Um, what war plagues India? Border skirmishes with Pakistan? War plagues the American heartland more than it plagues India...
Anyway, hippies amuse me. What is the only way to deal with starvation? Money! How do you make money? By spending less, and making more. Linux should help the Indian government do both.
While I don't doubt that the particular absolutist construction has been used before, the particular statement "you're either with [us], or you're..." is particularly well attributable to Bush. My point is not that Bush is unique in his view, but that Lucas's jab was directed at him, rather than at the idea in general.
Sure I can. Once is a natural process, the other requires technology to achieve.
what is the distinction? What is a womb other than a technology for turning embroys into babies? There is no reasonable way to distinguish "natural" from "unnatural". What is natural? Something that arises in nature? Well, people arise in nature, and people build houses, so aren't houses natural? Are anthills natural? You can only distinguish the two if you believe that people are somehow fundementally different from any other creature on earth, not in terms of capabilities, but intrinsicly different. You can say, "what God created is natural, but what humans create is not natural". But you can't prove that, so again, we're back to having no provable distinction.
This doesn't follow, since the unaided kidney cell isn't an embryo.
You mean an unaided kidney cell cannot grow into a human? Well, sorry to break it to you, but an unaided embryo cannot grow into a human either.
If this future technology was used to transform a kidney cell into an embyro, then that embryo should be protected.
There is nothing special about an embryo, intrinscally. The reason people want to protect them is because they have the potential to grow into a human being. If they didn't, they'd be just like every other cell in the body. However, the only reason an embryo can turn into baby and a kidney cell cannot is because the technology we use to create babies (wombs), operate on the former and not the latter. If the technology existed to create babies from kidney cells (after all, they are as genetically complete as an embryo), then should kidney cells be protected?
I would not do it and I do not agree that it should be done. The end does not justify the means.
You believe that, but that doesn't make it true. I don't believe either that the ends justifies the means. But like Machiavelli said, certain ends to justify certain means. Any rational analysis suggests that saving 1000 lives is worth taking one. Only if you leave our world and postulate the existence of some higher truth that prevents such a thing, only then can you claim that those children should not be saved.
Then I assume you won't mind if those of us who think you're wrong drag you to the disintegration chamber?
That does not logically follow what I said. I'd protest not because I believe human life is invioble, but I believe in self-preservation. But let me play along with your scenario. If you were dragging me to the disintigration chamber, and I killed you to protect myself, then very few people would fault me for it. Thus, human life is obviously not invioble. As soon as you justify taking life in one way, you cannot claim its inviobility. It becomes just one more priority to be balanced with all the other priorities people have.
If reading a D&D manual teachs you new vocabulary, then you obviously don't read enough. Shit, I read my cereal box in the mornings too, it doesn't make it anything more than a silly way to kill time.
Seriously, though, I didn't think it was a *bad* movie, just not a very good one. The acting and dialog really hurt the movie for me. It kept taking me out of the action, because it just plain didn't fit. Like during the first scene where Obi Wan and Anakin invade that cruiser. I'd get drawn in for a few moments, then snap back when someone opened their mouth. It just looked so obvious that the only reason they were talking was because that's what the script said at that point. I particularly hated the writers tendency to insert "cool" or "humerous" phrases in situations where they didn't make sense, or were totally out of place.
Obi Wan in particular was horrible. He was nothing like the guy from the original films, or even Ep. I and II. Hey made way to many quips and generally came off as a wiseass.
There is a threshold. The acting and dialog in most good sci-fi isn't great, but at least its not bad enough to pull you out of the story.
Anyway, the acting and dialog in the originals is actually not that bad. The original was nominated for Best Picture, Best Writing, and Best Director Oscars. Mark Hamil and Carrie Fischer won Saturn Awards (a Sci-Fi/Horror award) for their roles.
They are genetically complete human beings. It doesn't matter what end of the timeline they are on.
Assume an embryo is a child. What is the distinction between an embryo and a kidney cell? Both are genetically complete, in that both contain the knowledge necessary to create a full person. The only distinction is that an embryo can be developed into a person, and a kidney cell can't. But this isn't inherent to the embryo and the kidney cell. It's simply the result of the current state of technology. Namely, we have natural technology (a womb), that can turn an embryo into a baby. Now, postulate a future in which we have man-made technology that can turn a kidney cell into a person (which is clearly possible). Now, you cannot create any distinction between the two, and if you accept that an embryo is a person, so too must you accept that a kidney cell is a person. Since the latter is ridiculous, so to must be the former.
