You have such a simple-minded view of the planetary climate...that is...unfortunately...wrong. Planetary temperatures are not correlated with (in the order you mention them) 1)short-term earth-solar distance, 2)CO2 increases, 3)solar absorbtion-black body radiation 'balance', 4)warming sea water CO2 solubility decrease (also bad chemistry as carbonate chemistry is far more complex than just 'CO2 solubility') or 5) tundra melting.
It is a simplified explanation, suitable for slashdot. I note you do not offer an alternative mechanism that explains the curves mentioned. Normally, I'd gladly enter into a real scientific debate, but the slashdot comment system is really not suited for this.
That CO2 must warm the earth can also be concluded directly by looking at the absorbtion bands of CO2. You could even calculate the approximate effect (though not the feedback loops) from this, the atmospheric and distribution of CO2 and from the distribution of the electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere.
Apparently you have never actually looked at the absorption bands for CO2. There is already more than sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb all of the IR radiation that is capable of being absorbed by CO2, within the first few hundred meters of the atmosphere above the surface. Once absorbed, the energy is not trapped but is immediately re-emitted. The wavelength of the reemitted thermal radiation is a probability distribution depending ONLY on temperature that can be predicted with Planck's law and it is NOT concentrated within the narrow CO2 absorption band so almost all of that re-emitted raditation is free to radiate out into space untouched any further by your nemesis CO2.
Really? I think you must re-study your physics. CO2 does indeed reemit the infrared radiation, and the energy is (mostly) not related to temperature, but rather to the energy levels of the molecular frequncy in the CO_O bond (especially the frequency where the gap between the two oxygen atoms increase/decreases --- I think this is called "scissoring", but don't quote me on that). The frequency emitted is the frequency absorbed, more or less; I think you have blackbody light emitted confused with light emission cause by decay (Not sure about this word, "henfald" is the correct Danish word). Now, yes, actually, the temperature matters a bit, since the perceived emitted light is red-shifted (or blue-shifted) according to the entire molecule's speed. The direction is completely random, as I recall. It's been a while since I studied Raman spectroscopy, but I believe I have all the major points correct.
Not that you do not reveal yourself as a parrot-sceptic with words like "Nemesis". Frankly, I do not believe I, or my country, will be significantly affected by GW before 2100, so I will not really cry if nothing is done about it. However, this does not change the science.
As a thought experiment, consider how the world would really look if all IR radiation were blocked at a distance of 100 meters or so. For crying out loud, there is a spectacle in my country because a city is doing IR filming from the air to track down houses with bad insulation. Wouldn't that be a bit hard if all (loosely speaking, since it is a exponential decay sort of thing) the IR radiation was trapped in 100m?
Thank you for your interesting post. I have often wondered what the explanation for CO2 lagging temperatures was.
However, am I mistaken in thinking that in this case, we couldn't say that the CO2 / temp graphs actually _demonstrate_ the hypothesis that CO2 significantly enhances warming, only that such a hypothesis is consistent with the graph? In other words, _could_ the graph also be consistent with the hypothesis that CO2 did _not_ significantly enhance warming (for example in the case that no discernible signal telling us one way or the other could be found in the data)? Please note that I am asking this, not asserting anything.
Please note that my first language is not English, so some nuance might be lost. Going by wikipedia, demonstration is an experiment meant to teach, rather than to prove. So going by that, the graph does "demonstrate" that the theory of CO2 enhancing warming is correct. However, if you meant "demonstrating" as in proving, it is not proof, the correlation might be just be incidental. It is, as you say, just consistent with the theory (or hypothesis, as you say, I have never been fond of that division of terms).
The best part is that even on that very page, if you match up the time-lines you can see that the temperature and CO2 graphs don't line up, and that the temperature starts to spike before CO2 amount does.
Unfortunately, there's no -1 misinformative mod.
