because science is boring to non-scientists. Most of us couldn't give a ripe shit about science.
Honestly, it's a little disingenuous to whine about the state of science education in America -- the same complaint can be made about literature.
Quoth the article
"But the rest of the population, by any rational standard, is abysmally ignorant of literature, poetry and
all things literary. That is the paradox
of literary elites and real
illiterates: how can the same system of
education that produced all those
talentedwriters also have produced
all that abominable Slashdot grammar?
Get over it -- science nerds are just like any other type of nerd. Nerds live in a Nerd Ghetto, surrounded by AOL Barbarians. Quit your whining, pick up a stick and make a few rounds around the walls unhooking grappling hooks and pushing seige ladders away from the wall and into the moat.
Unfortunately, more money isn't the answer to our educational problems. In Washington DC, the schools spend about $9000 per student per year (figures from memory, but they're close). That's a lot of jack, and Washington DC public schools are horrible.
conventional wisdom, but I'm not sure it's always true. Mine are picking up some japanese, even if it's only wierd bits. Nickelodeon can rot in Hell though, if that's what you mean
My main complaint is the passivity and format of TV. Beyond channel surfing, there is no interaction, and segmenting learning into 30 minute blocks leaves huge holes in the knowledge. But after you watch a 30 minute show on dinosaurs, you're left with the impression that you've learned a lot, when you've actually barely scratched the surface. Going into greater detail on TV is simply too expensive to produce and air, and thus the knowledge emparted is incomplete.
(plus, I simply hate the culture that TV endorses -- beautiful people doing exciting things! gaaah!)
Your point is valid and well taken. If your child is not learning from school, then something must be done.
Unfortunately, because of the virtual monopoly the government has on the education system, there is little you can do except 1) send your kid to private school, or 2) home school the little blighter.
But do you think that a Web enabled computer helps a kid that is motivated to learn? Possibly, but not nearly as helpful as a well-stocked library. If a book gets printed, there is a higher chance for it to contain at least verifiable facts, whereas too much on the Web is useless (at best), ignorant, or actively wrong (at worst).
Plopping a kid in front of a computer is better than in front of a TV, but not nearly as good as a well-written textbook (of which there are so few these days...)
Well, for programming nerds, the days of DOS were much easier, since they were allowed to program in modes: "now we're in editing mode, so the keys CTRL-I activate italics, now we're in layout mode and CTRL-I now adjusts line spacing..."
... and the users rebelled. "It's too hard! I keep erasing my document because I can't remember what mode I'm in!"
Then GUIs gave us modelessness, and all was better in the world for users, but programmers now had three times as much work to do.
Of course, now users still lose their documents, but because of the brain dead way OSes work, the user ends up feeling like it's his fault, even if it's not.
except that in a school situation, I wouldn't want kids browsing, I'd want them researching.
I don't want my kids on the Internet at all while at school. The Internet is of dubious value to learning and teaching, whereas a kid sitting down with a teacher can accomplish a lot.
A computer is a poor replacement for caring teachers, involved parents and a supportive community.
Think about what RMS does, and why -- he has a passionate belief "software should be Free", and expresses it in a fairly consistant manner. He fights a somewhat unpopular fight with little reward -- outside of recognition within of a small, tight-knit community, which isn't much.
RMS has been fighting this fight longer than some GNU/Linux nerds have been alive. He had the vision to kick the thing off in the first place. His reward? A string of Slashdot readers questioning his relevency, sanity and parentage.
While I may disagree with some of RMS's views (I get the occasional whiff of Unreconstructed Socialist from some of his writing, and nobody hates a commie (or a socialist) more than me), I have the utmost respect for his work, and I'm thankful for it.
While Ulrich may have a genuine beef with RMS, waving it about in public (and Slashdot posting the story) is not very professional, nor productive.
He saved the page to local disk -- network time had nothing to do with it.
However, his hardware did: a Pentium 166. My main machine is a P-133, and I normally see such load times on complicated sites. While I could use a faster computer, a slower one is a good indicator of when your HTML is getting out of hand and that it's time to stop dinking with it.
Regardless, I still use Netscape 4.7x for these reasons -- it's fast, relatively stable while Mozilla on a P-133 is a complete joke.
More importantly, most of them have a reason to be in a blind rage regarding Steve Jobs -- blind enough to overlook the good things and concentrate on the bad just because "it's Steve".