Now, theologically, you can make the distinction that an embryo contains some innate "humanness" that distinguishes it from any other types of cell clusters. If you believe in this (it doesn't have to be religious, by the way, any belief that humans are more than the sum of their parts will do), then you can create an additional distinction to solve the embryo/kidney cell problem. However, science has yet to ascertain the existance of such a "humanness", so while you can believe it all you want, others are free to not believe it, and you cannot say you are right and they are not.
All of the above was a long way of saying: it's dishonest to claim that supporters of stem cell research believe in killing children. They believe in killing embryos, and do not believe embryos are children. Since you cannot prove that they are, all you can do is agree to disagree.
Killing one is one too many.
Oh please. If one baby could be killed to end the hunger of hundreds of children that starve to death every day, would you not do it? If you would not have the stomach to do it yourself, do you not at least agree it should be done? The idea that human life is invioble is ridiculous. Nature does not consider human life invioble, religion does not consider human life invioble, and most people, faced with their own self preservation, do not consider human life invioble. Now, human life is important, to the preservation of the species (something which nature, religion, and people recognize), but its merely one priority to be weighed against many others.
They're both an equally big waste of time. At the end, you haven't really *done* anything. You haven't created anything, or learned anything, or enriched yourself, or gained anything at all. Maybe it makes you feel good, but then again, so does mastrubation. The end result is the same --- you're exactly the same person afterwards that you were before.
Now, I'm not saying that you always have to be productive and do things to improve yourself. That would be silly. People need to do pointless things to amuse themselves. But judging your pointless amusement as somehow more worthy than someone elses is just stupid.
It's not the "wanting to meet" part that I took exception with, but the "bimbo" part. The implication was that if you waste your time by shopping at the mall, rather than waste your time by playing a board game, you're somehow a bimbo (read: dumb).
I recommend seeing it, but let's be objective about this. The acting *was* horrible, and the dialog *was* bad. Every professional review of the movie I've seen said as much. Whether you like the movie really depends on your tolerence for bad acting and dialog. Or rather, how bad it has to get before you're jarred out of the story world and realize you're watching a movie.
Women and children are just people. People die in wars. In fact, they die all the time. Sometimes, them dying in wars can prevent other women and children fro dying as a result of the status quo.
Besides, you're not supposed to forgive Vader. You're supposed to realize that Vader and Anakin aren't the same person.
Bzzt. Wrong. Nobody rationalizes killing many children to save one. Proponents of stem cell research reject the very idea that embroys are children. Even if it was, it would be "kill a few children to save thousands", but not that many embroys are necessary to maintain viable stem cell lines, at least relative to how many people that could be saved by the technology.
Now, it's up to you to decide whether you think embroys are children, or whether its worth it to kill a few to save many, but either way, its intellectualy dishonest to mischaracterize the arguments of your opponents, so I suggest you avoid doing so in the future.
That wasn't evil, it was anger. And those weren't children he knew, they were random members of a people who had wronged him. Killing jedi trainees he knew is quite different. Now, I don't think it would have been a problem if Lucas hadn't played up the "he's good now" thing. He spends the entire first half of the movie kissing Obi Wan's ass. Perhaps Lucas was trying to convey that Anakin's behavior in the first half was superficial, and he's underlying nature hadn't changed at all, but he doesn't have the directoral skills to pull off something that subtle, and Christensen wouldn't have been able to make it convincing anyway.
Well, that's a very well research post, but it kind of missed the point. While the plot might have existed for a long time, the dialogue surely didn't. There is no mistaking "you're either with me or you're my enemy". When I heard the first two words, I anticipated the rest of the line. As for "only the Sith see things in absolutes", that too was an obvious jab, for the simple reason that its so out of place. It's not like the Jedi *don't* see things in absolutes, nor do they seem to have a problem with absolutes of their own.
Yeah right. Most people won't go near an stick-shift these days. The only know a couple of guys who drive a stick, and they're pretty hardcore people...
I dunno. I don't think he can't act. Have you seen him in "Stattered Glass"? It wasn't great acting, but I thought it was decent. Although, he was playing a pouty, immature character, so maybe he's just good at that...
It's not those lines. It's the "you're either with my, or your my enemy" (from Anakin), and the "only the Sith see things in absolutes" (from Obi Wan).