That is to be expected. Normally, temperature starts to rise due to e.g. distance to the sun decreasing slightly, which leads to increased CO2 which enhances the effect of the warming, causing further CO2 to be released until a new balance is achieved (essentially that the energy absorbed from the sun equals the earths black-body radiation). CO2 increase with temperature because CO2 is less soluble in warm (sea)-water, and a number of other effects (Tundra melting is often mentioned as a big one, though I don't personally know.). Now, into this system we (the humans) release enough CO2 to increase the concentration by what, 30%? What do *you* think will happen?
That CO2 must warm the earth can also be concluded directly by looking at the absorbtion bands of CO2. You could even calculate the approximate effect (though not the feedback loops) from this, the atmospheric and distribution of CO2 and from the distribution of the electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere.
But of course, you knew all this. What pisses me off about all this that while the above is well-known science and has been for a long time, the economic aspects are far from clear to me. Is it worth it to curtail the warming? How much will it cost to adapt vs. prevention? Those are the interesting questions, but few discusses this:/
From experience, if you offer people 20% of their work time to work on personal projects, a fair amount of them will actually work 100% on their assigned work anyway.
I've never used F# but that syntax is very clear as long as you understand pattern matching. Furthermore, the F# version won't cause a stack overflow for large values of n where the Python version will.
Who cares? Either programs are toys which are not really useful for big values. There are other more efficient ways to compute n! for big n's, but not something that will fit in a handful of code lines.
Well, I may be stupid, but still. No, the match I understood as a funny way to write case statements. The -> is clear as well, but the 0l? I supposed l is for long, but I guess it meant "arbitrary precision integers" And the _? What's the deal with that? I also cannot guess what "rec" standard for. Compare this to the Haskell example:
factorial:: Integer -> Integer factorial 0 = 1 factorial n = n * factorial (n-1)
Here, I see plain English (Integer) and only two magic symbol (::, ->), the latter of which should be plain for anyone having even a basic schooling in mathematics (where functions are usually written as f:X->Y, a syntax few programming languages use for some reason). Contrast this with the F# version: Magic symbols ( |, ->, l, _ ) and a slew of non-obvious words ( let, rec, match.. with.. ). I think the Haskell version is much, much cleaner.
In all cases, I have ignored the math symbols =,+,*,- etc as being common between almost every language out there, and thus irrelevant.
F# version is essentially the same as OCaml version.
I don't know OCaml (I have a cursory knowledge of Haskell, which is why I picked that for comparison), but I could read the OCaml version no problem. The Scala version was difficult, but after staring at it for a bit I understands what it's getting at (especially the _ syntax is unnecessary obtuse). I still think F# is the worst of the lot. Big disclaimer: I have only looked at the factorial example. So this is sort of criticism based on "Hello World" snippets. I'm just saying that the poster far above might actually know what he is talking about,.
He was probably modded as troll because, while he may be entirely correct about "marketing droids", the conclusion that "F# stinks" doesn't exactly follow from that - unless he has some specific horror stories to share. Or at least saw the language, and is qualified to judge on its merits (i.e. familiar with similar existing languages).
Looking at the wikipedia articles, I tend to think he has a point. Look at the F# version of the famous factorial program and compare to the Haskell version(s). I think anyone would be hard-pressed to prefer the F# version, but who knows?
Long trips happen often enough to require a second car payment. Well, fuck that. Does it really make sense for me to have 2 car payments so I can have a coal burning electric car on the overloaded socal grid, and still have a payment for a second car to go climbing every 2-3 weeks?
But a lot of people have 2 cars anyway, to permit man and wife to commute. One of these being electric makes a lot of sense, since electric cars do have some advantages for short trips. But yes, it has to make economic sense and I still doubt the batteries will ever be able to handle this. Would LOVE to be proven wrong, though.
Half an hour in the sun each day is only a "modest exposure?"
I have a garden, so I think so, but point taken. Still, I think that more people spend that time in the sun than eats a raw-marinated herring each day, even around here.
