file patents or sue anyone for using his ideas. Yes, he got mad when the government made him share the "recipe" with everyone else, but that doesn't mean he wanted his "intellectual property" saved by the government.
Yes, they made a big mistake in failing to manually examine the files in question before sending out a notice. Yes, that seems like it could be construed as harassment--it may even be actionable--due to that negligence or failure or due diligence or whatever.
However, it is in no way perjury. Here's what they said:
under penalty of perjury, that we are authorized to act on behalf of the owners of the exclusive rights being infringed as set forth in this notification
What rights are they talking about that were set forth? Go back earlier in the letter:
We have received information that, at the above noted date and time, the IP address 216.52.171.81 was used to offer or to materially contribute to the offering of downloadable or streaming copies of copyrighted motion pictures.
The rights they were talking about were the rights to the motion pictures.
They did not state under penalty of perjury that X-Files1.21b.tar.gz is a copy of the X-Files Seasons 1-7 video. They stated under penalty of perjury that they represent the owner of the rights that they are claiming have been infringed--i.e., that they represent the owners of "X-FILES, THE Season 1-7".
Which is exactly what they are doing. IF the courts decide that homosexuals are actual human beings with the same rights as heterosexuals then the states have to afford them those rights.
You either weren't listening, or wrote me off as an unthinking bigot whose statement don't deserve actual response. To quote myself: "Everyone in America has precisely the same marriage rights--not to marry anyone you want, but to marry a consenting adult of the opposite sex. Yes, that right is constructed so that it doesn't do some people any good--but that doesn't give the courts license to redefine an institution." Also: "When it came time to extend voting rights to women, was it done through the courts? NO!! It was done through the legislative branch, because that is the only branch with the power to change the law as it is.
"In America's legal tradition, the very definition of marriage has always been exclusively between those of opposite sex."
throughout history of the world the norm has been poligamy. Only recently did monogomy come to fashion.
I didn't say anything about "one man, one woman." The persecution of Mormons for practicing polygamy was a travesty.
In recent american history it was also illegal for interracial couples to marry. CLearly the definition of marriage changes with time.
That had nothing to do with the definition of marriage; it was a matter people thinking such marriages were undesirable and immoral.
And yes, that's what people are saying about gay marriage. I'm not 100% decided, but I didn't support Bush's amendment. I just despise legislating from the judicial bench. Like women's voting rights, this is a real issue of fairness, but it should be decided in the legislature.
Of course the 95% of the people who are straight don't want the 5% of the people who are gay to have the same rights as they do. Just like the 95% of the people who are white at one time didn't want the 5% of the blacks to have the same rights. In that case judges ruled that the majority was wrong and that the rights of the minority were guaranteed by the constitution. If the judges rule the same way for homosexuals then it's incumbent on the states to let them marry.
That's not what happened. In our original Constitution, most blacks really didn't have the same rights, and courts ruled as such. Then after we fought the Civil War, we passed amendments to the Constitution to end slavery and ensure equal protection for all. Then courts rules to protect their rights, after gaining the legal basis to do so.
But that equal protection clause is not an absolute, overriding principle. When it came time to extend voting rights to women, was it done through the courts? NO!! It was done through the legislative branch, because that is the only branch with the power to change the law as it is.
It is not the courts job to determine what rights should and should not be protected. It is their job to rule on the law as it is. Anything else is violating the nature of our system of checks and balances.
This isn't an obvious legal issue either way. In America's legal tradition, the very definition of marriage has always been exclusively between those of opposite sex. Everyone in America has precisely the same marriage rights--not to marry anyone you want, but to marry a consenting adult of the opposite sex. Yes, that right is constructed so that it doesn't do some people any good--but that doesn't give the courts license to redefine an institution.
Or maybe it does; I can see room for argument. But if you ignore this sort of perspective, you won't convince anyone who disagrees with you.
They did libraries a big favor by selecting these CDs because there's no way libraries could have said what they wanted.
If there's "no way" that libraries can say what they want, it's a flaw in the organization of the libraries of Kansas, not a license for someone else to dictate their content for them. It seems to me that, having continual contact with the public, libraries are more in touch with what the people really want. Therefore, they should be in charge of stocking themselves.