While I agree with him, I personally couldn't really care less what Lucas thinks, and his references to the situation are as simple and without subtlety as we accuse Bush of being.
FYI: I'm not trying to single out D&D players here. I play Halo for kicks. And yes, Halo is a stupid game, it wastes time that I could be using for something productive. But I'm not going to pretend that playing Halo somehow makes me smarter than somebody who chooses to waste time in a different way.
You know, the whole D&D playing Star Wars watching thign doesn't imply intelligence any more than the "let's go to the mall and shop to kill time" thing. Indeed, it implies stupidity, just about different things.
No, not really. It was better than the first two (in the last half, anyway), but I've seen better on much cheaper sci-fi movies. But at least during the last half of the movie, Lucas seems to take the hint and not have much in the way of dialogue at all.
So true! That was exactly my reaction to Episode III. Now, it's not like I expect great acting in a Sci-Fi movie, but I expect passable acting. I expect good enough acting that I'm not continuously drawn out of the action by bad it is (or how cringe-worthy the dialogue is).
I watch Sci Fi channel, for god's sake, so I'm not a movie snob by any means. The acting in those movies is bad, but they are also filmed on $10. In a $200m major blockbuster with well-known actors, I expect the acting and dialog to at least keep up with something like Stargate, a series filmed for a fraction of a fraction of that cost.
Actually, if you consider biology a science, you've got to throw psychology in with it. Biology is fuzzy enough that a lot of it overlaps with experimental and medical pyschology.
While that definition is true, the actual mechanics of the field is not. While yes, it's "simply" connecting correlations between human behavior and other events, that in itself is a non-trivial task.
Very simple example. Say you're contracted by a government to help them develop a health system for their poor rural population. How do you arrange the system to minimize cost and maximize utilization? Sociology can tell you a lot about how peoples' behavior will affect the way they use available services. While you can say these conclusions are "obvious", the fact remains that a lot of big entities don't handle the situations correctly. A lot of governments and aid groups waste a lot of money building additional facillities that are not needed, or building facillities in places where they will not be used.
Slashdot Mirror
Not anymore you arent...
Um, what war plagues India? Border skirmishes with Pakistan? War plagues the American heartland more than it plagues India...
Anyway, hippies amuse me. What is the only way to deal with starvation? Money! How do you make money? By spending less, and making more. Linux should help the Indian government do both.
I can just imagine the cognative dissonance in a Slashdot-browsing IT worker:
Hmm. I love Linux, but I hate India. Ah! What to do!
While I don't doubt that the particular absolutist construction has been used before, the particular statement "you're either with [us], or you're..." is particularly well attributable to Bush. My point is not that Bush is unique in his view, but that Lucas's jab was directed at him, rather than at the idea in general.
Sure I can. Once is a natural process, the other requires technology to achieve.
what is the distinction? What is a womb other than a technology for turning embroys into babies? There is no reasonable way to distinguish "natural" from "unnatural". What is natural? Something that arises in nature? Well, people arise in nature, and people build houses, so aren't houses natural? Are anthills natural? You can only distinguish the two if you believe that people are somehow fundementally different from any other creature on earth, not in terms of capabilities, but intrinsicly different. You can say, "what God created is natural, but what humans create is not natural". But you can't prove that, so again, we're back to having no provable distinction.
This doesn't follow, since the unaided kidney cell isn't an embryo.
You mean an unaided kidney cell cannot grow into a human? Well, sorry to break it to you, but an unaided embryo cannot grow into a human either.
If this future technology was used to transform a kidney cell into an embyro, then that embryo should be protected.
There is nothing special about an embryo, intrinscally. The reason people want to protect them is because they have the potential to grow into a human being. If they didn't, they'd be just like every other cell in the body. However, the only reason an embryo can turn into baby and a kidney cell cannot is because the technology we use to create babies (wombs), operate on the former and not the latter. If the technology existed to create babies from kidney cells (after all, they are as genetically complete as an embryo), then should kidney cells be protected?
I would not do it and I do not agree that it should be done. The end does not justify the means.
You believe that, but that doesn't make it true. I don't believe either that the ends justifies the means. But like Machiavelli said, certain ends to justify certain means. Any rational analysis suggests that saving 1000 lives is worth taking one. Only if you leave our world and postulate the existence of some higher truth that prevents such a thing, only then can you claim that those children should not be saved.