You don't even need to get out in the sun that much... If you're eating right, you'll be getting plenty of vitamin D.
Well, yes, according to wikipedia some herring will do. But I have heard from a lot of sources that getting enough vitamin D through diet alone is difficult, while even a modest exposure to sun should do the trick (I think it was something like half an hour in the sun with arms exposed).
Just wait until he realizes that his tax/accounting software won't run on linux, and his son tries watching some youtube clips on it.
Eh. My wife runs Ubuntu, uses accounting software (some windows thing, worked out of the box through wine I suppose) and watches tons of youtube clips. I think you are a bit behind times...
What doesn't work too well is win32 games, for those that care about that. For most people, they prefer what they have always used since it doesn't cost anything (the software is either included or pirated).
You can actually use a lot of them against the others repository. E.g, hg works fine against a git repository. So just use git on the server (seems to be the one with most features there) and let people use whatever client they like.
Not that there is any good reason to prefer git except for one thing, which brings me back on subject: We really need a libgit(2). Development has essentially halted on this.
KDevelop 4 is shaping up to be a very good IDE. Probably worth to try out a beta if you're into FLOSS. Does PHP (I hear) and C++ (I know) quite well. A few stupid corner that are not quite there yet, but most of the hard stuff seems to be working.
According to wikipedia, this entire article is just silly. Neodymium is not rare, nor only occurring in China
Um, just make sure the last hundred or so edits aren't from Chinese addresses...
If it makes you more comfortable, it matches what I expect from my minor degree in chemistry. These elements are not really rare, nor concentrated in one part of the planet. The article is just the typical alarmist stuff.
very gooood. i think this is highly amusing, on several fronts. the first is just the irony of the country touted as having "A Bad Human Rights Record" (when in fact they are just using common sense to keep control over 1.3 billion people) happens to now hold a damocles sword over the rest of the world if it wants to go "green".
According to wikipedia, this entire article is just silly. Neodymium is not rare, nor only occurring in China.
lol. Or maybe you have no humor?;)
Or you are a psychopath?
Since I present the majority, I doubt it:) But there is a saying about thieves...:P Check out this map, nice company
you have:P
Most unborn babies do not want to be killed (as most living things do not want to be killed).
I believe that is pseudoscience. Anyway, you screwed up the formulation: I think it is safe to say rocks do not want to be melted (or want anything else), yet no one sane would claim it is immoral to melt a rock. Similarly, if a fetus does not want or desire anything, it is properly not immoral to kill it. So the question would rather be if a fetus about 12 weeks (still going by local law) desires life. I sincerely doubt that, though I am really no expert. I do know that at 2 weeks (where it is just one cell), there is no desire (or any other thoughts).
Concerning abortion the breaking point is whether the fetus is more or less a person than say a pig, which we will happily kill for convenience. (Or a dog, or whatever).
This is an extremely bad line of reasoning. Babies have intelligence lower than many animals.
Pseudoscience again. We do not know, as can easily be inferred by the fact that we cannot objectively measure intelligence at all. Indeed, I haven't even seen a good and universal definition of intelligence. Finally, you commit intellectual dishonesty by requiring your science to justify killing animals but not foetusses or even babies. There might be no such justification in science at all.
Is a mentally handicapped person less of a person?
Well, in the extreme case (what we call a vegetable case around here) then yes, that is not really a person at all. Of course, someone with a very mild mental handicap (say, Asperges) is of course a fullblown person with all the rights of a person. So it is not something you can answer categorically.