Amelio, as you say, was tossed out on his ass by Jobs. Unjustifiably, I say, since Amelio was given the thankless task of doing the dirty work for the Apple board, plus he hired Ellen Hancock(!!). But, as his book attests, he's pretty bitter towards Jobs.
Gassee was hired as a sort of kindred-spirit to replace Jobs after he left. Gassee was Scully's boy-toy -- but Gassee didn't have Jobs's panache, and knew it. He was more of a testosterone charged computer guy, whereas Jobs was more "visionary". Basically, Gassee added slots to the Mac line. Then, at Be, Jobs snubbed him (with good reason) by going with NeXT.
But the worst is Raskin. I've alwasy liked Raskin, and honestly, since he was the guy who *started* the Macintosh project (it was named Macintosh because that was *Raskin's* favorite kind of apple) it's hard to NOT have respect. But, Jef has always rankled at Jobs's buttinski attitude, and when Jobs pushed him out the Macintosh team's door at Bandley 3, he was pissed. Basically, Jobs stole Macintosh from Raskin. That is hard, hard, hard to let go, especially when your vision of what Macintosh was to be (he did build it, called the Canon Cat) failed without so much as a whimper.
This roundtable is like getting B'nai B'rith, Winston Churchill and Jesse Jackson around a table to discuss Goebbels.
It points out three false hopes held by web 'libertarians.' 1. the web is too international to control. 2. the net is too interconnected to fence in. 3. the net is
full of hackers that are impossible to control. This is a good read." Bingo.
No, not "Bingo" -- try "Bimbo".
Point 1 and 2 are irrelavent -- while the article threw up a couple of examples that seem depressing, they miss the fact that it's really #3 that makes the whole mish-mash go 'round.
A dedicated and motivated hacker will always be able to engineer around limitations in onternational politics or bandwidth. It's what makes us love hackers so much.
The point about hardware not being crackable is ridiculous -- if the content is going to be read, listened to or watched, it has to go analog for a bit -- and at that point it is vulnerable. All it takes is one guy to re-record, transcribe, copy or what have you, and a "free" version is in the wild.
Are Gnutella packets suceptible because of their headers? No biggie -- encrypt the headers, mutate the headers, whatever. It's a Whack-a-Mole game that can't be won.
Ignore #1 and #2 -- it's #3 that will keep the other problems from encroaching.
Because that's the truth. Current polls suggest that the opposition to stem cell research doesn't lie in the mainstream.
Please -- spare me. "Mainstream" is a poor reason to do anything. Burning witches was "mainstream" as well.
Reasonable people can disagree -- disagree without gratuitous name-calling. Your claim that it's "the truth" does not make it so. A single example of a non-religious anti-human embryo stem cell supporter disproves your blanket statement of "religious extreme" (wow, that's mangled syntax -- I hope you made your way to the end of that sentance).
That's why you hear
enigmatic things like the Pope publicly opposing the research, while the news reports in the same breath that the majority of American catholics
support it.
What's enigmatic about it? He opposes it! No. Not. Negative. Not ever. Uh-uh. Negatory, good buddy. Is that enigmatic?
The Pope is not beholden to what American Catholics believe -- thank God for that. As I understand Catholocism, if the Pope is sitting in the chair of St. Peter, he's supposed to be infallible, the mouthpiece of God. While I don't believe it myself, Catholics are supposed to.
Besides, most American Catholics are actually members of the most popular religion in the world, non-practicing Christianity. I care not a whit for their opinion. The mainstream also think Britney Spears is swell... pffft!
And specific cases aside, the "scientific community" is pretty single-minded on the issue--they see the research as a valuable tool.
The scientific community is single-minded on many things, not all of them right, or even desirable. For example, I wish the scientific community had given the whole atom splitting idea a pass -- nuclear waste is pretty bad, and so are dirty anti-nuke protesters. Regardless, the scientific community is not in lock step on this issue, as least as I've heard it told. I know my uncle, who's a doctor, is most emphatically against human embryo stem cell research.
Ignoring the fact that the scientists aren't "killing" anything
that wouldn't be "killed" anyway (what do you think they do with those unused embryos, eh?)