Then I assume you won't mind if those of us who think you're wrong drag you to the disintegration chamber?
That does not logically follow what I said. I'd protest not because I believe human life is invioble, but I believe in self-preservation. But let me play along with your scenario. If you were dragging me to the disintigration chamber, and I killed you to protect myself, then very few people would fault me for it. Thus, human life is obviously not invioble. As soon as you justify taking life in one way, you cannot claim its inviobility. It becomes just one more priority to be balanced with all the other priorities people have.
If reading a D&D manual teachs you new vocabulary, then you obviously don't read enough. Shit, I read my cereal box in the mornings too, it doesn't make it anything more than a silly way to kill time.
where did all these Ep3 haters come from?
The theaters...
Seriously, though, I didn't think it was a *bad* movie, just not a very good one. The acting and dialog really hurt the movie for me. It kept taking me out of the action, because it just plain didn't fit. Like during the first scene where Obi Wan and Anakin invade that cruiser. I'd get drawn in for a few moments, then snap back when someone opened their mouth. It just looked so obvious that the only reason they were talking was because that's what the script said at that point. I particularly hated the writers tendency to insert "cool" or "humerous" phrases in situations where they didn't make sense, or were totally out of place.
Obi Wan in particular was horrible. He was nothing like the guy from the original films, or even Ep. I and II. Hey made way to many quips and generally came off as a wiseass.
There is a threshold. The acting and dialog in most good sci-fi isn't great, but at least its not bad enough to pull you out of the story.
Anyway, the acting and dialog in the originals is actually not that bad. The original was nominated for Best Picture, Best Writing, and Best Director Oscars. Mark Hamil and Carrie Fischer won Saturn Awards (a Sci-Fi/Horror award) for their roles.
They are genetically complete human beings. It doesn't matter what end of the timeline they are on.
Assume an embryo is a child. What is the distinction between an embryo and a kidney cell? Both are genetically complete, in that both contain the knowledge necessary to create a full person. The only distinction is that an embryo can be developed into a person, and a kidney cell can't. But this isn't inherent to the embryo and the kidney cell. It's simply the result of the current state of technology. Namely, we have natural technology (a womb), that can turn an embryo into a baby. Now, postulate a future in which we have man-made technology that can turn a kidney cell into a person (which is clearly possible). Now, you cannot create any distinction between the two, and if you accept that an embryo is a person, so too must you accept that a kidney cell is a person. Since the latter is ridiculous, so to must be the former.
Now, theologically, you can make the distinction that an embryo contains some innate "humanness" that distinguishes it from any other types of cell clusters. If you believe in this (it doesn't have to be religious, by the way, any belief that humans are more than the sum of their parts will do), then you can create an additional distinction to solve the embryo/kidney cell problem. However, science has yet to ascertain the existance of such a "humanness", so while you can believe it all you want, others are free to not believe it, and you cannot say you are right and they are not.
All of the above was a long way of saying: it's dishonest to claim that supporters of stem cell research believe in killing children. They believe in killing embryos, and do not believe embryos are children. Since you cannot prove that they are, all you can do is agree to disagree.
Killing one is one too many.
Oh please. If one baby could be killed to end the hunger of hundreds of children that starve to death every day, would you not do it? If you would not have the stomach to do it yourself, do you not at least agree it should be done? The idea that human life is invioble is ridiculous. Nature does not consider human life invioble, religion does not consider human life invioble, and most people, faced with their own self preservation, do not consider human life invioble. Now, human life is important, to the preservation of the species (something which nature, religion, and people recognize), but its merely one priority to be weighed against many others.
They're both an equally big waste of time. At the end, you haven't really *done* anything. You haven't created anything, or learned anything, or enriched yourself, or gained anything at all. Maybe it makes you feel good, but then again, so does mastrubation. The end result is the same --- you're exactly the same person afterwards that you were before.
Now, I'm not saying that you always have to be productive and do things to improve yourself. That would be silly. People need to do pointless things to amuse themselves. But judging your pointless amusement as somehow more worthy than someone elses is just stupid.
It's not the "wanting to meet" part that I took exception with, but the "bimbo" part. The implication was that if you waste your time by shopping at the mall, rather than waste your time by playing a board game, you're somehow a bimbo (read: dumb).