Is it okay to kill a baby (that is one of the reasonings used to justify infanticide btw. The other is that a baby “doesn’t have a personality yet”)
I think you screwed up the prose here, at least I cannot make head from tails of it. It is not okay to kill a baby by any normal morals in anything approaching a normal situation. Foetus starts as a cell, which is certainly ok to "kill", and ends up being a baby, which is not ok to kill unless we are talking extreme cases (mothers life in real danger, e.g.). Somewhere in between we have to draw the line; that line cannot be drawn with absolute scientific certainty, and that's just too bad. I also wish we could eat pork, have happy pigs and not kill any animals, but wishing does not change the world in such a way. I'd much prefer condoms over abortion; but life doesn't always work that way.
Around here it is 12 weeks. You can debate the exact limit, of course, I am no expert.
In most countries it is around 20 weeks (for the convenience) and as high as 26 weeks.
I would not know, I believe it is around 12 weeks in most of Northern Europe, but I really have never had a reason to care. It is one of the cases where I think that the experts should draw the line.
What matter is whether the fetus is conscious or not, or if such a line cannot be drawn, more conscious than say a dog.
If we define consciousness as “knowing and perceiving;
Ah, but we do not. It is always understood as a self-reflective concept; you have to be aware of a "you" to be conscious. It is something that (we think!) distinguish us from animals.
yet you still do not have a right to kill them (e.g. patients with serious head trama, etc).
It was a) me and b) a joke pertaining to the reply I replied to.
Your post wasn’t a joke. If you think it was a joke then you have no taste.
lol. Or maybe you have no humor?;)
You tried a vile conversational trick, and were called out. I
Really? So you do not see any similarity between abortion and infanticide?
Slavery. Don't try to talk around it. An no, saying "infanticide" is silly conversational trick in itself; Killing a person against its will is what matters, not if it was a child or an adult or whatever. Concerning abortion the breaking point is whether the fetus is more or less a person than say a pig, which we will happily kill for convenience. (Or a dog, or whatever).
And around here, anti-abortion really is considered old-fashioned fringe thinking.
So? Modern society is surprisingly lacking in moral values. Abortion is something that is probably two millennia old and even the moral justification that people now use (i.e. that a fetus before 26 weeks is not a human) is based on Victorian era religious pseudo-science (the so called “quickening”).
Around here it is 12 weeks. You can debate the exact limit, of course, I am no expert. What matter is whether the fetus is conscious or not, or if such a line cannot be drawn, more conscious than say a dog.
So, I would say that pro-abortion justification is really old fashioned pseudo-science.
What you believe is beside the point. Claiming that slavery and abortion is in any way related was vile, and you know it.
That has got to be the stupidest argument against abortion I have heard yet.
I did not state an argument (however you like to construe it). I stated my opinion - that abortion is a vile, barbaric and unnecessary practice that has no place in a civilised society.
don't try to excuse yourself. You tried a vile conversational trick, and were called out.
I stated my opinion in contrast the above poster's opinion (that you do not have a problem with).
It was a) me and b) a joke pertaining to the reply I replied to. So I don't see how I could have a problem with it. And around here, anti-abortion really is considered old-fashioned fringe thinking.
Pretty sure there's a sizable chunk of the middle east where all three of those are still accepted by mainstream society...whether or not that's a refutation of your argument is up for debate, though...
No debate. I could have written "in US" or "in the civilized world" or similar, and it would have been the same "argument". It's not an argument at all, just a lame attempt to condemn something by associating. Like condemning Christianity by linking it with child abuse/sex, or linking Islam and terrorism.
You are correct - abortion and infanticide are completely different concepts and really have nothing to do with each other. Good on ya for noticing the fallacy.
Did you miss my carefully related triplet? Stoning, religion and castration?
And I wouldn't call this argument a fallacy. Fallacy is a at least somewhat subtle or common trap. This argument is simple moronic.
Slashdot Mirror
You have such a simple-minded view of the planetary climate...that is...unfortunately...wrong. Planetary temperatures are not correlated with (in the order you mention them) 1)short-term earth-solar distance, 2)CO2 increases, 3)solar absorbtion-black body radiation 'balance', 4)warming sea water CO2 solubility decrease (also bad chemistry as carbonate chemistry is far more complex than just 'CO2 solubility') or 5) tundra melting.