What the hell? Forget the article--did you even read the summary? This has nothing to do with the state government dictating the content of the libraries, and it has nothing to do with whether or not they're "in charge of stocking themselves." This is about CDs given to the state by the music industry as part of the settlement.
There's nothing to indicate the libraries aren't free to stock these CDs themselves--the AG just decided the state wasn't going to provide them unrequested. This is no more censorship than if a parent decides, "I'm not going to give this CD to my son for his birthday." That doesn't mean the kid can't buy it himself.
No one seems to have explained this point sufficiently, so I'll give it a go. (The other posts give correct information--but incomplete.)
XML looks a lot like HTML. If you look at any XML or HTML document, you'll see a bunch of tags--a word or phrase or letter surrounded by greater than/less than symbols--perhaps with text in the middle. For example, here's basic HTML:
<p>The quick brown fox said, <i>"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet."</i></p>
Your web-browser sees the <p> tag and interprets everything between it and the closing </p> tag as a paragraph. The text is formatted accordingly, with line breaks before and after. Similarly, the browser knows to show everything between the <i> and </i> tags--which are nested inside the <p> tags--using italics instead of standard formatting. Other tags include <img> for images; an image tag also has attribute inside the tag to specify the image to be shown. For example:
<img src="mypic.jpg">
That's HTML. XML is structured in pretty much the same way. Tags are used to give meaning to text in a systematic way, attributes can be included, tags can be nested, etc. For instance, you might store information for an address book in the following tags:
<entry> <name> <firstName>Joss</firstName> <lastName>Whedon</lastName> <title>Mr.</title> </name> <address> <streetNum>1324</streetNum> <street>Mulholland Dr.</street> etc. </address> </entry> <entry> info for another person </entry>
Then you would write a program that parses the data and displays it onscreen or saves it to your PDA or whatever.
The key difference between XML and HTML or XHTML is that XML tags have no inherent meaning. You can use any text you want as a tag name, with a few limitations (no spaces, for instance). There are no assigned tag names like there are in HTML, where a <p> mean paragraph, and <b> means bold, etc. In the above example, you could change "entry" to "stickyWicket" if you want. XML data is meant to be interpreted by a machine, not a person--though meaningful tag names are obviously more convienient than random junk like "xkljad".
As the other posts say, XML has some stricter rules than HTML. For instance, in HTML, there's a tag <br> for a line break. It doesn't have a closing tag--you just put it anywhere you want a new line to start. In XML, every tag has to have a closing tag--though you can combine both the opening and closing tags using the / symbol. You can use that to make your XML more concise. For instance, the <name> tag above with nested <firstName> and <lastName> could be simplified to this:
<name first="Joss" last="Whedon" title="Mr."/>
People have used XML to define all sorts of formats, from music notation to images. All that means is that they decided on a tag structure with meaningful tag names and nesting, and published the rule set. Then anyone can write applications to deal with that data. XHTML is just the old HTML tag with the strict XML rules. So, in XHTML, a line break is <br/>.
To sum up, XML is just a way to structure data systematically. XHTML is an XML document with particular tags intended for a web browser.
Slashdot Mirror
coincidences doesn't really work when you can use the coincidence to predict outcomes.
All it means it that the kids polled in the Weekly Reader are a remarkably accurate indicator of public sentiment.
I don't get it. Don't you know how to pen a silly joke?
Wow, what church do you go to? I've never seen the like at any church I've attended.
Don't generalize.
I'm sorry, that's wrong.
What do you mean? You changed your mind?
In situations where the mother is at risk, discretion would have to be granted to doctors; it would essentially be a triage. However, elective abortion could be prohibited.
Antiabortion legislation was aimed at taking those medical decisions away from doctors, patients, and public health planners.
I'll say it again. The basis of antiabortion legislation is the theory that abortion kills a human person. If that premise is granted, such legislation is firmly grounded in law and reason.
I think you're being highly irrational. If human life/personhood/whatever does begin before birth, why would those decisions belong in the hands of doctors and public health planners? Why should any patient have the right to arbitrarily end the life of another?