I recommend seeing it, but let's be objective about this. The acting *was* horrible, and the dialog *was* bad. Every professional review of the movie I've seen said as much. Whether you like the movie really depends on your tolerence for bad acting and dialog. Or rather, how bad it has to get before you're jarred out of the story world and realize you're watching a movie.
Women and children are just people. People die in wars. In fact, they die all the time. Sometimes, them dying in wars can prevent other women and children fro dying as a result of the status quo.
Besides, you're not supposed to forgive Vader. You're supposed to realize that Vader and Anakin aren't the same person.
Bzzt. Wrong. Nobody rationalizes killing many children to save one. Proponents of stem cell research reject the very idea that embroys are children. Even if it was, it would be "kill a few children to save thousands", but not that many embroys are necessary to maintain viable stem cell lines, at least relative to how many people that could be saved by the technology.
Now, it's up to you to decide whether you think embroys are children, or whether its worth it to kill a few to save many, but either way, its intellectualy dishonest to mischaracterize the arguments of your opponents, so I suggest you avoid doing so in the future.
That wasn't evil, it was anger. And those weren't children he knew, they were random members of a people who had wronged him. Killing jedi trainees he knew is quite different. Now, I don't think it would have been a problem if Lucas hadn't played up the "he's good now" thing. He spends the entire first half of the movie kissing Obi Wan's ass. Perhaps Lucas was trying to convey that Anakin's behavior in the first half was superficial, and he's underlying nature hadn't changed at all, but he doesn't have the directoral skills to pull off something that subtle, and Christensen wouldn't have been able to make it convincing anyway.
Well, that's a very well research post, but it kind of missed the point. While the plot might have existed for a long time, the dialogue surely didn't. There is no mistaking "you're either with me or you're my enemy". When I heard the first two words, I anticipated the rest of the line. As for "only the Sith see things in absolutes", that too was an obvious jab, for the simple reason that its so out of place. It's not like the Jedi *don't* see things in absolutes, nor do they seem to have a problem with absolutes of their own.
Yeah right. Most people won't go near an stick-shift these days. The only know a couple of guys who drive a stick, and they're pretty hardcore people...
I dunno. I don't think he can't act. Have you seen him in "Stattered Glass"? It wasn't great acting, but I thought it was decent. Although, he was playing a pouty, immature character, so maybe he's just good at that...
It's not those lines. It's the "you're either with my, or your my enemy" (from Anakin), and the "only the Sith see things in absolutes" (from Obi Wan).
While I agree with him, I personally couldn't really care less what Lucas thinks, and his references to the situation are as simple and without subtlety as we accuse Bush of being.
FYI: I'm not trying to single out D&D players here. I play Halo for kicks. And yes, Halo is a stupid game, it wastes time that I could be using for something productive. But I'm not going to pretend that playing Halo somehow makes me smarter than somebody who chooses to waste time in a different way.
You know, the whole D&D playing Star Wars watching thign doesn't imply intelligence any more than the "let's go to the mall and shop to kill time" thing. Indeed, it implies stupidity, just about different things.
No, not really. It was better than the first two (in the last half, anyway), but I've seen better on much cheaper sci-fi movies. But at least during the last half of the movie, Lucas seems to take the hint and not have much in the way of dialogue at all.
So true! That was exactly my reaction to Episode III. Now, it's not like I expect great acting in a Sci-Fi movie, but I expect passable acting. I expect good enough acting that I'm not continuously drawn out of the action by bad it is (or how cringe-worthy the dialogue is).
I watch Sci Fi channel, for god's sake, so I'm not a movie snob by any means. The acting in those movies is bad, but they are also filmed on $10. In a $200m major blockbuster with well-known actors, I expect the acting and dialog to at least keep up with something like Stargate, a series filmed for a fraction of a fraction of that cost.
Actually, if you consider biology a science, you've got to throw psychology in with it. Biology is fuzzy enough that a lot of it overlaps with experimental and medical pyschology.
While that definition is true, the actual mechanics of the field is not. While yes, it's "simply" connecting correlations between human behavior and other events, that in itself is a non-trivial task.
Very simple example. Say you're contracted by a government to help them develop a health system for their poor rural population. How do you arrange the system to minimize cost and maximize utilization? Sociology can tell you a lot about how peoples' behavior will affect the way they use available services. While you can say these conclusions are "obvious", the fact remains that a lot of big entities don't handle the situations correctly. A lot of governments and aid groups waste a lot of money building additional facillities that are not needed, or building facillities in places where they will not be used.