This brings up a point not mentioned much -- I'm consistant in my belief -- those embryos should not be created if they are not going to be allowed the chance to live. This argument was mentioned way back when fertility clinics were just starting this process. The "religious extreme", as you call them, said that it could lead to harvesting the embryos for fetal tissue research, or for organs. No mention of stem cells, because nobody was looking at that. Lo and behold, we're here today arguing over the very issue the scientific community (at that time) said was a non-issue. Now it is, and the religious among us are now "extreme". Funny, that.
it's highly questionable to morally equate
scientific investigators--people whose work has a great chance of doing good--to common murderers.
If medical experimentation on convicted murderers (or organ harvesting) was for the common good, would you be for it? I hope not.
The issue comes down to "is an embryo a human life", simple as that. That's all. Those that oppose human embryo stem cell research don't oppose it out of a fear of technology, or medicine, or science. It is a simple matter of we don't want human life snuffed out for the sake of research.
You may disagree, and claim that human life doesn't begin at the moment of conception. I ask "at what point is a human defined as a human?" Whatever arbitrary line you draw is just that -- arbitrary. I fall back to the only point at which it is safe to say "that's a human life" -- conception.
And at this point, you've thoroughly proven that you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
At this point, you've proved you know little about human nature. I am not a scientist -- if pressed, I suppose since I majored in Art, I'd be an artist. However, my much more educated friends -- an anthropologist PhD candidate and an astrophysicist PhD candidate among them -- love to tell stories about scientists who are mostly looking to recieve $CREDITS, where $CREDITS may be money, or fame, or acknowledgement of their peers... whatever the going currency may be.
Federally-funded stem cell research will be
administered through the NIH. If the NIH, with it's extensive peer review systems (consisting of some of the best scientific minds in the US) is
sponsoring the research of greedy charlatans, then Bush has bigger problems than deciding whether a blastocyst constitutes a person...
I must say, having the NIH run things doesn't make me feel any better -- but that might be the libertarian in me coming out. I have a hard time believing that a federally funded endeavor is free from politics, and science-through-politics is rarely a good idea.
I'd say: "hooray! someone found a cure for alzheimers." And it would be a great day. And if I were ever diagnosed with alzheimers, I would
gladly pay for the treatment, thrilled that someone found a way to cure me of a progressive, debilitating and dehumanizing illness.
At the cost of life? How many people is it okay to kill to save another life? Here we part ways again, on the primary argument -- is that "blastocyst", as you call it, a human life?
And, in case you've been asleep for the majority of the stem-cell debate, the very reason scientists are so keen on keeping federal funding for
this research is so that we have a fighting chance of keeping the results open. In the era of gene patents and spiraling research costs, it's
essential that silly and vacuous political arguments don't cut off our ability to do interesting research in a public manner.
Your last statement is filled with horrible ideas: "vacuous political arguments"? There are no political arguments. It's a simple decision -- at what point is it a human life? Politics have nothing to do with it, outside of the question of whether the government should be murdering citizens (or using clumps of undifferentiated meiotic cells).
Second, "interesting research in a public manner". I thought this was for the public good? If not, we can drop the argument altogether. I don't think you mean that the way it sounds -- what's interesting? I'm sure the Nazi medical tests were interesting, too. (-1 point for me for invoking Godwin's Law)
All this verbiage doesn't answer my original question -- why do the proponents of human embryo stem cell research get to portray the other side as "extreme", while the dissidents aren't allowed to portray the proponents as "baby killers" (which, undoubtably they would do if allowed to) with the same impunity?
Not a theory, just an expression. I believe in a soul. Upon conception, the soul comes alive. Whether the body is all there or not, the soul exists. Call it mysticism, or call the soul a natural occurance from the combining of an egg and sperm -- regardless, the life begins there.
"Wasting" eggs and sperms isn't a problem. Why not? They aren't human life. I suppose you could call them "potential life", but only in the same sense that eggs, milk, and cheese are "potential omlette". However, once you put all those ingredients in a pan, you have an omlette.
(Please don't insult my intelligence or call yours into question by claiming that the cooking process makes the omlette complete, and thus a human isn't human until it's "cooked" in the womb. If you're a native English speaker of reasonable intelligence, you can follow my (admittedly) limited analogy.)
I have a question:
Why is it The religious extreme and The scientific community?
I could just as easily say the supporters of life and the killers of babies -- but you'd probably call that hate speech.
Those opposed to human embryo stem cell research are not neccessarily extreme, or even religious. And those scientists who will pursue the research are not neccessarily pure, or even scientific. They could be complete charlatans, only wanting the funding because they're greedy. Hell, what if one of the scientists create a cure for alzheimers from this research and manages to patent it? What will you say then?