It is a simplified explanation, suitable for slashdot. I note you do not offer an alternative mechanism that explains the curves mentioned. Normally, I'd gladly enter into a real scientific debate, but the slashdot comment system is really not suited for this.
That CO2 must warm the earth can also be concluded directly by looking at the absorbtion bands of CO2. You could even calculate the approximate effect (though not the feedback loops) from this, the atmospheric and distribution of CO2 and from the distribution of the electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere.
Apparently you have never actually looked at the absorption bands for CO2. There is already more than sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb all of the IR radiation that is capable of being absorbed by CO2, within the first few hundred meters of the atmosphere above the surface. Once absorbed, the energy is not trapped but is immediately re-emitted. The wavelength of the reemitted thermal radiation is a probability distribution depending ONLY on temperature that can be predicted with Planck's law and it is NOT concentrated within the narrow CO2 absorption band so almost all of that re-emitted raditation is free to radiate out into space untouched any further by your nemesis CO2.
Really? I think you must re-study your physics. CO2 does indeed reemit the infrared radiation, and the energy is (mostly) not related to temperature, but rather to the energy levels of the molecular frequncy in the CO_O bond (especially the frequency where the gap between the two oxygen atoms increase/decreases --- I think this is called "scissoring", but don't quote me on that). The frequency emitted is the frequency absorbed, more or less; I think you have blackbody light emitted confused with light emission cause by decay (Not sure about this word, "henfald" is the correct Danish word). Now, yes, actually, the temperature matters a bit, since the perceived emitted light is red-shifted (or blue-shifted) according to the entire molecule's speed. The direction is completely random, as I recall. It's been a while since I studied Raman spectroscopy, but I believe I have all the major points correct.
Not that you do not reveal yourself as a parrot-sceptic with words like "Nemesis". Frankly, I do not believe I, or my country, will be significantly affected by GW before 2100, so I will not really cry if nothing is done about it. However, this does not change the science.
As a thought experiment, consider how the world would really look if all IR radiation were blocked at a distance of 100 meters or so. For crying out loud, there is a spectacle in my country because a city is doing IR filming from the air to track down houses with bad insulation. Wouldn't that be a bit hard if all (loosely speaking, since it is a exponential decay sort of thing) the IR radiation was trapped in 100m?
Thank you for your interesting post. I have often wondered what the explanation for CO2 lagging temperatures was.
However, am I mistaken in thinking that in this case, we couldn't say that the CO2 / temp graphs actually _demonstrate_ the hypothesis that CO2 significantly enhances warming, only that such a hypothesis is consistent with the graph? In other words, _could_ the graph also be consistent with the hypothesis that CO2 did _not_ significantly enhance warming (for example in the case that no discernible signal telling us one way or the other could be found in the data)? Please note that I am asking this, not asserting anything.
Please note that my first language is not English, so some nuance might be lost. Going by wikipedia, demonstration is an experiment meant to teach, rather than to prove. So going by that, the graph does "demonstrate" that the theory of CO2 enhancing warming is correct. However, if you meant "demonstrating" as in proving, it is not proof, the correlation might be just be incidental. It is, as you say, just consistent with the theory (or hypothesis, as you say, I have never been fond of that division of terms).
The best part is that even on that very page, if you match up the time-lines you can see that the temperature and CO2 graphs don't line up, and that the temperature starts to spike before CO2 amount does.
Unfortunately, there's no -1 misinformative mod.
That is to be expected. Normally, temperature starts to rise due to e.g. distance to the sun decreasing slightly, which leads to increased CO2 which enhances the effect of the warming, causing further CO2 to be released until a new balance is achieved (essentially that the energy absorbed from the sun equals the earths black-body radiation). CO2 increase with temperature because CO2 is less soluble in warm (sea)-water, and a number of other effects (Tundra melting is often mentioned as a big one, though I don't personally know.). Now, into this system we (the humans) release enough CO2 to increase the concentration by what, 30%? What do *you* think will happen?