If you reason from the premise that the personhood of a fetus is an unanswerable question, I can understand your point. But you're not even recognizing the debatability of that premise. You're just condemning people for the sin of disagreeing with you--and that's bigotry.
Frankly, I would have expected more from you, going by your other posts in this story.
In general, the difference is that "legalizing" carries the implication of official sanction. Declaring unconstitutional a law that prohibits X doesn't necessarily sanction X. In particular, if the courts overturn a law due to a conflict with a higher law (such as the Constitution), you can't say they are "legislating" or "legalizing" anything.
In this case, however, the court did enshrine a right to abortion in the law. If you think their reasoning had no basis in actual constitutional law, then it's appropriate to criticize them for "legislating from the bench."
I'm also quite upset with the Republican Party regarding the current philosophy of restricting freedom in the name of security, and I agree with you regarding the nature of our rights and the importance of regarding them as inherent and ungranted.
However, I think abortion is a terrible example. Anti-abortion legislation was aimed at the protection of human life. Whatever you think about the beginning of human life (or personhood, or whatever term you want to use), that was the reasoning behind it. The Supreme Court side-stepped the issue, assuming without cause that the conflict is between an individual's rights and governmental intervention, instead of between two individuals' rights.
If the "religious" forces expressed half the love for babies that they do for foetuses, maybe I'd feel differently about this.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Seriously, I'm asking what you actually mean by that. What are they doing wrong? What do you think they should be saying or supporting or lobbying for that they're not? For that matter, who exactly is "they"? Is it that all groups opposed to abortion fail to do what you're requiring, or do you have someone specific in mind?
And if you do have something specific in mind, why do you think they should be expanding their efforts to be "acceptable"? Do you criticize the ACLU for not working harder to secure good economic policy? Do you criticize a worker's union for not expressing moral outrage at voter fraud?
Or are you just condemning a group of people of whom you have a prejudicial negative opinion?
They come with the installation of software--after you've already paid for it.
The big problem most people have with EULA's is that they aren't presented at the time of purchase. I go to the store to buy a copy of Warcraft 3, I see no license agreement, I am presented with no conditions on my purchase, I pay for it. Contract concluded. Finito. I now have all the standard rights of the consumer to a copy of a copyright-protected work.
What makes you think Blizzard can then say, "Oh, and you have to agree to surrender some of those rights. Tough luck."
My google-fu must be on the fritz today; I can't find a website telling me how representatives voted on this bill. Can anyone else do better?
Since Slashdot's about as reliable as the Weekly World News, I can't trust a word you're saying. :)
Life doesn't start at any point, it is continuous. The sperm and egg are alive, the person they come from are alive, so at no point is a zygote/fetus/baby *not* alive. But you have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise menstruation and masturbation is murder.
Me? I draw the line here: If the entity is capable of surviving outside of the mother's body, regardless of whether it needs assistance, and there is trivial danger to the mother in removing the entity intact, then abortion is wrong.
You didn't present an argument straight from hard science, so I'll assume your answer is, "I guess I was wrong; it's not anti-science to say personhood begins at conception."
Your standard seems nice--"viability" satisfies the "common sense, gut feeling" test--but it seems rather useless to me without a precise definition of "assistance." I'm sure we'll eventually gain the technological prowess to remove a fetus at any point and bring it to term, ex-utero. You're basically saying that the personhood of a fetus can be affected by the surrounding society's technological achievements.
Another standard I think passes the "common sense, gut feeling" test is this: Once an egg has been fertilized and a new entity with its own DNA has come into being, that entity is a human being.
You may find problems with that standard, and who knows, you might even be right--but that doesn't mean the standard involves "denying biology."
I also reject out of hand the assumption that judging when life begins is a personal decision. An abortion either is the unjustifiable killing of a human being, or it isn't. If it isn't--if a fetus really is just a "potential person," and there's no distinct point at which a person appears--then you're right. But it strikes me as ludicrous--and frankly, somewhat childish--to ask someone to concede the point out of hand.