Normally I ignore ACs -- anybody without enough courage in their convictions to at least stand behind a pseudonym is a Craven Anonymous Coward -- but this is too ignorant to pass up:
You've got to be kidding. Oh my god, sperm donation is horrific? Fuck, I've got friends that did that in college. I can't even think of how much
money I could've made by now, doing that. And egg donation is wrong? Ooooooooooh, you mean that once a month a potential life is aborted?
Get real.
No, an egg alone or a sperm alone is not a human life. When I mention donating a sperm or egg, it's for the embryo bank to combine to then create a life in the form of an embryo. You may find it extreme, but I do believe that once that egg and sperm combine, life begins -- that life has been tuned to receive the Great Radio Signal of the Soul, if you will.
Would you do what you needed to do to produce stems cells and feel like your killing off an unborn child or would you feel like you are using your natural abilities to produce embryos that will save YOUR PRESENTLY LIVING CHILD???
This is the reason a lot of people oppose human embryo stem cell research. Notice, it's not "no stem-cell research" -- adult, umbilical, and placenta stem cells are fine. It's the idea of creating a life (I do believe it is a human life, no matter the cell count) for the purpose of harvesting stem cells.
I do believe in a slippery slope, and I fear that if this first step is allowed, and stem cells are found to be true saviors for millions of degenerative diseases, there will be people willing to open embryo banks (like current day plasma donation centers) -- donate an egg or sperm, get $50!
Mix in cloning, and it's a short step from there to growing humans for harvesting their organs. It's just like brainwashing -- if you can believe this, you'll soon believe this, then this, and then you'll believe something completely out of character before you know it.
And, unfortunately, the only way we CAN discuss an issue like this is through politics. The government should act to protect the lives of its citizens, it's one of its true functions. If you believe this is a human life, then it deserves protection.
All I know for certain is that this will be a contentious issue for years to come.
Well, in a just and sane world, if you accidentally drop your copy of Saul Bellow's _Herzog_ overboard, it's gone forever, and you'll have to purchase the book again.
But (again, in a just and sane world), if you lose your ebook reader and your harddrive craps out, you could download your book collection again.
Of course, the current crop of publishers don't seem to want to allow you to do this.
I have done this as well -- my Palm IIIxe has carried some of the worlds best literature on it, and I've used iSilo to read it, and loved it. It's especially great to read in low-light (or even in the dark), because you can turn the backlight on and continue reading under the stars without a 400 watt sodium lamp spoiling the atmosphere.
But, I also like my well stocked and well-thumbed library, which I intend to keep adding to. When I'm looking for a book to read in bed, or in the tub, or indeed in the hammock on a lazy spring day, I browse better in the library than on a computer. Plus, I enjoy the feeling of knowing that on my shelves are dozens of friends that I can call on at anytime to whisk my brain away to another place, another time.
My thinking is, put your novel or text online, and let me try it on ebook for a buck or two. If it's particularly good, and worthy of being a long-time friend, give me the opportunity to buy a nice hardbound copy at a reasonable price. You'll get two sales from me! Winner!
Remember those books on demand machines? Here's the perfect opportuninty for authors -- put a better binding and stock in the machine, and I can take my e-book on my Palm to the local Borders and get it printed immediately for $10-15, maybe even with a credit for the ebook I already bought.
The opportunity is there, it will take a brave company to truly embrace the concept in order for it to work. I have no doubt that Random House will *not* be the company to do it. I doubt it will be some failing dot.bomb either -- but some visionary will do it, and will convice a real author to participate, and it will happen.
Unless they rust I'll never need new furniture. Best part is the colours are starting to come back into fashion!:-D
That's it exactly... what kills me is those old, heavy metal chairs didn't cost *that* much back in the 50s. So I wonder what the markup is on these new plastic chairs...
Jeez, guys catch up with 2K1
on
Case Tweaking
·
· Score: 1, Troll
Dissing Mac hardware is so 1993... Apple's got plenty of things wrong, but their hardware isn't really one of them.
I dunno -- my favorite chairs are the office chairs built in the 50s and 60s. They're comfortable and sturdy, and I can sit for many hours in them. They go for between $5-10 at any flea market or thrift store.
(Also, 20-30 year old drafting stools are much better than the $60 POS they sell in Office Depot for all you amateur architects and engineers out there)
Slashdot Mirror
because science is boring to non-scientists. Most of us couldn't give a ripe shit about science.