That CO2 must warm the earth can also be concluded directly by looking at the absorbtion bands of CO2. You could even calculate the approximate effect (though not the feedback loops) from this, the atmospheric and distribution of CO2 and from the distribution of the electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere.
But of course, you knew all this. What pisses me off about all this that while the above is well-known science and has been for a long time, the economic aspects are far from clear to me. Is it worth it to curtail the warming? How much will it cost to adapt vs. prevention? Those are the interesting questions, but few discusses this :/
From experience, if you offer people 20% of their work time to work on personal projects, a fair amount of them will actually work 100% on their assigned work anyway.
However, there's more to it than syntax. For example, can you point out a decent Haskell IDE?
I did write, several times, that I was comparing languages by one example. Does that sound like I would know such stuff? Anyway, try this :P
I've never used F# but that syntax is very clear as long as you understand pattern matching. Furthermore, the F# version won't cause a stack overflow for large values of n where the Python version will.
Who cares? Either programs are toys which are not really useful for big values. There are other more efficient ways to compute n! for big n's, but not something that will fit in a handful of code lines.
Well, I may be stupid, but still. No, the match I understood as a funny way to write case statements. The -> is clear as well, but the 0l? I supposed l is for long, but I guess it meant "arbitrary precision integers" And the _? What's the deal with that? I also cannot guess what "rec" standard for. Compare this to the Haskell example:
Here, I see plain English (Integer) and only two magic symbol (::, ->), the latter of which should be plain for anyone having even a basic schooling in mathematics (where functions are usually written as f:X->Y, a syntax few programming languages use for some reason). Contrast this with the F# version: Magic symbols ( |, ->, l, _ ) and a slew of non-obvious words ( let, rec, match .. with .. ). I think the Haskell version is much, much cleaner.
In all cases, I have ignored the math symbols =,+,*,- etc as being common between almost every language out there, and thus irrelevant.
F# version is essentially the same as OCaml version.
I don't know OCaml (I have a cursory knowledge of Haskell, which is why I picked that for comparison), but I could read the OCaml version no problem. The Scala version was difficult, but after staring at it for a bit I understands what it's getting at (especially the _ syntax is unnecessary obtuse). I still think F# is the worst of the lot. Big disclaimer: I have only looked at the factorial example. So this is sort of criticism based on "Hello World" snippets. I'm just saying that the poster far above might actually know what he is talking about,.
He was probably modded as troll because, while he may be entirely correct about "marketing droids", the conclusion that "F# stinks" doesn't exactly follow from that - unless he has some specific horror stories to share. Or at least saw the language, and is qualified to judge on its merits (i.e. familiar with similar existing languages).
Looking at the wikipedia articles, I tend to think he has a point. Look at the F# version of the famous factorial program and compare to the Haskell version(s). I think anyone would be hard-pressed to prefer the F# version, but who knows?
Top Female Driver?
Where does that put her overall?
Well, she won something, came second in something else and then quit due to rule changes. But please, read the article already.
Long trips happen often enough to require a second car payment. Well, fuck that. Does it really make sense for me to have 2 car payments so I can have a coal burning electric car on the overloaded socal grid, and still have a payment for a second car to go climbing every 2-3 weeks?
But a lot of people have 2 cars anyway, to permit man and wife to commute. One of these being electric makes a lot of sense, since electric cars do have some advantages for short trips. But yes, it has to make economic sense and I still doubt the batteries will ever be able to handle this. Would LOVE to be proven wrong, though.
Half an hour in the sun each day is only a "modest exposure?"
I have a garden, so I think so, but point taken. Still, I think that more people spend that time in the sun than eats a raw-marinated herring each day, even around here.
Agreed.
You don't even need to get out in the sun that much... If you're eating right, you'll be getting plenty of vitamin D.