Incidentally, I also think the ethics of "plastering pictures of aborted fetuses on the sides of buses" is highly debatable, and is greatly impacted by whether there really are hundreds of thousands of innocent people being killed every year.
and eliminate biology altogether by claiming that...stem cells are people.
Not stem cells--embryos. IIRC, research from existing lines of stem cells was not under fire--the problem was with extracting new lines from newly terminated/aborted/whatevered embryos.
You know, it might help if you gave a concise explanation of why you think biology proves embryos aren't people. When does biology tell us personhood starts--birth? During the 2nd trimester? Seven weeks, two days, three hours, and five seconds after conception? Really, I'm fascinated.
taking away the rights of individuals to remain firmly planted on the Earth.
This is being done in an effort to rid the world of all those wacky tree-hugging environmental fundamentalists.
You don't give him enough credit. Have you read Songmaster, with protagonists in homosexual relationships without hint of negativity? While he definitely opposes gay marriage, you can't write off his attitudes/opinions with a simple "dang homophobe." There's a lot more complexity to it than that.
The problem is, they were into the whole "IP is property" scam since day one (go read Atlas Shrugged for an early example).
You may be right--I don't know--but Atlas Shrugged isn't the best support for your point. I assume you're talking about Rearden steel. IIRC, Rearden never asked for government protection; he didn't file patents or sue anyone for using his ideas. Yes, he got mad when the government made him share the "recipe" with everyone else, but that doesn't mean he wanted his "intellectual property" saved by the government.
Yes, they made a big mistake in failing to manually examine the files in question before sending out a notice. Yes, that seems like it could be construed as harassment--it may even be actionable--due to that negligence or failure or due diligence or whatever.
However, it is in no way perjury. Here's what they said:
under penalty of perjury, that we are authorized to act on behalf of the owners of the exclusive rights being infringed as set forth in this notification
What rights are they talking about that were set forth? Go back earlier in the letter:
We have received information that, at the above noted date and time, the IP address 216.52.171.81 was used to offer or to materially contribute to the offering of downloadable or streaming copies of copyrighted motion pictures.
The rights they were talking about were the rights to the motion pictures.
They did not state under penalty of perjury that X-Files1.21b.tar.gz is a copy of the X-Files Seasons 1-7 video. They stated under penalty of perjury that they represent the owner of the rights that they are claiming have been infringed--i.e., that they represent the owners of "X-FILES, THE Season 1-7".
*ahem*
Interesting how a post titled funny can be rated insightful!
Interesting how a post titled insightful can be rated funny!
Funny how a post titled insightful can be interesting!
Funny how a post titled interesting can be insightful!
Insightful how a post titled funny can be interesting!
Insightful how...
Oh, never mind. My soul has already been destroyed by this pointless, unfunny, whorish beaten-dead-horse of a post! I hope you're happy.
*sniff*
And yes, that's what people are saying about gay marriage. I'm not 100% decided, but I didn't support Bush's amendment. I just despise legislating from the judicial bench. Like women's voting rights, this is a real issue of fairness, but it should be decided in the legislature.
But that equal protection clause is not an absolute, overriding principle. When it came time to extend voting rights to women, was it done through the courts? NO!! It was done through the legislative branch, because that is the only branch with the power to change the law as it is.
It is not the courts job to determine what rights should and should not be protected. It is their job to rule on the law as it is. Anything else is violating the nature of our system of checks and balances.
This isn't an obvious legal issue either way. In America's legal tradition, the very definition of marriage has always been exclusively between those of opposite sex. Everyone in America has precisely the same marriage rights--not to marry anyone you want, but to marry a consenting adult of the opposite sex. Yes, that right is constructed so that it doesn't do some people any good--but that doesn't give the courts license to redefine an institution.
Or maybe it does; I can see room for argument. But if you ignore this sort of perspective, you won't convince anyone who disagrees with you.
There's nothing to indicate the libraries aren't free to stock these CDs themselves--the AG just decided the state wasn't going to provide them unrequested. This is no more censorship than if a parent decides, "I'm not going to give this CD to my son for his birthday." That doesn't mean the kid can't buy it himself.
??? Uh, I wrote it all myself.
The sound quality is far too grainy.