Honestly, it's a little disingenuous to whine about the state of science education in America -- the same complaint can be made about literature.
Get over it -- science nerds are just like any other type of nerd. Nerds live in a Nerd Ghetto, surrounded by AOL Barbarians. Quit your whining, pick up a stick and make a few rounds around the walls unhooking grappling hooks and pushing seige ladders away from the wall and into the moat.
Unfortunately, more money isn't the answer to our educational problems. In Washington DC, the schools spend about $9000 per student per year (figures from memory, but they're close). That's a lot of jack, and Washington DC public schools are horrible.
There are many problems; money isn't one of them.
My main complaint is the passivity and format of TV. Beyond channel surfing, there is no interaction, and segmenting learning into 30 minute blocks leaves huge holes in the knowledge. But after you watch a 30 minute show on dinosaurs, you're left with the impression that you've learned a lot, when you've actually barely scratched the surface. Going into greater detail on TV is simply too expensive to produce and air, and thus the knowledge emparted is incomplete.
(plus, I simply hate the culture that TV endorses -- beautiful people doing exciting things! gaaah!)
Your point is valid and well taken. If your child is not learning from school, then something must be done.
Unfortunately, because of the virtual monopoly the government has on the education system, there is little you can do except 1) send your kid to private school, or 2) home school the little blighter.
But do you think that a Web enabled computer helps a kid that is motivated to learn? Possibly, but not nearly as helpful as a well-stocked library. If a book gets printed, there is a higher chance for it to contain at least verifiable facts, whereas too much on the Web is useless (at best), ignorant, or actively wrong (at worst).
Plopping a kid in front of a computer is better than in front of a TV, but not nearly as good as a well-written textbook (of which there are so few these days...)
Goes to show that education is hard, I guess.
Well, for programming nerds, the days of DOS were much easier, since they were allowed to program in modes: "now we're in editing mode, so the keys CTRL-I activate italics, now we're in layout mode and CTRL-I now adjusts line spacing..."
... and the users rebelled. "It's too hard! I keep erasing my document because I can't remember what mode I'm in!"
Then GUIs gave us modelessness, and all was better in the world for users, but programmers now had three times as much work to do.
Of course, now users still lose their documents, but because of the brain dead way OSes work, the user ends up feeling like it's his fault, even if it's not.
except that in a school situation, I wouldn't want kids browsing, I'd want them researching.
I don't want my kids on the Internet at all while at school. The Internet is of dubious value to learning and teaching, whereas a kid sitting down with a teacher can accomplish a lot.
A computer is a poor replacement for caring teachers, involved parents and a supportive community.
Think about what RMS does, and why -- he has a passionate belief "software should be Free", and expresses it in a fairly consistant manner. He fights a somewhat unpopular fight with little reward -- outside of recognition within of a small, tight-knit community, which isn't much.
RMS has been fighting this fight longer than some GNU/Linux nerds have been alive. He had the vision to kick the thing off in the first place. His reward? A string of Slashdot readers questioning his relevency, sanity and parentage.
While I may disagree with some of RMS's views (I get the occasional whiff of Unreconstructed Socialist from some of his writing, and nobody hates a commie (or a socialist) more than me), I have the utmost respect for his work, and I'm thankful for it.
While Ulrich may have a genuine beef with RMS, waving it about in public (and Slashdot posting the story) is not very professional, nor productive.
He saved the page to local disk -- network time had nothing to do with it.
However, his hardware did: a Pentium 166. My main machine is a P-133, and I normally see such load times on complicated sites. While I could use a faster computer, a slower one is a good indicator of when your HTML is getting out of hand and that it's time to stop dinking with it.
Regardless, I still use Netscape 4.7x for these reasons -- it's fast, relatively stable while Mozilla on a P-133 is a complete joke.
duh.... temporary brain fart... sorry about that.
let's try "Gassee got snubbed when Amelio chose Jobs over him."
Oh, and I don't think Godwin's law applies here. I'm not comparing anybody to Nazis, just happen to be using a Nazi in an analogy.
"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
No comparison, just an analogy. :-)
Not the point -- Raskin loves Apple, sure. My point it he has good reason to loathe Steve Jobs.
More importantly, most of them have a reason to be in a blind rage regarding Steve Jobs -- blind enough to overlook the good things and concentrate on the bad just because "it's Steve".