Well, yes, according to wikipedia some herring will do. But I have heard from a lot of sources that getting enough vitamin D through diet alone is difficult, while even a modest exposure to sun should do the trick (I think it was something like half an hour in the sun with arms exposed).
Just wait until he realizes that his tax/accounting software won't run on linux, and his son tries watching some youtube clips on it.
Eh. My wife runs Ubuntu, uses accounting software (some windows thing, worked out of the box through wine I suppose) and watches tons of youtube clips. I think you are a bit behind times...
What doesn't work too well is win32 games, for those that care about that. For most people, they prefer what they have always used since it doesn't cost anything (the software is either included or pirated).
You can actually use a lot of them against the others repository. E.g, hg works fine against a git repository. So just use git on the server (seems to be the one with most features there) and let people use whatever client they like.
Not that there is any good reason to prefer git except for one thing, which brings me back on subject: We really need a libgit(2). Development has essentially halted on this.
KDevelop 4 is shaping up to be a very good IDE. Probably worth to try out a beta if you're into FLOSS. Does PHP (I hear) and C++ (I know) quite well. A few stupid corner that are not quite there yet, but most of the hard stuff seems to be working.
guess again, New Zealand is part of the continent Zealandia
it is NOT part of the continent of Australia, different shelf.
makes sense our schools gave up teaching geography and history, who needs that when we have blogs.
Hm, according to the Ultimate Truth (aka Wikipedia), it seems New Zealand is between plates.
According to wikipedia, this entire article is just silly. Neodymium is not rare, nor only occurring in China
Um, just make sure the last hundred or so edits aren't from Chinese addresses...
If it makes you more comfortable, it matches what I expect from my minor degree in chemistry. These elements are not really rare, nor concentrated in one part of the planet. The article is just the typical alarmist stuff.
very gooood. i think this is highly amusing, on several fronts. the first is just the irony of the country touted as having "A Bad Human Rights Record" (when in fact they are just using common sense to keep control over 1.3 billion people) happens to now hold a damocles sword over the rest of the world if it wants to go "green".
According to wikipedia, this entire article is just silly. Neodymium is not rare, nor only occurring in China.
Whoosh - someone doesn't get irony. Who else but Pratchett gives his characters names like "Visit"
Surely you mean "Visit-the-infidels-with-informative-pamphlets"?
lol. Or maybe you have no humor? ;)
Or you are a psychopath?
Since I present the majority, I doubt it :) But there is a saying about thieves... :P Check out this map, nice company
you have :P
Most unborn babies do not want to be killed (as most living things do not want to be killed).
I believe that is pseudoscience. Anyway, you screwed up the formulation: I think it is safe to say rocks do not want to be melted (or want anything else), yet no one sane would claim it is immoral to melt a rock. Similarly, if a fetus does not want or desire anything, it is properly not immoral to kill it. So the question would rather be if a fetus about 12 weeks (still going by local law) desires life. I sincerely doubt that, though I am really no expert. I do know that at 2 weeks (where it is just one cell), there is no desire (or any other thoughts).
Concerning abortion the breaking point is whether the fetus is more or less a person than say a pig, which we will happily kill for convenience. (Or a dog, or whatever). This is an extremely bad line of reasoning. Babies have intelligence lower than many animals.
Pseudoscience again. We do not know, as can easily be inferred by the fact that we cannot objectively measure intelligence at all. Indeed, I haven't even seen a good and universal definition of intelligence. Finally, you commit intellectual dishonesty by requiring your science to justify killing animals but not foetusses or even babies. There might be no such justification in science at all.
Is a mentally handicapped person less of a person?
Well, in the extreme case (what we call a vegetable case around here) then yes, that is not really a person at all. Of course, someone with a very mild mental handicap (say, Asperges) is of course a fullblown person with all the rights of a person. So it is not something you can answer categorically.