Amelio, as you say, was tossed out on his ass by Jobs. Unjustifiably, I say, since Amelio was given the thankless task of doing the dirty work for the Apple board, plus he hired Ellen Hancock(!!). But, as his book attests, he's pretty bitter towards Jobs.
Gassee was hired as a sort of kindred-spirit to replace Jobs after he left. Gassee was Scully's boy-toy -- but Gassee didn't have Jobs's panache, and knew it. He was more of a testosterone charged computer guy, whereas Jobs was more "visionary". Basically, Gassee added slots to the Mac line. Then, at Be, Jobs snubbed him (with good reason) by going with NeXT.
But the worst is Raskin. I've alwasy liked Raskin, and honestly, since he was the guy who *started* the Macintosh project (it was named Macintosh because that was *Raskin's* favorite kind of apple) it's hard to NOT have respect. But, Jef has always rankled at Jobs's buttinski attitude, and when Jobs pushed him out the Macintosh team's door at Bandley 3, he was pissed. Basically, Jobs stole Macintosh from Raskin. That is hard, hard, hard to let go, especially when your vision of what Macintosh was to be (he did build it, called the Canon Cat) failed without so much as a whimper.
This roundtable is like getting B'nai B'rith, Winston Churchill and Jesse Jackson around a table to discuss Goebbels.
Named after a man in Greek mythology who got the first recorded venereal disease, and tried to get it cured at the local HMO.
That vicious bagbiter Hippocrates wouldn't allow the leech procedure and Sisyphus spent years arguing the case before Plato and Socrates.
Eventually, Sisyphus went to an illegal back-collonade leechist.
No, not "Bingo" -- try "Bimbo".
Point 1 and 2 are irrelavent -- while the article threw up a couple of examples that seem depressing, they miss the fact that it's really #3 that makes the whole mish-mash go 'round.
A dedicated and motivated hacker will always be able to engineer around limitations in onternational politics or bandwidth. It's what makes us love hackers so much.
The point about hardware not being crackable is ridiculous -- if the content is going to be read, listened to or watched, it has to go analog for a bit -- and at that point it is vulnerable. All it takes is one guy to re-record, transcribe, copy or what have you, and a "free" version is in the wild.
Are Gnutella packets suceptible because of their headers? No biggie -- encrypt the headers, mutate the headers, whatever. It's a Whack-a-Mole game that can't be won.
Ignore #1 and #2 -- it's #3 that will keep the other problems from encroaching.
Your response to my post is to throw up a logical argument? Hrumph...
Your response is weak. Try again, little boy.
Because that's the truth. Current polls suggest that the opposition to stem cell research doesn't lie in the mainstream.
Please -- spare me. "Mainstream" is a poor reason to do anything. Burning witches was "mainstream" as well.
Reasonable people can disagree -- disagree without gratuitous name-calling. Your claim that it's "the truth" does not make it so. A single example of a non-religious anti-human embryo stem cell supporter disproves your blanket statement of "religious extreme" (wow, that's mangled syntax -- I hope you made your way to the end of that sentance).
That's why you hear enigmatic things like the Pope publicly opposing the research, while the news reports in the same breath that the majority of American catholics support it.
What's enigmatic about it? He opposes it! No. Not. Negative. Not ever. Uh-uh. Negatory, good buddy. Is that enigmatic?
The Pope is not beholden to what American Catholics believe -- thank God for that. As I understand Catholocism, if the Pope is sitting in the chair of St. Peter, he's supposed to be infallible, the mouthpiece of God. While I don't believe it myself, Catholics are supposed to.
Besides, most American Catholics are actually members of the most popular religion in the world, non-practicing Christianity. I care not a whit for their opinion. The mainstream also think Britney Spears is swell... pffft!
And specific cases aside, the "scientific community" is pretty single-minded on the issue--they see the research as a valuable tool.
The scientific community is single-minded on many things, not all of them right, or even desirable. For example, I wish the scientific community had given the whole atom splitting idea a pass -- nuclear waste is pretty bad, and so are dirty anti-nuke protesters. Regardless, the scientific community is not in lock step on this issue, as least as I've heard it told. I know my uncle, who's a doctor, is most emphatically against human embryo stem cell research.
Ignoring the fact that the scientists aren't "killing" anything that wouldn't be "killed" anyway (what do you think they do with those unused embryos, eh?)
This brings up a point not mentioned much -- I'm consistant in my belief -- those embryos should not be created if they are not going to be allowed the chance to live. This argument was mentioned way back when fertility clinics were just starting this process. The "religious extreme", as you call them, said that it could lead to harvesting the embryos for fetal tissue research, or for organs. No mention of stem cells, because nobody was looking at that. Lo and behold, we're here today arguing over the very issue the scientific community (at that time) said was a non-issue. Now it is, and the religious among us are now "extreme". Funny, that.
it's highly questionable to morally equate scientific investigators--people whose work has a great chance of doing good--to common murderers.
If medical experimentation on convicted murderers (or organ harvesting) was for the common good, would you be for it? I hope not.
The issue comes down to "is an embryo a human life", simple as that. That's all. Those that oppose human embryo stem cell research don't oppose it out of a fear of technology, or medicine, or science. It is a simple matter of we don't want human life snuffed out for the sake of research.
You may disagree, and claim that human life doesn't begin at the moment of conception. I ask "at what point is a human defined as a human?" Whatever arbitrary line you draw is just that -- arbitrary. I fall back to the only point at which it is safe to say "that's a human life" -- conception.
And at this point, you've thoroughly proven that you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
At this point, you've proved you know little about human nature. I am not a scientist -- if pressed, I suppose since I majored in Art, I'd be an artist. However, my much more educated friends -- an anthropologist PhD candidate and an astrophysicist PhD candidate among them -- love to tell stories about scientists who are mostly looking to recieve $CREDITS, where $CREDITS may be money, or fame, or acknowledgement of their peers... whatever the going currency may be.
Federally-funded stem cell research will be administered through the NIH. If the NIH, with it's extensive peer review systems (consisting of some of the best scientific minds in the US) is sponsoring the research of greedy charlatans, then Bush has bigger problems than deciding whether a blastocyst constitutes a person...
I must say, having the NIH run things doesn't make me feel any better -- but that might be the libertarian in me coming out. I have a hard time believing that a federally funded endeavor is free from politics, and science-through-politics is rarely a good idea.
I'd say: "hooray! someone found a cure for alzheimers." And it would be a great day. And if I were ever diagnosed with alzheimers, I would gladly pay for the treatment, thrilled that someone found a way to cure me of a progressive, debilitating and dehumanizing illness.
At the cost of life? How many people is it okay to kill to save another life? Here we part ways again, on the primary argument -- is that "blastocyst", as you call it, a human life?
And, in case you've been asleep for the majority of the stem-cell debate, the very reason scientists are so keen on keeping federal funding for this research is so that we have a fighting chance of keeping the results open. In the era of gene patents and spiraling research costs, it's essential that silly and vacuous political arguments don't cut off our ability to do interesting research in a public manner.
Your last statement is filled with horrible ideas: "vacuous political arguments"? There are no political arguments. It's a simple decision -- at what point is it a human life? Politics have nothing to do with it, outside of the question of whether the government should be murdering citizens (or using clumps of undifferentiated meiotic cells).
Second, "interesting research in a public manner". I thought this was for the public good? If not, we can drop the argument altogether. I don't think you mean that the way it sounds -- what's interesting? I'm sure the Nazi medical tests were interesting, too. (-1 point for me for invoking Godwin's Law)
All this verbiage doesn't answer my original question -- why do the proponents of human embryo stem cell research get to portray the other side as "extreme", while the dissidents aren't allowed to portray the proponents as "baby killers" (which, undoubtably they would do if allowed to) with the same impunity?
Not a theory, just an expression. I believe in a soul. Upon conception, the soul comes alive. Whether the body is all there or not, the soul exists. Call it mysticism, or call the soul a natural occurance from the combining of an egg and sperm -- regardless, the life begins there.
"Wasting" eggs and sperms isn't a problem. Why not? They aren't human life. I suppose you could call them "potential life", but only in the same sense that eggs, milk, and cheese are "potential omlette". However, once you put all those ingredients in a pan, you have an omlette.
(Please don't insult my intelligence or call yours into question by claiming that the cooking process makes the omlette complete, and thus a human isn't human until it's "cooked" in the womb. If you're a native English speaker of reasonable intelligence, you can follow my (admittedly) limited analogy.)
I have a question:
Why is it The religious extreme and The scientific community?
I could just as easily say the supporters of life and the killers of babies -- but you'd probably call that hate speech.