Is it okay to kill a baby (that is one of the reasonings used to justify infanticide btw. The other is that a baby “doesn’t have a personality yet”)
I think you screwed up the prose here, at least I cannot make head from tails of it. It is not okay to kill a baby by any normal morals in anything approaching a normal situation. Foetus starts as a cell, which is certainly ok to "kill", and ends up being a baby, which is not ok to kill unless we are talking extreme cases (mothers life in real danger, e.g.). Somewhere in between we have to draw the line; that line cannot be drawn with absolute scientific certainty, and that's just too bad. I also wish we could eat pork, have happy pigs and not kill any animals, but wishing does not change the world in such a way. I'd much prefer condoms over abortion; but life doesn't always work that way.
Around here it is 12 weeks. You can debate the exact limit, of course, I am no expert. In most countries it is around 20 weeks (for the convenience) and as high as 26 weeks.
I would not know, I believe it is around 12 weeks in most of Northern Europe, but I really have never had a reason to care. It is one of the cases where I think that the experts should draw the line.
What matter is whether the fetus is conscious or not, or if such a line cannot be drawn, more conscious than say a dog. If we define consciousness as “knowing and perceiving;
Ah, but we do not. It is always understood as a self-reflective concept; you have to be aware of a "you" to be conscious. It is something that (we think!) distinguish us from animals.
yet you still do not have a right to kill them (e.g. patients with serious head trama, etc).
Well, noone wants to be killed
It was a) me and b) a joke pertaining to the reply I replied to. Your post wasn’t a joke. If you think it was a joke then you have no taste.
lol. Or maybe you have no humor? ;)
You tried a vile conversational trick, and were called out. I Really? So you do not see any similarity between abortion and infanticide?
Slavery. Don't try to talk around it. An no, saying "infanticide" is silly conversational trick in itself; Killing a person against its will is what matters, not if it was a child or an adult or whatever. Concerning abortion the breaking point is whether the fetus is more or less a person than say a pig, which we will happily kill for convenience. (Or a dog, or whatever).
And around here, anti-abortion really is considered old-fashioned fringe thinking. So? Modern society is surprisingly lacking in moral values. Abortion is something that is probably two millennia old and even the moral justification that people now use (i.e. that a fetus before 26 weeks is not a human) is based on Victorian era religious pseudo-science (the so called “quickening”).
Around here it is 12 weeks. You can debate the exact limit, of course, I am no expert. What matter is whether the fetus is conscious or not, or if such a line cannot be drawn, more conscious than say a dog.
So, I would say that pro-abortion justification is really old fashioned pseudo-science.
What you believe is beside the point. Claiming that slavery and abortion is in any way related was vile, and you know it.
That has got to be the stupidest argument against abortion I have heard yet. I did not state an argument (however you like to construe it). I stated my opinion - that abortion is a vile, barbaric and unnecessary practice that has no place in a civilised society.
don't try to excuse yourself. You tried a vile conversational trick, and were called out. I stated my opinion in contrast the above poster's opinion (that you do not have a problem with).
It was a) me and b) a joke pertaining to the reply I replied to. So I don't see how I could have a problem with it. And around here, anti-abortion really is considered old-fashioned fringe thinking.
Pretty sure there's a sizable chunk of the middle east where all three of those are still accepted by mainstream society...whether or not that's a refutation of your argument is up for debate, though...
No debate. I could have written "in US" or "in the civilized world" or similar, and it would have been the same "argument". It's not an argument at all, just a lame attempt to condemn something by associating. Like condemning Christianity by linking it with child abuse/sex, or linking Islam and terrorism.
You are correct - abortion and infanticide are completely different concepts and really have nothing to do with each other. Good on ya for noticing the fallacy.
Did you miss my carefully related triplet? Stoning, religion and castration?
And I wouldn't call this argument a fallacy. Fallacy is a at least somewhat subtle or common trap. This argument is simple moronic.