Those opposed to human embryo stem cell research are not neccessarily extreme, or even religious. And those scientists who will pursue the research are not neccessarily pure, or even scientific. They could be complete charlatans, only wanting the funding because they're greedy. Hell, what if one of the scientists create a cure for alzheimers from this research and manages to patent it? What will you say then?
Normally I ignore ACs -- anybody without enough courage in their convictions to at least stand behind a pseudonym is a Craven Anonymous Coward -- but this is too ignorant to pass up:
You've got to be kidding. Oh my god, sperm donation is horrific? Fuck, I've got friends that did that in college. I can't even think of how much money I could've made by now, doing that. And egg donation is wrong? Ooooooooooh, you mean that once a month a potential life is aborted? Get real.
No, an egg alone or a sperm alone is not a human life. When I mention donating a sperm or egg, it's for the embryo bank to combine to then create a life in the form of an embryo. You may find it extreme, but I do believe that once that egg and sperm combine, life begins -- that life has been tuned to receive the Great Radio Signal of the Soul, if you will.
This is the reason a lot of people oppose human embryo stem cell research. Notice, it's not "no stem-cell research" -- adult, umbilical, and placenta stem cells are fine. It's the idea of creating a life (I do believe it is a human life, no matter the cell count) for the purpose of harvesting stem cells.
I do believe in a slippery slope, and I fear that if this first step is allowed, and stem cells are found to be true saviors for millions of degenerative diseases, there will be people willing to open embryo banks (like current day plasma donation centers) -- donate an egg or sperm, get $50!
Mix in cloning, and it's a short step from there to growing humans for harvesting their organs. It's just like brainwashing -- if you can believe this, you'll soon believe this, then this, and then you'll believe something completely out of character before you know it.
And, unfortunately, the only way we CAN discuss an issue like this is through politics. The government should act to protect the lives of its citizens, it's one of its true functions. If you believe this is a human life, then it deserves protection.
All I know for certain is that this will be a contentious issue for years to come.
Well, in a just and sane world, if you accidentally drop your copy of Saul Bellow's _Herzog_ overboard, it's gone forever, and you'll have to purchase the book again.
But (again, in a just and sane world), if you lose your ebook reader and your harddrive craps out, you could download your book collection again.
Of course, the current crop of publishers don't seem to want to allow you to do this.
I have done this as well -- my Palm IIIxe has carried some of the worlds best literature on it, and I've used iSilo to read it, and loved it. It's especially great to read in low-light (or even in the dark), because you can turn the backlight on and continue reading under the stars without a 400 watt sodium lamp spoiling the atmosphere.
But, I also like my well stocked and well-thumbed library, which I intend to keep adding to. When I'm looking for a book to read in bed, or in the tub, or indeed in the hammock on a lazy spring day, I browse better in the library than on a computer. Plus, I enjoy the feeling of knowing that on my shelves are dozens of friends that I can call on at anytime to whisk my brain away to another place, another time.
My thinking is, put your novel or text online, and let me try it on ebook for a buck or two. If it's particularly good, and worthy of being a long-time friend, give me the opportunity to buy a nice hardbound copy at a reasonable price. You'll get two sales from me! Winner!
Remember those books on demand machines? Here's the perfect opportuninty for authors -- put a better binding and stock in the machine, and I can take my e-book on my Palm to the local Borders and get it printed immediately for $10-15, maybe even with a credit for the ebook I already bought.
The opportunity is there, it will take a brave company to truly embrace the concept in order for it to work. I have no doubt that Random House will *not* be the company to do it. I doubt it will be some failing dot.bomb either -- but some visionary will do it, and will convice a real author to participate, and it will happen.
Oddly enough (or maybe not...) that's my favorite working situation as well. A $40 folding table and a $10, 50-60 year old desk chair.
Makes you really wonder about those dot-dummies, how many of them were really all that smart.
That's it exactly... what kills me is those old, heavy metal chairs didn't cost *that* much back in the 50s. So I wonder what the markup is on these new plastic chairs...
Dissing Mac hardware is so 1993... Apple's got plenty of things wrong, but their hardware isn't really one of them.
Catch up with the present...
I dunno -- my favorite chairs are the office chairs built in the 50s and 60s. They're comfortable and sturdy, and I can sit for many hours in them. They go for between $5-10 at any flea market or thrift store.
(Also, 20-30 year old drafting stools are much better than the $60 POS they sell in Office Depot for all you amateur architects and engineers out there)